The Great Generation

3 February 2007

Re Greg Sheridan’s blog on why his father’s generation were the greatest, Jan 20:

Whether their generation is 'better' than ours is a canard. They tended to be morally rigid and sexually repressed, with stunted imaginations. We tend to be soft, hedonistic and a little irresponsible. But how could you ever decide which generation is 'better'? It's a non-question.

Greg Sheridan must be granted his feelings of respect for his Dad, but to extrapolate that to a gushy comparison between two entire generations is mawkish.

It also needs to be said, given Greg Sheridan's role in geeing up public support for what was obviously going to be - and has turned out to be - a catastrophic war, that his father's generation fought for much clearer values.

We, by contrast, are thesedays beset on all sides by media commentators such as his son, and other servants of the imperium. As a consequence, we were sufficiently addled to support an invasion that was transparently against our national interest.

Greg Sheridan's father's generation were not dumb enough to put Australia - its nuclear reactors, its power plants, its buses, trains and planes, its civilian population - on the hitlist of every international terrorist on Earth.

I'll give them that.