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.
bfl
Reason? sending them to gov run propaganist schools of progressive liberal communist facist thought. Cutting our own wrists. Would a rat send his or her robot to a conservitive institution of thought?
The desire to fornicate like a man - without consequences.
Genesis 3:16 - God curses the woman with a desire to be like the man.
ping
I have friends who homeschooled their kids. A pastors daughter rejected Christianity, went to Berkelley, and is very liberal.
I have another friend whose son was homeschooled until high school who came out as gay.
Both of those families are very devout Christians, but we do live in California.
My kids went to a mixture of public and private Christian., and we are not very devout. My husband has only recently started going to church regularly. Our son chose to go to a conservative college, Texas A&M, and he is very active in Campus Crusade for Christ. Our daughters are very conservative, but they are not in college yet.
I don’t know what pushes kids away from their parents beliefs.
To the point of murder.
Horse pucky. They don't understand the mechanics of their values well enough to explain how liberty works in contrast to collectivism. Most conservatives were products of public schools and even then an ignorant hand-waving mystical priesthood.
Oh, involved parents can and do raise devout conservative kids in public and private schools. It’s just the odds are a lot better for homeschoolers. There was a study a few years ago about churched kids who stay with or leave the faith - and it was something like 80% of public/private schooled kids fall away in young adulthood, while over 80% the homeschooled kids stuck with the faith.
Ted Cruz graduated from Princeton.
And Harvard.
(just sayin’...your general rule is of course true! But Cruz is sort of the exception in many respects....)
God bless you, and each of your children. "Hear me now, believe me later" has become my byword in some of the discussions with mine.
All of the great presidents came from no-name colleges (Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe) or didn't even attend college at all (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland).
Values must be inculcated early in a child’s life — before the school systems get a hold of them.
My children and I talked about life and politics every night at the dinner table, along with their parents taking an active interest in every aspect of their education.
I’ve now got a tremendous young man who is at least as conservative as I am and a God-loving, God-fearing daughter who will exceed me in life in every important respect. You have to put in the time as a parent. There is no substitute for it.
I think Reagan’s problem with his kids were that they all rebelled against their mothers.
Try not to be close-minded. A lot of us are "underground" in academia and business. I have an Ivy graduate degree, always was and still remain about 95% conservative. My undergrad college almost threw me out for being conservative; by the time I got to grad school, I knew how to work the system. The facilities and resources there were excellent for my purposes at the time.
Don't beat yourself up. I think a little rebellion is a natural part of growing up and becoming an adult.
I rebelled for a time in my early 20’s. And I was raised by VERY Conservative parents and went to a Catholic school. In my case I think my peer group was still romanticizing the Hippies who had come just a few years before us.
It didn’t take long being out on the job market, married and having kids to get my mind right again.
Of course kids today don’t want to get married and can’t find a job. So they may linger in this twilight adolescence for a very long time.
Michael was grateful. Liberals are ingrates. Happens to many parents who have wealth or prominence.
That was great hearing your story. I wish everyone was as dedicated to raising children like you have been. It can be done, and you have proved it.
Dwight Eisenhower was one of our greats, but he was trashed continually by the left. He went to West Point.
Churchill.
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