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.
Hence why with few exceptions people that tell me they graduated from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Stanford et. al. I scorn and do not seek further interaction. I to this day will not hire one either.
All their money was spent to make them the dumbest people in the room.
After decades of left-wing indoctrination of our children in the schools and media, I’m surprised there are any
Conservatives on the earth at all let alone enough to have a fighting chance in any political debate.
Turning your kids over to the public schools will do that. I have five kids in private school and even still I need to work mightily to help them understand the myths and falsehoods of liberalism. The key is not just telling them the way it is, but taking the time to explain why. My oldest is out on her own at college now and I’m very proud of the independent thinking conservative she has grown to become. She still emails me and says she knows something she’s hearing has to be wrong and could I help her understand it better. It’s a lot of work, but so is every other aspect of raising a child properly.
Wait until “reality” slaps the faces of these children. As always, they realize their parents were RIGHT.
Remember a “conservative” is a former “liberal” who was ROBBED.
Turn your kids over to the government at age 5 and what do you expect?
If you want to keep your kids, you have to raise them yourself. Homeschool.
The NEA and government have been using Liberal propaganda and brainwashing in the the public schools since 1980. If you doubt that, look at your children’s paperwork and curriculum. The teacher’s were raised on this propaganda via their professors. We’ve come full circle.
Read President Reagan’s report “A Nation At Risk.”
Watch James Clavell’s short story “The Children’s Story.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C1IV00LLDQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Va0b0tL1M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojxtz-9vSr8&feature=related
I wonder if the professors who said question your father’s values also mean that conservative students should challenge their father’s (or parents) left-wing values and ideas.
I don't know to whom this quote should be attributed (and I'm too lazy to do a Bing search) but some wise person said, "If you're not a Liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you are not a Conservative when you're old, you have no brain."
mine are all three conservative thank God
their Dad is a former conservative who wanted to be popular and fell for the obama pied piper act
The question for these parents is
“who are you letting disciple your children?”
Churchill, I believe.
We have a winner!
Thank-you for making my day. :)
The older you get, the smarter your parents are!
Some people feel that way about Texans. LOL
It's not automatic. Some of the smartest, thoughtful people I've known are conservatives who are able to work their way through those kinds of institutions and remain true to their beliefs. In many ways I'd much prefer to have someone like that working for me than someone who had it easy. UC Berkeley, one of the worst, has always had the one of the most active College Republican organizations in the country, and I can attest that two of my closest conservative friends are poli-sci grads of Berkeley. One of them went on to get a law degree from UCLA and is by far one of the sharpest, conservative, public policy minds in the country today.
Yeah, I’ve got one like that. Happened when she went to college. But, unlike liberals, I don’t believe in group think. She is free to choose, hopefully life experience and a crushing tax burden will be the “I told you so”.
You have that backwards.
My parents are screaming left wingers frothing at the mouth
with resentment of the rich even though they went to Catholic college, own homes and have never missed a meal.
I am a conservative.
My siblings are all lefties.
How do I explain it?
My parents were deceived by the devil of psychology, starting with ‘Transactional Analysis” the “I’m OK, You’re OK” crapola of my youth.
I could tell it was garbage from the beginning. My siblings bought into it. I attribute a lot of the damage to garbage spouting psychologists and the ‘I deserve to be happy at your expense” crap that they spout.
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