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.
....Rather, the older you get, the more you appriciate your parents.
Thank you. This is so unexpected. I have so many people to thank. First, I’d like to thank my parents for having me. I’d also like to thank the academy for voting for me. Gosh. I hear the music coming up so I’ll just end with, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Here are some facts:
1) Children in secular schools **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate in the classroom.
2) If they attend government schools they risk learning to be comfortable with the single payer and tuition-free entitlement that is the very foundation of government schooling. Hey! If the government can give the citizen tuition-free schooling, why not use that power to get lots of “free” stuff?
3) Nearly all the K-12 teachers in this nation ( both public and private schools) were trained by godless Marxists in Marxist run colleges and universities. The indoctrination continues into the highest levels of university graduate school!
4) Drive by nearly any of those Marxist run K-12 schools, colleges, or universities in this nation, and you will see schools stuffed full to the brim ( **willingly**) with the children of conservatives and God fearing so-called “patriots”.
5) The children are being indoctrinated by Marxists to hate their nation and heritage. The boys, especially, are being humiliated and drugged into submission. The Marxists are hard at work producing girly Peter Pans who are incapable of defending themselves, their families ( if they can figure out how to form one!), and our nation. The indoctrination of our youth is already having consequences in the voting booth, culture, and birth rate. It will only get worse.
Will God save this nation? I doubt it. Why should He when conservatives and God fearing parents mistreat their children in this way and subject them to such evil? ( It's a millstone thing.)
I do? Crap. Does that mean I have to give back my award?
Another Reason to Homeschool
You’re obviously smarter
Your welcome!
Each generation rejects the previous which is why the pendulum swings. Conservative 50-s liberal 80-90’s, conservative 2010-2020 (when the bills are due)
I think so, lol!
I was never liberal, period. I wasn’t always a conservative but I was never left-wing.
Well....My parents ( born 1913) and my grandparents ( born in the 1890s) though Franklin D. Roosevelt walked on water and “saved the nation”.
I started figuring it out pretty early. Nowadays, the person I most want to be like is my Father!
This is absolutely true.
Every generation has had it's share of "kids who rebel." This is a natural process of transitioning into adulthood. The difference now is that the consequences of that rebellion -- that in the past would naturally cause a reassessment and realignment of one's views -- don't exsist like they used to. "Childhood" extends well into the 20s. Bad decisions are subsidized by the government. No one can "judge" you. So being young and stupid is something you can do with impunity.
Heh, heh.
That probly goes for most of us. I was anti-nukes as a young person even though the first vote I ever cast was for Ronald Reagan.
Absolutely!
Any child in a godless secular school must think and reason godlessly just to cooperate. How could it be otherwise? Even if they maintain their faith they risk learning that their belief in God must be hidden away as if it were a bathroom activity.
And...If the public is powerful enough to give them tuition-free schooling aren't the children at risk of learning that this voting mob can give them lots of “free” stuff?
Timothy Leary, the Unabomber, the Clintons, and John Kerry. Names like that don’t make you look at potential Ivy League employees with starry eyes? < /sarc >
Look, even Reagan couldn’t keep two our of his four children from the clutches of liberalism. His adopted son Mike understood more readily than his natural born kids. I guess it’s just not easy.
It only took one to three generations of socialist-entitlement schooling to give the nation Franklin D. Roosevelt and his crypto-Marxist programs.
Fundamentally, public schooling is ( and **always** has been) a single-payer socialist entitlement. It is working **exactly** as designed by the Progs of the 19th century.
I have three sisters. They’re all hardcore libs. What is the most important issue for all three? Take a guess. If you said abortion, you win the prize. Although they claim abortion is down the list as far as importance in voting for women, I’d bet most lib women lie when they tell pollsters that abortion is not the most important issue for them. Even many normally Republican-voting women are pro-abortion and vote accordingly.
Lucky you....my first vote was for GWB, for all the good that did.
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