There isn’t much momentum behind Klein’s notion. A more popular suggestion, beloved of prestigious commissions and popular among those who worry about our national backbone, is some kind of universal national-service program. This could involve bringing back the military draft (ended in 1973) and combining it with other ways of serving the country, such as teaching, or emptying bedpans at veterans’ hospitals. Everyone would be expected to serve when around draft age. This expectation might be enforced by law, but most proponents, in order to maintain the pretense that it’s “voluntary,” foresee relying on peer pressure and civic hoo-hah, and making participation a condition for getting student loans.

As a monument to the Baby Boom generation, and in almost every other way, this is a terrible idea, a solution in search of a problem. Most obviously, Boomers are now well past draft age. So this is a clear case of “Do as I say, not as I did.” Apart from a nice biblical resonance (Abraham offering to sacrifice his son Isaac), it has little to recommend it. As a way to fill the military, it is almost comically inefficient. Only about 10 percent of American males who were of draft age during the Vietnam War ever went to Vietnam. To make service, military or otherwise, universal would have required coming up with nine do-good or make-work jobs in order to recruit each soldier. Whether a standby supply of drafted soldiers would make it easier or harder for a president to get this nation into a war is, at the least, an open question. Whether the vast majority who do nonmilitary service will likely be doing work of real value that’s now going undone is a question that isn’t even open. A universal national-service program would take jobs away from people who currently hold them and presumably want them, and force these jobs on people who don’t want them. All to satisfy some social engineer’s vision of what American society should look like.

So if not legalizing marijuana or reinstituting the draft, what should the Boomer legacy be? It should be concrete: not “a new spirit of patriotism” or any of those gaseous high-concept notions that presidents and newsmagazines resort to when there’s not much going on. It ought to be big. (Remember: the competition is victory in World War II.) It ought to be patriotic. And it ought to be accomplished by the time the last Boomer turns 65, which would be 2029. Boomers have 19 years to redeem themselves.

So what do you give the country that has everything? You give it cash. The biggest peril Americans now face isn’t Islamo-fascism. It’s our own inability to live within our means. It would be nice to give our country the wisdom and self-discipline to stop running up the credit card. And we should try. But it’s unlikely that we can remake the national character (including our own) in 19 years. What we can do is offer a lecture and a fresh start. We should pass on to the next generation an America that’s free from debt. Instead of ignoring it, or arguing endlessly about whose fault it is and who should pay for it, Boomers as an age cohort should just grab the check and say, “This one’s on us.”

Fair? Of course it’s not fair. That’s the point. If it was fair, the gesture would be meaningless. Boomers are not primarily responsible for America’s debt crisis. Blame goes mostly to the World War II generation, which in this regard was not so Great. They’re the ones who notoriously want to “Stop the Government from messing around with our Medicare,” and Boomers are the ones who have been paying to support the last vestige of old-fashioned fee-for-service medicine—for the old folks. The Boomers themselves and their children are more likely to go to an HMO.