Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994 TAG: 9405030014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BATES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The name itself tips off the nature of the "honest new generation." Its members are somehow better than the clearly dishonest old generation, a new breed of cat. This type of exceptionalism often occurs in some political members of the baby-boomer generation. The affliction runs in two strains.
First the liberals. They want to mandate through government action the removal of all toxins from the environment, eliminate poverty, guarantee full employment and harmonize race, gender and interspecies relations.
I admit to having sympathies with the goals of the Woodstock group that wants to have government put everything right. However, there is the problem of reality. Big Government in this vein costs a lot and has nearly bankrupted the country. It has ensured that my generation will be worse off than our parents. The end of the American Dream.
Now the Allen crowd. They believe conservatives will renew America through their superior moral vision. Several key members of the Allen regime, the "honest new generation," have been leaders in the National Committee for the Right to Life and Virginia Society for Life, are admirers of Harry Byrd, and push the goals of the Temperance Society.
While believing that government is too inept to offer help to working people, this crew wants government to come into your bedroom and monitor your sex practices and reproductive cycle.
No thanks. We are all adults here. So get out of our bedrooms, please. And if you are so interested in deviancy, I can direct you to West Grace Street in Richmond or the transvestite prostitute, Sandy, I saw on the streets of Norfolk during my tour for the Commission on Urban Virginia.
So consider this advice from a younger brother, a member of Generation X. I can't tell you how many of my friends with college degrees are working at 7-Eleven and sitting on their mother's couch at home because of diminishing job opportunities. Let's not pass the bills off to the next generation and let's get real.
And to the "honest generation" of leaders now in the capital, stop being like Gladys Kravits, the nosy neighbor on "Bewitched," and instead try to improve education or rebuild the cities or something.
Scott Bates was secretary of the commonwealth during the Wilder administration.
by CNB