"We are a crooked and perverse generation," said Josiah Bartlett, member of the Continental Congress (not the fantasy president). "I am obnoxious, suspected, unpopular," lamented John Adams, member of the Continental Congress and second president of the U.S.
Two-thirds of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence on this day 229 year ago were members of a generation labeled "Liberty" by Strauss and Howe in their book Generations (from which much of this entry is cribbed; see also yesterday’s blog entry on defining GenX). In their cyclical theory of history, four types of generations recur over and over again in sequence... and the Liberty were of the type they call "Nomad"... just as Xers are.
They sure sound an awful lot like us. They were born in the middle of the religious Great Awakening, the 18th-century equivalent of the Age of Aquarius baby Xers were born into. They survived a relatively neglected childhood (we were "latchkey" kids) that was ravaged by war and disease (we had Vietnam and AIDS). Instead of gangsta rap and crazy bike messengers, they had vigilante mobs: the Green Mountain Boys, the Paxton Boys. They were privateers, rabble rousers, and adventurers, as notorious as often as they were merely famous: Daniel Boone and Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen. The term "Yankee" was coined for them, and it was considered perjorative -- imagine that two centuries from today, anyone who spends any time at all in the virtual world is casually called an Xer, and you’ve got the idea.
But in their midlife years (perhaps 10 years from now for us Xers), they were George Washington (who won a nation’s independence, though he frequently doubted he would), Paul Revere (who organized underground resistance to tyranny), and Thomas Paine (the original blogger).
They were tough and pragmatic, expeditious and daring, and they did great things with those qualities. Hopefully we will, too.
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