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Young conservative writer Helen Andrews is what the right usually accuses progressives of being shes a scold.

All cyclical, of course, because when I was a wee bairn it was indeed the Birchers and their buds who did the societal scolding. No rocknroll, no birth control for you, bohemians just redlined neighborhoods with segregated schools and then its off to fight the Commies in Vietnam, thank you very much. Gay? No youre not. One God, one country, love it or leave it.

I could never get how the reactionaries were allowed to pretend their views had anything to do with freedom. The conformity most in our parents generation sought for all Americans resulted, naturally, in rebellion by those who didnt want to grow up to be The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.

But the premise of Andrews new book Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster is that the rebellion resulted in societal ruin, and that, thanks to those born between 1945 and 1964, were basically screwed, going forward: They inherited prosperity, social cohesion, and functioning institutions. They passed on debt, inequality, moribund churches, and a broken democracy.

I first heard Andrews interviewed on Left, Right and Center, on which she was funny and bright, and then read her book. That Andrews premise is wild and provocative doesnt mean its wrong. It turns out that on closer inspection it is wrong almost comically wrong. But she is such a good writer, so finely contrary, so ornery, that its worth taking a look at the world through her millennial eyes. If shes incorrect in the main in claiming we boomers have ruined the world forever, shes not at all wrong in skewering some of the pomposity of the hippies and their ilk, and in her worries about how the economy works for her generation: the cruelties of the real estate market, the disaster that is college debt.

An editor suggested the topic of popping the OK, boomer balloon to Andrews, saying she should base it on Lytton Stracheys Eminent Victorians, a vicious lampoon of four late leaders of the generation that brought Britain World War I. Youre like Strachey, the editor told her, because youre an essayist, and youre mean. Nice work if you can get it!

So Andrews, an editor at The American Conservative, chose six boomers Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton and Sonia Sotomayor to blame for what she sees as the current unpleasantness. Stracheys subjects, including Florence Nightingale, being dead, never got to read about their degrading effect on their country. Andrews chooses mostly live ones because these boomers should not be allowed to shuffle off the world stage until they have been made to regret theirs.

I didnt read her chapter on Jeffrey Sachs, cause I didnt know who he is, and I am not interested in Al Sharpton. But Andrews is meanly masterful on Jobs how his ascetic purity drove him to serve terrifying unsweet vegan cake to his wedding guests. She is absolutely fixated on Sorkin and how his cast of ambitious strivers too wonky to be glamorous, and too young to have gravitas made The West Wing a fantasy balm for liberals during the W. years.

Where Andrews is entirely wrong is in her inability to admit that the biggest changes wrought during the heyday of the boomers are basic to human dignity. She claims we created a myth that America was a totalitarian nightmare before we forged that holy trifecta, civil rights, womens liberation and the gay movement. What galls her most is our smugness over those achievements. OK, touche. But, no, I dont want that nightmare back.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.

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You blew it, boomers, says millennial writer Helen Andrews - The Daily Breeze