QUOTE OF THE DAY. An American Thinker essay identifies where much elite opinion went wrong. Start with the (overrated?) Kennedy presidency.

The early 60s was one of the most youth-obsessed periods in American history. There's no simple explanation for this, and we don't really require one beyond noting the fact. It was reflected in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who was characterized as "young" although, like Obama, he was actually on the cusp of middle age. What youth thought, wanted, and believed was subject to endless public dissection and analysis. Youthful opinion on all sorts of complicated topics, ranging from Cold War strategy to Vietnam to race relations, was actively courted and given serious consideration. At one point, Time magazine chose the "Youth of America" as its Man of the Year.

More specifically, that was the Class of 1965 at Pacific Palisades High, in a very rich part of greater Los Angeles, and a more screwed up bunch of young adults you'll be hard pressed to find.

As the decade wore on, rhetoric concerning the younger generation grew more extreme. Rather than simply having opinions of interest, youth were now said to possess the Answer to all sorts of critical matters. Youth, the public was assured, had important things to say. Youth must be listened to. And finally, "Older people have screwed things up. Let's give the kids a chance." All sentiments that would sound familiar to the Roger Cohens of our day.

And out went core curricula, dress codes, single-sex dorms, curfews, and common sense. Note, though, the real villain of the piece.

All this might have been harmless but for the collapse of the previous generation -- the so-called "Silents". (Actually merely a subset of the GI generation.) Possibly the most overlooked factor of the entire decade is the manner in which this generation, just coming into their prime years, abdicated responsibility in favor of what we've come to know as the 60s lifestyle. It was this, rather than anything the kids did, that caused much of the later trouble.

No, the Silents are not a subset of the GI generation. It's more precise to identify the most destructive Silents as too young to be called to Korea and too old to be called to Vietnam. A large chunk of that cohort had the opportunity to climb the career ladder quickly owing to an expanding economy, and, in education, a relatively small cohort faced the growing population of what we now call the Baby Boomers. The following assessment, however, is more accurate than not.

There's no difficulty explaining this turn of events. Every generation has a strictly limited leadership cohort -- the number is generally held to be approximately 5%. The U.S. lost over a quarter-million men in WW II. A substantial number of the GI generation's natural leaders were killed at places like Kasserine, Tarawa, and Omaha Beach. This is one kind of deficit that simply can't be made up. As a result, positions in the postwar world that required hard-charging alphas were filled by whoever was available, too many of whom weren't up to the job.

One of the older heads in my department recalled that there was sufficient churn in the academic job market that the way to get rid of an uncollegial colleague was to not recommend that person for a pay increase. Tenure was relatively unimportant. The same dynamic might have been at work elsewhere -- remember the conglomerate merger wave?