Lessons from the Greatest

by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
July 23, 2010

Those who have been labeled and now marketed as the Greatest Generation are leaving us. The events that marked them, that led to them being called the Greatest Generation — the Great Depression, the Second World War, the effort to rebuild the world after the Second World War — are nearly three generations past now. The men and women of that time shaped our economics, our arts, and certainly our politics, but the youngest is in his or her late 70s, and anno domini will not be denied.

Nationally, politically, those people included the Kennedys, they included Robert Byrd, they included Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

They also included John Raymond Lindstrom, who never ran for office but who never hesitated to speak his mind politically, and in so many ways encapsulated the elements of what made the Greatest Generation so great.

He was this reporter’s father, and on July 16 he died at age 84. The reason this column did not appear a week ago was so that I, my wife, my mother, and my brother and sisters could be with him in his final hours.

Like so many of that time, my Dad not only crossed the chronological and technological divide of generations (unlike so many his age, Dad was a vigorous Internet devotee, shooting off e-mails, delighting in flipcam videos of his grandson, often watched while listening to his iPod), but cultural and economic divides as well. He was born relatively poor just before the Depression and advanced to serious poverty during the Depression. Yet he was the first in his family to graduate high school, and while waiting to turn 18 to enlist in the Army Air Corps, he enrolled in Tufts College (to which he returned after the war, thanks to the GI bill, and graduated from in 1949). He never stopped learning, surrounded all the time by books on every subject, able to quote poets at length, cite obscure historic incidents, combine issues of science and economics, and pose questions such as: “Does President Clinton suffer from echolalia?”

Like so many other post-war, newly educated men, he went on to found a business and prospered. Like so many others he went from being a New Deal Democrat, supporting Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, to a conservative, more Republican-leaning independent. He was never a libertarian, and he always understood the need for social services and the role government plays in promoting education and culture, as well as its role in regulating finances.

One thing he did not do, however, is suffer fools. And in recent years, as he reviewed the state of government and politics, he felt himself adrift in a roiling sea of foolishness. No party, no politician was sparred from his harpoon of criticism. Yet he also had an understanding of one essential component needed to promote progress, especially political progress.

In an e-mail sent to me earlier this year, Dad said, “There is enough blame to go around so that all sides are complicit; we’re all guilty, but what we need now is courage and leadership. It’s time for those who should be governing and leading to stop screaming at one another and allow the poor, beleaguered tax-paying citizens at least a few moments of comfort and rest.”

Like so many of those who struggled through the Depression, who fought the world’s deadliest and largest war, and who then joined in to help their allies and their former enemies to regain their place in the world, my dad was baffled at a political ethic that seems to value screaming argument over solid accomplishment.

For if the Greatest Generation truly was the greatest, it was because the men and women of that time understood that to solve big issues, like winning a war, people had to find common ground. Common ground had to be found because problems had to be solved. The current state of seeming to pick at issues but not find or at least attempt to find solution to them, thereby keeping the problems current for ongoing political purpose, is baffling to them.

They understood that principles are often little more than middle-class luxuries, and when facing enormous problems the key is solving the problem, not clinging to principle. That did not necessarily mean abandoning principles, but it did mean making the principles work within the restrictions of the time and understanding that all persons had to be able to do the same with their principles to reach common accord that will then accomplish certain goals. And they understood that sometimes the goal was greater than the principle, and that refusing to act because you allowed principles to prevent you from acting was in its own way a type of moral cowardice.

And above all, they understood that reaching common ground meant talking to each other, getting to know one another, getting to understand a person’s motivation and, above all, taking each other at face value and assuming the best of that person. Whatever a person’s political bent and background, one began by assuming the person was there to help solve problems and, therefore, it was incumbent on all persons to figure out how to reach agreement with each other. The idea that a person was little better than an automaton for a party or a special interest or a principle was simply baffling.

This is not to suggest that the men and women of the Greatest Generation were perfect, that they always reached agreement, that life was a straight-line progression towards Nirvana under their leadership. No, problems aplenty still remained. There were conflicts of left and right, labor and management, Republican and Democrat. After all, McCarthyism was a big hit back then. Some major issues were either never resolved or resolved in a fashion that has continued to cause problems.

But still, when one looks at the history of the post-war period, from 1945 to about 1980, and considers the policies and actions taken, it is an astonishing record, one scarcely comparable to any other period in American history. America is far from achieving total racial harmony, and the civil rights laws of the 1960s were enacted in the teeth of almost unimaginable violence and discord. Yet, somehow, looking at how men and women of different parties and backgrounds came together to put into law the essential elements of civil rights, one has to wonder: could we do the same today? Could we rise up and face down the enmity and anger and fear that so many Democrats and Republicans faced then and say, this is right and this we will do?

As Dad said, we should show “courage and leadership,” we should “stop screaming at one another.”

Could one honestly imagine a situation like that of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod occurring during the 1950s and 1960s? That an innocent person would be set up for deliberate attack, and that everyone would fall for the bait because society had become so shallow that it could only accept the worst possible interpretation, without attempting to establish the full facts? Maybe, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Could one honestly imagine in the 1950s and 1960s that anyone would rush to defend the perpetrator of the attack as just an innocent dupe and for that be above reproach? Maybe, maybe. Then again… Could one imagine anyone in the 1950s and 1960s not taking at least a minute of reflection about what just happened before feeling the need to run to some other imagined horror and hold it up for public censure? Again, maybe, maybe. But…

For politics to succeed, for politicians to be successful, those in politics have to talk to each other — not at each other, not about each other, not behind each other, not to someone else about each other; they have to talk to each other. Sometimes that’s not easy. Sometimes, that’s infuriating. But unless we think society will be happy to continue to founder and flounder, we have to talk to each other. Maybe not, as one of Dad’s favorite poets, W. H. Auden, said, “love each other or die,” but at least talk to one another, at least find the commonality we all share, and from that find agreement.

Ironically, another death gives hope that ideal is not fully gone. Chet Zarko died suddenly at 39. He was a conservative activist, a Republican stalwart (some might have called him a right-wing henchman at times) eager to engage in a fight. On the social media sites, his fellow conservatives praised him to the heaven he is sharing with Dad as a great champion of liberty, a true supporter of the conservative cause, one who never failed to stand for the limited government principles that made America great.

But the liberal commentators remembered Mr. Zarko as a nice guy, as a funny guy, as one who could put the fight away and get to know a person, who would sometimes make suggestions to help the other side out. He was one, as Dad might say, who stopped screaming, who showed courage by opening up to the other side, and the other side responded.

It is always the simplest things that are the most profound. As Dad said, be brave and lead, stop screaming. Things then may get done.

It is those simple things, the ability to live by those simple rules, that one could say made Dad and his generation the greatest.

John Lindstrom is publisher of Gongwer News Service. For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.