The Most
Influential People in our Lives
HowardSmead.com
Title Page
Introduction
Conclusion
Besides our parents, who
haven't always come first and who suffered through the ignominy of the
decade-long Generation Gap -- our generation, their gap -- several men have had
enormous influence over us. When you look at our history, even Elvis and the
Beatles pale before Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Richard Nixon
Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Dr. King gave us our idealism and inspiration. He has easily had the most
positive influence over us -- and many others as well. His eloquence alone
would have stirred our hearts and minds. But his resolution, his bravery in the
face of adversity taugh t us to aspire to greatness. He cast a shinning beacon
that grew stronger even after his personal light was snuffed out.
Dr. Benjamin Spock
"...I think that more of our children would grow up happier and more
stable if they were acquiring a conviction, all through childhood, that the
most important and the most fulfilling thing that human beings can do to serve
humanity in some fashion and to live by their ideals ... If you raise a child
who has idealism he will have no lack of opportunities to apply it." Our
parents took these optimistic ideas to heart. And to a large extent raised the
baby boomers by his counsel, indulgent while instilli ng "the feeling that
[we] are in this world not for [our] own satisfaction but primarily to serve
others." He told our parents their job was to create a generation of
dreamers that would originate to new designs for life that might free our
countrymen fro m economic turmoil and destructive wars. He wanted this new
generation of babies to be reformers with a feel for the past and an eye to the
future. To do that he urged our mothers to breast feed us, to nurture us
towards our full potential. In doing so he may not have allowed for the
impatience such lofty goals might have instilled in an affluent and protected
generation.
John F. Kennedy
Stirring though his rhetoric, inspirational though his youthful vigah and optimism may have been, JFK's lasting legacy came from his assassination. While it remains one of the great ifs of our generation -- If he had only lived -- the fact is ou r generational paranoia, our mistrust of authority burst forth with his strange death. The alienation might have come anyway. But we've never gotten past the feeling that conspirators took him away to prevent change.
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. He restored our
moribund sense of honor and pride and we loved him for it. But his feet were of
clay. His administration committed worse transgressions against the public
trust that Nixon's. Like JFK, Reagan was shallow and a monumental hypocrite.
His rhetoric about values was just that. He lied with tears of righteousness in
his eyes. He never attended church except for funerals. They both preached
Christianity but consulted astrologers. And he and Na ncy were hardly the role
model parents they pretended to be. His eight years left Americans disliking
and mistrusting their government even more -- and a national debt that
threatened to wreck the lives of children yet to be born.
Elvis Presley
He took race music, the blues, added a dash of country and
unleashed rock n' rock on the world. With his white bucks, long sideburns, DA
haircut, pump-action pelvis, defiant sneer and nearly feminine sex appeal, he
was kid on the block with an a ttitude. The juvenile delinquent older brother
in the leather jacket and hot rod Ford who broke the culture barriers that we
would later obliterate.
The Beatles
We knew we were in for something extraordinary when John, Paul, George
and Ringo hit our shores. Beatlemania was generational. But it didn't stop with
them. It started. Although John denied it, the Beatles were present at the
beginning of the cultural revolution. They gave our music dignity and
perfection. Their cheekiness showed us how to be something other than miniature
adults.
Bob Moses
Bob Dylan
He put the intellectual muscle into the times. Trite though it sounds now, Dylan made us sit down and listen to the words -- and take their meaning to heart. He was always more troubadour than musician, more critic than inspiration, and more eccentric than he needed to be. But he was our own.
Timothy Leary
Social disfunction resulted from this man's lame, pretentious and
misleading ideas. Though we romanticized the search for enlightenment, taking
drugs and dropping out of society was no way to achieve it. We were desperate
for meaning and a leader to fi ll the vacuum in our lives. Leary came along and
filled it with balderdash. In his way he was as deceitful as Richard Nixon.
Jerry Falwell
Let us never undervalue the importance of the religious revival that
began in the mid-70's. This Fourth Great Awakening came to us through via
televangelists like Falwell. Although his arrogance and spitefulness led
pollsters to declare him the Most Ha ted Man in America for a number of years,
the message he and his cohort brought was one of family, tradition,
Christianity and strict morality. These values became the rallying cry for
boomers leading the counterrevolution that may come to have a more las ting
effect than the counterculture. Unfortunately, the man's pride blinded him to
his own less than charitable attitude towards his fellow man. He was no Dr.
King.
Bill Gates
The richest boomer. The richest American. This visionary, and others like
him, such as Steven Jobs, Steve Wozinak, and Richard Allen, have changed our
lives to a greater extent than 60's or 90's radicals could ever hope to
achieve. When it's all said a nd done, Microsoft's innovative software and
Apple's home computers, facilitated the computer revolution that is
restructuring our existence on the planet.
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