Posted on 06/14/2010 6:58:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Abby Sunderland's recent adventure has everyone questioning teen safety. It all depends one how one defines it.
Parents, where are your teenage daughters? They had better be "safe" at home watching the perverse antics of Disney role models like Miley Cyrus or Lindsay Lohan on TV. Perhaps they're "safe" at school, where they are being educated about the sexual revolution, and in some states, being ushered "safely" by administrators to a clinic where the abortion procedure will be administered with you parents none the wiser. At the very worst, one can rest assured that even if America's daughters have ventured to a house party -- where the parents have purchased and readied all the alcohol and prophylactics -- never fear, because those parents have taken each attendee's keys. All are locked inside and "safe"!
In any of these cases, parents, hit your knees and thank God that your daughter does not run the risk that Abby Sunderland does. As far as I can tell, that is the ruggedly individualist risk of running roughshod, acquiring and exercising true grit, and cultivating a classical skill a tad more aged than cheerleading or speed-texting. The progressive parent asks: Is Abby Sunderland a teenage girl at all? Not a typical one: this aberration from the norm, and not any safety violation, is the true charge against Abby and the Sunderlands.
Cue the chirping sectaries in the news media; they're up. It's always a little strange -- and quite awkward -- when those relativists in the news muster enough moral sentiment, from time to time, to actually impugn someone. When they do so, it is never the right target. News folks have usually by that point stepped around dens of thieves and vipers to get to their next "fall guy": usually just a harmless, individualist soul not well-attuned to the drumbeat of liberalism. This is the case, no doubt, with the Sunderlands, whose foreheads are now feeling all the applied moral heat of the progressive-parent crucible, represented by popular news sources. Happily for the Sunderlands, progressive heat is rather tepid.
In a befuddling combo, society mavens prescribe both naturalist coddling and sexual prompting for our daughters. While the progressive approach to parenting has usually sounded that "children should make and learn from their own mistakes," stalwart young Abby's adventure has proven that liberal parents mean this only in the moral and sexual contexts. Trying your experienced hand at a legitimate craft which requires fortitude, skill, and even phronesis (Greek for practical knowledge) ought to be excluded from the relevance of such a dictate, apparently. In other words, the goal of child-rearing is, according to these "progressives," to cloister our daughters from the reality of the amoral, natural forces of the world while exposing them to all the immoral, conventional ones. And contrary to the teachings of the best thinkers ever produced, it is false that there are things worse than death.
This renders young Abby Sunderland neither fish nor fowl. She is neither parentally coddled from the earth's forces nor suffering from ennui sufficient to land her in the toil and moil of "harmless" teen concupiscence. The lib establishment cannot accept that a young woman has looked for her jollies outside the musty teen world that they have so deified. Hollywood, for one example, is an industry of middle-aged burnouts looking fondly backward to the empty promise of the teens; conversely, Sunderland is a teen who looks to the horizon of more meaningful post-teen endeavors. Neither fish nor fowl also because she was neither made male, like her brother, who performed the same feat at seventeen, nor made supple and mediocre like the pseudo-sexy pudgemeisters on the Disney channel (whose corporate aim, I've gathered, is to muddle all the bright-line age requirements in the heterosexual book).
In that vein, where in the world are the feminists, if not at the side of the Sunderlands? Surprisingly, feminists might be of some use in this case (perhaps they've forsworn usefulness): A young woman would be denied the facility of her well-honed skills on account of her gender! If the true aim of feminism is to show that females possess all the desiderata males do, one might mistake the silence prompted by Abby's sailing excellence for laudation. To those who deny that Abby possesses the skills requisite for her journey, please take another look at the course that she pursued. She made it halfway around. One abjectly unequipped for such a try would not make it that far. So why did she fail?
Answering this question is perhaps the most prominent lesson instructed by the whole affair. It's the ultimate classical lesson, learnable from the ultimate classical craft: the tragic worldview amor fati, loving life through both success and failure. One can make all the right moves and possess all the right skills and still fail. If our pudgy youth had a dose of well-fought, weather-worn failure, it would be a national shot in the arm. Contrary to the bumper stickers, this is not "mean" or "unfair." It is life. Abby Sunderland is hip to this tragic lesson, stoically quipping, "The long and the short of it is, well, one long wave and one short mast." God bless her...and her parents, who evidently made the way ready for such precocious wisdom. Such practical wisdom will grace her life with successes in the long run, no doubt, just as the failure to acquire it will render an overly soft, overly safe, overly sexed society...and one ironically impotent.
You can do a lot of growing up sailing solo, without getting other people to pay for a boat so you can try to sail around the world and set an age record that no one recognizes anyways...
Any sympathy I had for them evaporated when they asked for donations to recover ‘Abby’s boat’ while saying there was no way they would pay the Aussies anything for the rescue of their daughter!
You said it perfectly!
I hate to break it to you but they're broke. However, never fear! Coming to a TV near you! The Adventures in Sunderland!
The homeschooled kids I have known have a full social life outside of the corrupt public schools. Its up to the parents to see that the kids have a social life, too. A lot of them get their social life from church activities, etc. Home schooled kids usually get a better education and are more well adjusted then public school kids. And they are not indoctrinated to be little commies.
I home-school our daughter. That isn’t crazy.
Now if I encouraged my 12 year old daughter to hike alone along the Mexico/Arizona border to become the youngest girl to hike the border alone, and I had her do it in summer, and had a reality show planned to document it...THAT would be crazy! In fact, that would be time for someone to step in before I killed my daughter!
Yes, donations - to recover ‘Abby’s boat’ for her, not to reimburse the Australian government, and the french vessel that went out of its way to save their daughter. I consider that misplaced priorities.
These parents are lower than whale poop. I wish the authority that recognizes records in sailing would make the boat put up bond for any cost related to rescue or admin expense for a country. Plus require 18 years old as the entry level.
I am so frosted about this. Sending your kid to her potential death is child abuse in the first degree. The kid failed, was behind schedule, put in for repairs and was then advised by her father to continue the march. Put those parents in a Dingy in the middle of the Southern Ocean in Winter. Let’s see what hero’s they are. That girl was facing weather worse that what crashed her for the next two months.
Honor the rescuers. The fishing boat crew that got her lost production, and the captain, almost his life. Fell into the water. I’m hot about this.
Check out real sailors comments, post #2944.
http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=102689&st=2925
“Our ancestors didn’t have time to be kids at 16. Life expectancy now is 77.7 years. Comparing her with 16 year olds from our history is misleading.”
Following that logic, then we shouldn’t expect our children to behave as responsibly as a 16 year old from that era, until age 30. The better way to see longer life span, is not as a reason to extend childhood, but that if will become that capable at 16, how much more life you can get out of 77 years.
I agree. I think homeschooling is the best way to educate kids. However it requires work and patience, something a lot of people don’t want to do. They would rather send them to school and get them out of their hair. Some are just snobs who think the public schools are the only ones smart enough to teach your kids. Good for you for homeschooling.
I never said otherwise. I simply stated the way things are.
Great post.
“Yeah. I read 30 to 40%. I can’t imagine the heartbreak”
That was basically the plot setup of that movie “The Yearling”. Kid was the sole survivor of mom’s 4 children. It was a believeable plotline back then.
“I think that Child Protective Services should assume custody of her, and check into the safety of her siblings.”
Normally, I ignore such calls for expansion of the long arm of “Da Gooberment”, but yours simply is so egregious as to justify wasting valuable time on a worthless postulate.
You appear to be making an emotion driven call for the State to intervene in the private affairs/decisions of a family of relatively high achievement individuals.
On what basis do you justify allowing a mere social science major to oversee and/or countermand a parent?
Belay that last!
Since when did you accept principles of communism? The child is, after all, the responsibility of the parent in the American system
Enjoy your participation trophy.
Based on recommendations by some co-workers who were in the Coast Guard, I suggested that my son (16 yrs old) investigate their options for paying for college. It looked like they had some great programs.
How does your daughter like the Coast Guard?
Remember years back when legislation had to be passed about the minimum age of pilots -- because all the children's ages kept getting younger & younger & younger in attempts to achieve cross-country flight records?
I’ve been doing my genealogy and a lot of little ones disappear in the census in a 10 year span.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.