I think a lot of people would disagree about (3) and (4), which reveal old-fogeyism more than any insights into today’s culture. Middle-aged and older people have been filing similar complaints about society and the younger generation since the dawn of history.
I want to agree with you on that, but sadly, I cannot.
One, just one, novel of a Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe even, is worth more than what has been written collectively in the last ten years.
T. S. Eliot in a day could write better poetry than what has been composed in all the creative writing departments in the United States over the last twenty years—and we are going to give more billions under Obama to “education.”
That (coffin)nailed it.
And America expects what from the NEA agenda and the American educational system? (sic)
To teach math, science, reading, writing, and the pride and dignity of the values of Western civilization and America’s stunning achievements in the world?
Nope. Its all multicultural diversity training and the loving embrace of every perverted and disgusting habit of man.
Sorry, students haven’t gone through twelve years of public school for nothing.
They’ve learned one thing and perhaps only one thing during those twelve years.
They’ve forgotten their algebra, they’ve grown to fear and resent literature, they write like they’ve been lobotomized, but Jesus, can they follow orders!
Students don’t ask that orders make sense because they gave up expecting things to make sense long before they left elementary school.
Things are true because the teacher says they’re true.
Outside class, things are true to your tongue, your fingers, your stomach, your heart.
Inside class, things are true by reason of authority, and that’s just fine because you don’t care anyway.
Miss Wiedemeyer tells you a noun is a person, place or thing, so let it be. You don’t give a rat’s ass; she doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
The only important thing is to please her, and that lesson follows right through College. - cooperate and graduate as your professors tear down everthing good and noble in American history to replace it with their "agenda for change."
Back in kindergarten, you found out that teachers only love children who stand in nice straight lines.
And that’s where it’s been at ever since.
Nothing changes except to get worse, as those students now vote as they are ordered to vote, and believe what the MSM tells them to believe.
The Matrix is here.
A great job of ruining America by the NEA and the public education system.
In some eras, there have been the propensities to seriously attack and attempt to devastate standards. 20th Century music, for just one quick example, atttempted to overthrow traditional music and harmonies. The result? Atonal music, which you either like or dislike, but you have the choice whether to listen to it or not. Fine.
But when the standards being overthrown are those of behaviors which impinge upon the rights and freedoms of others...that's where the revolution becomes threatening (to some) And sure, the civil rights movement made (true) racists and bigots very uncomfortable. It is that type of reactionary discomfort the left ascribes to Conservatives when we're called "haters" and "neanderthals". The point being that the standards being imposed are either arbitrary, or, are those that folks can look up in our founding documents.
So, it begins when I can't drive down the street without 120 db of bass vibration shaking the pavement next to me. And then it continues to higher and higher degrees of impingement until actual rights of the disinterested are rescinded and behaviors are distated. (I'm not attempting to be comprehensive here with this post because I'm sort of distracted by current events around here)
But it's the lack of consideration for others that IMO VDHG is decrying, the idea that anything new and improved is worth shoving in anyone else's face because whatever standard is being used at the moment has to be attacked. In the past; it wasn't forced down out throats; we could take it or leave it. Now it's get with the program or find yourself the subject of a tax audit or an ACORN-arranged mob circling your home.
Only an old fogey even uses a term like "old fogey" anymore. The current proper nomenclature is "Old A** Muthaf******"... usually with a couple of random, unrelated, misspelled words (usually with numbers in the place of vowels) worked in there for seasoning.
When I look at the current generation, it's clear to me that all the "old fogeys" that came before us were right... we really were going to hell. And now we've arrived.
If you need any real insight into todays culture, check out Chuck E. Cheese on pole-dancing night when they're giving away Lil' Wayne CD's.
I’ll cede #3 but #4 goes to the essence of multiculturalism and values. If that’s “old-fogeyism” then the West is death bound.
“Middle-aged and older people have been filing similar complaints about society and the younger generation since the dawn of history.”
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This much is true but consider this. Back in the fifties when the young were going wild over Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and a whole host of others, their parents were lamenting that there was no good music being written just as I say today. The big difference is that today I see many young people listening to the music from the fifties and sixties, they are voting with their ears for music from their grandparents time. This wasn’t happening back then.
Occasionally I attempt to listen to what passes for the new popular music and it seems either lifeless and dead or just anarchistic noise that leaves me at a loss to explain why anyone, young or old, wants to hear it.
Also it is obvious that young people no longer have any knowledge of history or any understanding of governments and the consequences of choosing the wrong form of govenment, they are granted university degrees without learning the things that we had to learn in grade school. I have had conversations with university graduates who know little more about American history than they do about brain surgery, no wonder we have such an absurd collection of “leaders” when we grant the vote to people who, after sixteen or more years of school, cannot name the country from which we declared ourselves independent, cannot name the century, let alone the year, when the war between the bue and the gray started, cannot name the branches of government, are certain that this nation was founded as a democracy when in fact the founders considered democracy a dirty word and put in the constitution a guarantee of a “Republican” form of government. I am sorry but Hanson is right, we have failed to pass on the values that created this great nation and the youngest among us will soon pay the price.