Posted on 03/22/2014 4:34:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
Americans rode in wagon trains across this country, tossed the Brits’ tea in the Boston Harbor, outfought the superpower of the 18th century to get our freedom, pounded the Indians, Mexicans, and Spanish into the ground to fulfill our Manifest Destiny and then for an encore, we saved the planet in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. Our pioneer-pilgrim, hard-fighting, gold-mining, wagon-training, gun-fighting ancestors were so hard, Kid Rock's American Bad Ass should have played when they walked into a room. We conquered a continent, built the Hoover Dam, went to the moon, and not only did our Olympic athletes refuse to dip our flag to Hitler during the 1936 Olympics, we made the most evil man who ever lived kill himself in fear before we could get to him.
That's the stock that Americans come from, which begs an obvious question: What the hell happened to us?
How did the toughest, most independent society since Sparta turn into a wuss factory full of people who've never had an adventure in their life outside of a video game? We now have an entire grievance industry full of losers who spend all their time complaining that they're "offended" by everything from the name of the Redskins to the "Patriarchy" to politicians using "violent language" like "crosshairs" and "job killing." Can you imagine a member of the Greatest Generation complaining because a Japanese soldier called him a mean name? Do you think the wagon trains on the Oregon Train were more worried about "isms" or trying to avoid dying of dysentery and being scalped?
So back to that central question: How did Americans get so soft, so fast?
There are a lot of answers to that question. The military has gotten smaller; so fewer people serve; a lot of manly professions have faded away; our society has economically prospered to the point of decadence even if many people don't realize it; liberalism encourages wimpiness and failure....we could go on and on. However, the biggest problem we have is that we're systematically teaching our kids to be wusses.
The problem is that it doesn't matter how pretty, rich, or gifted you are; life is a pile of bricks coming towards you at 100 MPH and no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, or how often you do the right thing, it's going to clip you ever so often. You're going to lose a job, someone's going to die or decide he doesn't want to be your friend any more, you're going to have a stretch of bad luck, your hard work will be unrewarded, you're going to face financial stress, people are going to laugh at you -- no matter how charmed your life may be, it happens to EVERYONE.
Is this how we're going to prepare our kids for those unhappy eventualities?
1) Ban "Bossy:" This is the hot new idea on the "Left." Apparently if we "ban" the word "bossy," little girls will all grow up to be decisive leaders or something. Of course, if being called "bossy" is enough to dissuade a little girl from being a leader, she probably isn't cut out to be a leader in the first place. It doesn't matter if it's online, in Hollywood, at your local PTA, or in school; if you lead or gain a little status, someone will immediately start to undercut you. Typically, the words used are a lot less benign than "bossy," too. Sarah Palin knows a little something about being hit with abuse for being successful and as she would say, either "buck up or stay in the truck."
2) Microaggressions: This is a bit of popular silliness that has taken off on college campuses. Basically, since liberals are having trouble finding any overt racism to complain about, the general idea is supposed to be that someone is committing a "microaggression" against you by denying that he’s a racist, sexist, or even just by annoying a minority in some way. In fact, including microaggressions in this column counts as a "microaggression." In other words, the idea is supposed to be whiny losers always have some "ism" to be aggrieved over every time they feel bad, which is pretty much all the time because that's what life as a whiny loser is like.
3) Trigger Warnings: This is another bit of wackiness that has taken off on college campuses and I'll just use the Urban dictionary definition of it since it's as good as any other,
Used to alert people when an internet post, book, article, picture, video, audio clip, or some other media could potentially cause extremely negative reactions (such as post-traumatic flashbacks or self-harm) due to its content. Sometimes abbreviated as "TW."
Translation: instead of encouraging people to talk to a friend, get therapy, or just get over whatever is bothering them, it's everyone else's responsibility to warn others that they might be saying something that could trouble the legions of easily offended left-wing groups out there. Try that at your job some time and see what your boss says about it -- and don't expect a trigger warning before you get fired. Life is not only full of unpleasantness, it's full of things that remind you of that unpleasantness. Part of leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult is dealing with that fact.
4) Zero Tolerance Gun Policies at Schools: After Columbine, it's understandable that schools might be on the alert for weapons at school, but they've cranked things up to Salem-Witch-Trial levels of hysteria. There are kids who've been suspended for saying the word “gun,” chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun or in the latest case, there's a girl being threatened with expulsion for having a razor blade in her possession for as long as it took to get it away from a kid who was trying to cut his wrists. Every man should at least know his way around a gun; firearms benefit women even more since they're unlikely to be able to outfight a man who wants to beat, rape or murder them. How does teaching kids to turn into a jellied mass of quivering fear because some kid chewed a gun into a Pop Tart square with the importance of knowing how to use firearms for adults?
5) The Self-Esteem Movement: There is actually a basic formula for building self-esteem. You find something you have talent at, you work at it, your ability is recognized and you feel better about yourself. However, we've moved past that formula and may have become the first society in history to almost entirely disconnect self-esteem from accomplishment. It's debatable whether our schools should be focusing on building the self-esteem of kids at all, but we certainly shouldn't be teaching every kid that he's a special little sunflower, regardless of whether he's done anything to earn it. Yes, God thinks all of His kids are special, but the rest of us generally aren't impressed with someone who has nothing going for him other than the fact that he exists and his teacher says nice things about him. The world doesn't owe you a living, you're not special just because your teacher didn't mark your papers with red ink, and the harsh truth is that the world values you for what you bring to the table, not because your life has been one long series of participation trophies.
The “self-esteem” movement is at the heart of it. Please just think this thought through - YOU CANNOT GIVE SOMEONE ELSE SELF ESTEEM. THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED “SELF” ESTEEM. Why would anyone do it? To make people weak and dependent. To play God.
This is behind all of the other idiocy. You can’t say or do anything that might hurt someone else’s “self esteem” - well guess what, if you can threaten or harm it, it’s not self-esteem.
Self esteem is being able to laugh off the slings and arrows of others’ opinions. Being American means not having to ask permission, it means not needing anyone’s approval to do what is right or to be who you are.
This American self-esteem is what steams the clams of all of the other societies who have successfully subjugated their populations. The world and pseudo elites of our nation have been assaulting it ever since 1776.
The Revolution continues. Let’s not lose it now. The next time someone says they are “offended” recommend them to therapy or Cuba if they can’t deal with it.
1.) Liberalism
2.) Liberalism
3.) Liberalism
4.) Liberalism
5.) Liberalism
Parents not allowed to disipline should be added. Children as young as 4 are being taught to report spankings for bad behavior.
I’d been in jail many times over if it happened when my BOYS grew up. Since I raised them I knew who had to RULE. ME! after they got to old for that, I took every thing away, made them go to bed after home work in a stripped room. And wash and dry dishes, grounded to the house for a week, continue to whine, another week got tacked on, got in trouble again more time. They spent as much as 6 weeks doing this. 1 time 2 months. I have a will of Steel.
I didn’t take no BS off them, I don’t take it off my grand son who is 12. I’m not to old to use a belt on your hind end.
There you have the solution to the medicare and social security funding problems.
The affluence and human condition have resulted in "the Walmart People". That is, a generation or perhaps two generations containing multitudes of morbidly obese individuals.
They will die young. Few of those people will ever reach the increased threshold for Social Security. They will be dead before they can be cared for by Medicare.
Printing this one and framing it.
Sloths are hard to offend. Maybe auto correct is part of the problem. :)
Agreed.
I don’t think it is a bad thing for a kid to hear from parents “You aren’t (INSERT NEGATIVE THING HERE) and just keep working through it and you will be alright. Be yourself”
But this stuff I see today horrifies me. It as if they want to keep the child sheltered from EVERYTHING, including insults and adversity.
I am against bullying. I suffered as a kid (because I was bigger, slower and more silent than most, and the BCD glasses didn’t help) but my parents would never march over to the kids house, or I wouldn’t go to a teacher and expect them to take care of the issue.
My mother would say “You’re BIGGER than they are! Just sit on them!” (and I can’t imagine going to my father and whining that a kid was picking on me)
But even still, that bullying shaped me into who I am today. I am civil and polite to others, and can stick up for myself. I feel independent, emotionally speaking. As negative as it was at the time, I wouldn’t trade any of it, because I found a way to deal with adversity and use it to make myself stronger.
It also gave me humility (most of the time) so I can see my shortcomings pretty easily, because I have always felt that you need to be able to frankly see you strengths so you can exploit them, and weaknesses so you can either work around them or remediate them so you don’t fall prey to them.
Agreed. The interference by society in the raising of children is, in my opinion, a real problem.
A lot of kids know their parents can’t discipline them. Many get disciplined by having to stay in their rooms, where they can play video games or Skype with their friends or whatever. Plus, if a kid completely ignores discipline, what is a parent going to do? Call The Department of Youth Services so they can send someone over to evaluate the kid? That is part of what got us to this point in the first place.
My parents weren’t abusive. But I feared discipline by them, and most of my friends felt the same way about their parents. Now, parents seem to think any kind of fear is a horrible thing for a child.
Alas Babylon’s antithesis...
1. Be a man
2. Suck it up
3. Get to work
4. Show resolve
5. Let’s role!
Another root cause: extreme farm automation. There are far fewer muscle jobs now. Young men must move to urban centers to find work. Men that grow up in the city communes generally are smaller, more feminine, and vote Democrat. Farm and factory products go into the cities but the only tangible product that comes out is trash.
That would not happen in my house if I had kids, my are grown, have 1 grandson 12.
They take away all that stuff for a month at at time as he is 12 and knows all to well he can turn them in if they lay a hand on him. Yet all they do is argue with him, and themselves, sets a very poor example. Son was raised better, you did not Sass me. You got punished.
Let him try it in my house, does not work. I still spank. He was 11 and they were visiting, I was sick, just had a nerve block that had lots of side effects. After about a hr of if I made him stand in front of me, and read him the riot act. And said I’d find his grandpas belt, and use it on him sick or no sick. That stopped the sassing, after that the visit was fairly pleasant, as both parents had listened and toned down their own arguing. Kid thinks he know more than parents, because he is computer savy, they are not. Not their generation to have home or school computers. But they can use smart cell phones.
My parents weren’t either. And both grew up with stick discipline. Dad was an abused child, yet he NEVER raised a hand to us. Grounding was the general punishment. I only had 1 spanking. Done the right way, and not hard, just enough to sting. Baby sis is a selfish, self centered, spoiled brat from lack of discipline. 12 years age difference. We are not on speaking terms, her choice.
bflr
How did Americans get so soft, so fast?.
1960’s
Best example so far - mainly because I think the same. :-)
Nobody watches Islanders games, except the rats in the arena.
It’s just my protest against banning the word.
LOL...I know.
Didn’t Rush assign this a ‘homework’ to his listeners?
Darned if this isn’t a great article.
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