More are placing blame on the Baby Boomers for the financial and moral bankruptcy now gripping the country. The Millennial Generation certainly has its share of spoiled spendthrifts and some of the demands being made by activists at Occupy Wall Street are evidence of that.  But if the Millennials are becoming “Generation Debt,” are their Boomer parents to blame?  Responding to The American Interest‘s Walter Russell Mead, Rod Dreher says that the Boomers have contributed their share of screw-ups, but the Greatest Generation is not blameless. And what about Generation X?

The world is rapidly changing, says Andrew Bacevich, and Americans need to change with it. The “Freedom Agenda” of neoconservatives is unraveling as America is gripped by recession; the Middle East faces an uncertain future; and Europe looks for a lifeline from financial chaos. All the while, Bacevich says, American politicians continue to fiddle obliviously, chanting mantras of American greatness that will offer no comfort if the populace is lulled into believing America remains the post-war superpower of 1945:

American politicians stubbornly beg to differ, of course, content to recite vapid but reassuring clichés about American global leadership, American exceptionalism, and that never-ending American Century. Everything, they would have us believe, will remain just as it has been — providing the electorate installs the right person in the Oval Office.

Rod Dreher says the “Christmas Creep” has already begun to infect retailers, with giant Santa Claus decorations flanking shoppers, and fake greenery wrapping around street lights. He says this overly-eager commercialism of Christmas is destroying the spirit of the holiday. In light of the consumerism gripping the modern American Christmas, Philip Giraldi suggests that there may be way to encourage local economy this year, by consciously seeking to buy only American-made presents.

It seems that each year authorities expand the definition of what constitutes bullying, finding inflammatory comments an infraction punishable by the state. Paul Gottifried says that this kind of nanny-statism has gotten out of control.

There is nothing novel about these concerns. We have been living for decades with expanding government surveillance over our minds and emotions, a development that I describe in my books as “the triumph of the therapeutic state.” Sadly the outcry against this tyranny has been so underwhelming that I expect it to go on and on into the distant future. Universities and corporations are already being forced to monitor selectively insensitive speech (such as straights insulting gays but not the reverse), and about twenty years ago I began to notice that men hanging out in gyms were looking over their shoulders lest they be overheard engaging in “hurtful interactions.”  Should we therefore expect any limits to be placed on this meddling done in the name of making us more sensitive?