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.
>>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)
Emphatically not true until the post WWII era although the phenomenon was apparent after WWI. Previous to that, wars were a chronic condition without a subsequent differentiation between youth and parent value systems. Why? What in the 20th century made such a difference, one that was effortlessly exploited by lefties while we remained blind to it?
Why have conservatives traditionally been oblivious to the cultural determinants of social and psychological dynamics other than the primitivist Pavlovian ones? Are we innately stupid in this regard or did something in our outlook simply not take such dynamics into account?
My guess on the answer: Question your own values in front of your kids when they are young, and repeatedly as they age. Articulate why those values are correct, and defend them against criticism explaining why the criticisms are invalid. Whether sending our kids to the public schools, to a university, or into the general society, it is not enough for them to have accepted traditional values. Our kids must know why conservative values are correct and why progressive values are wrong, destructive, and harmful to everyone including those they claim to champion as special cases in need of special help.
I don’t get it. If my kids were to become liberals, i would consider it a personal failing of mine and my husband’s. I have kids 19, 22, and 25. Each of them is politically informed and as conservative as possible. the 19 yo daughter has door knocked for Ken Cuccinelli. my 22 yo son is at Syracuse University, leftwing bastion, and wears NRA and Prolife tshirts on campus regularly {he is on the hockey team and hasn’t gotten any crap for it from anyone}.my 25 yo daughter faced off with Caroline Matthews in her all girls Catholic HS class over whether you can be Pro abort and Catholic, and came out the winner. I think conservatives need to do a better job of raising their kids to know and understand conservative values and WHY we think the way we do.
One of the purposes of factory-style government schooling is to separate the child from his parents. It was only after WWII that there was a great push to consolidate schools and districts and close down one room ( parent controlled ) schools.
Read Gatto. He has a deep fountain of quotes from early 19th century and early 20th century Progressive educators who were **very** plain about the goal to separate the child from the parent.
Even today, I believe, the real motivation for the new and nutty math methods is to make it almost impossible for the parent to help the child with his arithmetic assignments.
Why have conservatives traditionally been oblivious to the cultural determinants of social and psychological dynamics other than the primitivist Pavlovian ones? Are we innately stupid in this regard or did something in our outlook simply not take such dynamics into account?
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Amen!
It looks correct to me.
So true. Too sad. Such a loss.
I’ve lost my optimism for any reversal of the creeping anti-USA, anti-Christian fascism. They won. All we can do now is try to slow the rate of decay of culture and liberty. Our silence is surrender.
you are EXACTLY correct! that is precisely what has to happen. you can’t tell them WHAT to think, you need to tell them what the other side thinks, what WE think and why we are right and they are wrong. my kids from a very young age were able to identify which of their teachers was a liberal, they have NEVER been taken in by one.
Conservative Parents, commie schools, liberal kids
Kidz, we get smarter faster or it’s game over.
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Your posts perfectly express my complete exasperation with conservatives!
Yes because many if not most private school teachers now went to a liberal or semi-liberal university and were indoctrinated, many without realizing it. They may have the best of intentions and not be a “flaming” liberal, but don’t understand things well enough to teach why liberalism is wrong.
Even those who call themselves Christians really cant articulate conservative principles of government and economy, even though they might be able to articulate basic gospel truths. That’s why we pulled our kids back out of private schools.
It’s just very, very difficult raising kids these days.
Ted Cruz is one of those few exceptions, but I agree, he is a huge exception. I’d love to know the percentage who actually survive going to an Ivy League school with their conservative values intact.
As long as you didn’t include Columbia, we are still on talking terms.
Nope. Only if the conservative parents abdicate their responsibility of educating their kids as to their belief system and why they believe as they do. All three of mine went to private school and had lib and conservative teachers along the way. If you teach your kids they will know why their lib teachers are wrong and you are right.
The gem of the ocean?
In 2d grade my youngest took in our John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton dogchew toys for show and tell. She came home and said, mommy, i think Mrs So and So is a democrat, i said why? she said she asked me why we didn’t have a George Bush chewtoy and i told her BECAUSE WE LIKE HIM!
Prager doesn’t get it. College is finishing school for leftist indoctrination that began at age 3.
The left controls the commanding heights of culture. They control nursery schools, K-12, and universities. This is true for public education and many private schools, including religious ones. They control the media, most corporations, and many religious institutions.
Traditional Americans are a counterculture. There is nothing left to conserve. We have a slow moving cultural revolution, and we are the enemy. We need to be counter-revolutionaries and that starts with indoctrinating your children starting with the books you read to them as babies.
I would disown leftist children. But then, I wouldn’t be sending them to gov’t indoctrination centers in the first place.
As a school nurse I warned people (especially Christian, conservative parents) about sending their kids off to colleges that were driven by leftist policy. However, the lure of them being “credentialed” by Ivy League schools and top tier universities is just too strong and many well-meaning parents succumb to the pressure. Somehow they think their child is immune, or that in the end they’ll still see the truth. The evidence shows otherwise. But, you cannot convince these parents, who are absolutely sure their children cannot be turned. Not only that, but trying to show them that the chances of their kids getting a higher paying job after graduation does not hold water. Some of the Christian colleges rank higher in job placement after college than many of the well-known universities. Parents won’t hear this, though, so this continues to be a travesty that didn’t have to happen. Parents’ desire for bragging rights trump common sense. Destructive behavior on steroids.
My parents were Dems who sent me to Catholic school where I learned to be conservative. So the opposite can happen. I wonder if Prager is raising his kids to be Romney-loving, Cruz-bashing RINOs like him?
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