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Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children
Townhall.com ^ | November 5, 2013 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 11/05/2013 6:08:47 AM PST by Kaslin

There is a phenomenon that is rarely commented on but which is as common as it is significant.

For at least two generations, countless conservative parents have seen their adult children reject their core values.

I have met these parents throughout America. I have spoken with them in person and on my radio show. Many have confided to me -- usually with a resigned sadness -- that one or more of their children has adopted left-wing social, moral and political beliefs.

A particularly dramatic recent example was a pastor who told me that he has three sons, all of whom have earned doctorates -- from Stanford, Oxford and Fordham. What parent wouldn't be proud of such achievements by his or her children?

But the tone of his voice suggested more irony than pride. They are all leftists, he added wistfully.

"How do you get along?" I asked.

"We still talk," he responded.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that. But as the father of two sons, I readily admit that if they became leftists, while I would, of course, always love them, I would be deeply saddened. Parents, on the left or the right, religious or secular, want to pass on their core values to their children.

As a father, my purpose is not to pass on my seed, but to pass on my values. Just about anyone can biologically produce a child. That ability we share with the animals. What renders us distinct from animals is that we can pass on values. As the Latin puts it, animals only have "genitors;" humans have "paters." Or as the Hebrew has it, parent (horeh) comes from the same root as teacher (moreh). That is why Judaism puts teachers (of religious/moral values) on the same plane as parents.

So it is sad when a parent who believes, for example, in the American trinity of liberty, "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum" has a child who believes that equality trumps liberty, that a secular America is preferable to a God-centered one, and that multiculturalism should replace the unifying American identity.

It is sad when a pastor, or any other parent, who believes that the only gender-based definition of marriage that has ever existed -- husband and wife -- has a child who regards the parent as a bigot for holding on to that definition.

It is sad when a parent who believes that America has always been, in Lincoln's famous words, "the last best hope of earth," has a child who believes that America has always been little more than an imperialist, racist and xenophobic nation.

That this happens so often raises the obvious question: Why?

There are two reasons.

One is that most parents with traditional American and Judeo-Christian values have not thought it necessary to articulate these values to their children on a regular basis. They assumed that there was no need to because that was true for much of American history, when the society at large held those values. Villages do indeed raise children. And when the village shares parents' values, the parents don't have to do the difficult work of inculcating these values.

But the village -- i.e., American society -- has radically changed.

Which brings us to the second reason.

Virtually every institution outside the home has been captured by people with left-wing values: specifically the media (television and movies) and the schools (first the universities and now high schools).

In the 1960s and 1970s, American parents were blindsided. Their children came home from college with values that thoroughly opposed those of their parents.

And the parents had no idea how to counteract this. Moreover, even if they did, after just one year at the left-wing seminaries we still call universities, it was often too late. As one of the founders of progressivism in America, Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, "I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible." Eighty-eight years later, the president of Dartmouth College, James O. Freedman, echoed Wilson: "The purpose of a college education is to question your father's values," he told the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College.

Even now, too few conservative parents realize how radical -- and effective -- the university agenda is. They are proud that their child has been accepted to whatever college he or she attends, not realizing that, values-wise, they are actually playing Russian roulette -- except that only one chamber in the gun is (SET ITAL) not (END ITAL) loaded with a bullet.

And then they come home, often after only year at college, a different person, values-wise, from the one the naive parent so proudly said goodbye.

What to do? I will answer that in a future column. But the first thing to do is to realize what is happening.

There are too many sad conservative parents.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: academicbias; childrenofthestate; communistgoals; culturewar; dncbrownshirts; hollywoodreds; indoctrination; ittakesavillage; liberalchildren; littleredschoolhouse; nuclearfamily; parentalrights; politicalcorrectness; reeducationcenters; thoughtcrime; waronreligion
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To: ElkGroveDan
Turning your kids over to the public schools will do that.

Public schools readies them for group think, falling to peer pressure and destroys their ability to reason.

Popular culture and media turns them into left wing fellow travelers.

101 posted on 11/05/2013 10:55:10 AM PST by riri (Plannedopolis-look it up. It's how the elites plan for US to live.)
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To: ElkGroveDan
The key is not just telling them the way it is, but taking the time to explain why.

Yes! It isn't enough to set an example.

I think I remained conservative through college and my twenties because my parents and my grandparents continually told me why we were conservatives. It was because we were individuals and no one else had the right to tell us what to do.

And that included labor unions. When I got my first college job at age 19, I was royally p***ed that I was forced to join a union to get it.

102 posted on 11/05/2013 11:05:51 AM PST by BfloGuy (The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment. [Ludwig Von Mises])
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To: wintertime

The children are being indoctrinated by Marxists to hate their nation and heritage. The boys, especially, are being humiliated and drugged into submission.

...what we will see next, within a decade, is the dismantling, through the vanguard of the feminist educational establishment, of boys high school sports that have no female counterpart...to wit, football...


103 posted on 11/05/2013 11:42:13 AM PST by IrishBrigade
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To: IrishBrigade

It has already started. Rush talks about this frequently.


104 posted on 11/05/2013 11:46:50 AM PST by wintertime
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To: ElkGroveDan

You have that backwards.

no he doesn’t...


105 posted on 11/05/2013 12:02:11 PM PST by IrishBrigade
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To: wintertime

It has already started. Rush talks about this frequently.

...in their perfect worlds, these gender equity shills would love to see the displaced football players adorned in field hockey skirts...

...some airheaded boys wanted to play field hockey a few years ago at the local school, and only gave it up when informed that they had to wear those skirts to play...and some knucklehead coach has allowed a girl to do his placekicking...which cost him a game recently as she missed two extra points and a chip shot field goal...

...I actually think we’ve become insane as a societal culture...


106 posted on 11/05/2013 12:09:09 PM PST by IrishBrigade
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To: Resolute Conservative
Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children,

Hell; they couda been LEFTist parents and gotten Conservative children; but then the kids would have had to have gone to a NON-public school!

107 posted on 11/05/2013 1:08:26 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Sir Napsalot

The indoctrination process starts them young, by the time you send ‘childrens’ to colleges it is already too late.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYlHI8Ghkg


108 posted on 11/05/2013 1:10:18 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Yollopoliuhqui
The boys, especially, are being humiliated and drugged into submission.

Even BIG ones!!

https://www.google.com/search?q=football+bully&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7ADRA_enUS475#q=football+bully&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-Address&tbm=nws

109 posted on 11/05/2013 1:13:04 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: IrishBrigade
...I actually think we’ve become insane as a societal culture...

Nope; it is called, correctly, SIN!

Proverbs 14:34

110 posted on 11/05/2013 1:14:20 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: ExTexasRedhead

I believe it began much earlier than 1980. Maybe 1965 or 1968.


111 posted on 11/05/2013 3:11:29 PM PST by reformedliberal
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To: ElkGroveDan

I went to Rutgers Newark and used to eat at Paul Robeson Hall. I. had no clue who the dude was until I Binged him out of curiosity. Had a good chuckle. Our star RB that I used to clear holes for led a “No Justice, No Peace march” back in the 80s through campus. I thought we were friends until I saw a look of pure hatred from him during the march. I was the team Captain so I ended every prayer with “God Bless President Reagan.” after that. I may have also missed a few run blitzing linebackers after that march. Terrible getting hit in the backfield before you got going during the steroid era. Sounded pretty bad. :-) I think I turned out fine.


112 posted on 11/05/2013 3:35:53 PM PST by MattinNJ (It's over Johnny. The America you knew is gone. Denial serves no purpose.)
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To: Kaslin

Just reading the headline made me think of Richard M. Nixon and Ronald W. Reagan. Are there any liberal parents, conservative children except for the old Michael J. Fox character from the 1980s?


113 posted on 11/05/2013 3:37:31 PM PST by Theodore R. (The grand pooh-bahs have spoken: "It's Jebbie's turn!" to LOSE!)
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To: wintertime

People like liberal indoctrination even if most couldn’t define it or even spell “indoctrination”.


114 posted on 11/05/2013 3:38:51 PM PST by Theodore R. (The grand pooh-bahs have spoken: "It's Jebbie's turn!" to LOSE!)
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To: luckystarmom

There are a lot of liberals at TAMU too, particularly in the non-engineering fields. People believe liberalism “protects” them whatever ails them.


115 posted on 11/05/2013 3:40:57 PM PST by Theodore R. (The grand pooh-bahs have spoken: "It's Jebbie's turn!" to LOSE!)
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To: Theodore R.

Nothing like the UCs. He says there are lots of liberterians there. He likes Texas.

I think he is more comfortable being a Christian at A&M than he ever was in California even in the private Christian school.


116 posted on 11/05/2013 3:53:28 PM PST by luckystarmom
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To: Kaslin

Parents need to do a better job. Correct thinking must be drilled into children at all costs and they must be inoculated against lies. How many of these parents actually made the priority effort to politically educate their children?


117 posted on 11/05/2013 6:53:20 PM PST by Impy (RED=COMMUNIST, NOT REPUBLICAN)
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To: Kaslin; All

It could be because if Christian at all, the parents now believe in a gutless gospel.

Liberalism comes along and whatever its faults, it isn’t gutless.

So the kids take the hook.

It takes more than “values” and “morals” folks! It takes a living faith in a living God!!


118 posted on 11/05/2013 6:56:06 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (The Lion of Judah will roar again if you give him a big hug and a cheer and mean it. See my page.)
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To: Albion Wilde

**the left-wing seminaries we still call universities**

Excellent description. I have said for a long time that Liberalism is a faith (in government) -based religion, and should be forced to respect the same kind of ‘separation’ that the leftists force onto practitioners of traditional religions.


119 posted on 11/05/2013 7:01:54 PM PST by maica (We are seeing an interesting mixture of malice and incompetence at healthcare.gov)
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To: Albion Wilde

My (currently) left-winger was a good, solid conservative all thru undergraduate school. It was grad school that created the current thinking. Makes me sick, but I’m praying it’s a phase that will be passed thru.


120 posted on 11/06/2013 8:29:02 AM PST by EDINVA
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