The 1940-45 cohort uniquely combined engagement with tolerance and bred civil rights

Evidence

Virtually no cohort in America is more engaged or more tolerant than those born around 1940–45. They are the liberal communitarians par excellence. Their parents were as engaged, but less tolerant. Their children are as tolerant, but less engaged. For some reason, that cohort inherited most of their parents’ sense of community, but they discarded their parents’ intolerance. For the most part, they successfully passed their tolerance to their children, but they failed to transmit the communitarian habits they had themselves inherited. It was from this liberal communitarian cultural matrix that the civil rights movement emerged. But that cultural matrix has already begun to fade, leaving a nation as we enter the new century that is increasingly disengaged, but no longer increasingly tolerant. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1270

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Large youth cohorts historically coincide with protest, extremism, and revolution — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 321; Civil Rights support was compatible with liberal faith in the system — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 692; America’s postwar civic engagement peaked despite widespread discrimination and inequality. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 29

Broader Connections

• Large youth cohorts historically coincide with protest, extremism, and revolution #expands (0.78) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 321