Loving America, Especially When it Was Better

I absolutely love the United States, as readers probably know by now.

I rarely, if ever, have a bad thing to say about our fundamental political-economy, although I have strong views on political polarization and the defeatist nihilism of the American left, not to mention the collapse of cultural standards in education.

Still, I hesitate to say that America has seen better days, in previous decades. Having said that, let me share Dennis Prager's essay, "When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place":

The day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced, I said to my then-teenage son, "David, please forgive me. I am handing over to you a worse America than my father handed over to me."

Unfortunately, I still feel this way.

With the important exception of racial discrimination -- which was already dying a natural death when I was young -- it is difficult to come up with an important area in which America is significantly better than when I was a boy. But I can think of many in which its quality of life has deteriorated....

When I was a boy, I ran after girls during recess, played dodgeball, climbed monkey bars and sat on seesaws. Today, more and more schools have no recess; have canceled dodgeball lest someone feel bad about being removed from the game; and call the police in to interrogate, even sometimes arrest, elementary school boys who playfully touch a girl. And monkey bars and seesaws are largely gone, for fear of lawsuits should a child be injured.

When I was boy, I was surrounded by adult men. Today, most American boys (and girls, of course) come into contact with no adult man all day every school day. Their teachers and school principals are all likely to be women. And if, as is often the case, there is no father at home (not solely because of divorce but because "family" courts have allowed many divorced mothers to remove fathers from their children's lives), boys almost never come into contact with the most important group of people in a boy's life -- adult men. The contemporary absence of men in boys' lives is not only unprecedented in American history; it is probably unprecedented in recorded history.

When I was a boy, we had in our lives adults who took pride in being adults. To distinguish them from our peers, we called these adults "Mr.," "Mrs." and "Miss," or by their titles, "Doctor," "Pastor," "Rabbi," "Father." It was good for us, and we liked it. Having adults proud of their adulthood, and not acting like they were still kids, gave us security (as well as something to look forward to in growing up). Today, kids are surrounded by peers twice, three, four times their age.

When I was a boy, the purpose of American history textbooks was to teach American history. Today, the purpose of most American history texts is to make minorities and females feel good about themselves. As a result, American kids today are deprived of the opportunity to feel good about being American (not to mention deprived of historical truth). They are encouraged to feel pride about all identities -- African-American, Hispanic, Asian, female, gay -- other than American.

When I was a teenage boy, getting to kiss a girl, let alone to touch her thigh or her breast (even over her clothes) was the thrill of a lifetime. Most of us could only dream of a day later on in life when oral sex would take place (a term most of us had never heard of). But of course, we were not raised by educators or parents who believed that "teenagers will have sex no matter what." Most of us rarely if ever saw a naked female in photos (the "dirty pictures" we got a chance to look at never showed "everything"), let alone in movies or in real life. We were, in short, allowed to be relatively innocent. And even without sex education and condom placement classes, few of us ever got a girl pregnant.

When I was a boy, "I Love Lucy" showed two separate beds in Lucy and Ricky's bedroom -- and they were a married couple. Today, MTV and most TV saturate viewers' lives with sexual imagery and sexual talk, virtually all of which is loveless and, of course, non-marital.

When I was boy, people dressed up to go to baseball games, visit the doctor and travel on airplanes. Today, people don't dress up even for church.

When I was a boy, Time and Newsweek were well written and relied little on pictures and illustrations. Today, those magazines often look like adult comic books by comparison. They are filled with large illustrations and photos, and they dumb down the news with features like "Winners and Losers" and "Who's Up and Who's Down." And when I was a boy, it would have been inconceivable for Time to substitute anything, let alone a tree, for the flag planted by the marines on Iwo Jima.

One might argue that these are the same laments that every previous older generation has expressed -- "Ah, when I was young..." But in America, that has not been the case. In America, the older generations tended to say the opposite -- "When I was a kid, things were worse."

Can we return to the America of my youth? No. Can we return to the best values of that time? Yes. But not if both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court move the country even further leftward. If that happens, many of the above noted changes will simply be accelerated: More laws restricting "offensive" speech will be enacted; litigation will increase and trial lawyers will gain more power; the American military will be less valued; trees will gradually replace the flag as our most venerated symbol; schools will teach even less as they concentrate even more on diversity, sexuality and the environment; teenage sex will be increasingly accepted; American identity will continue to be replaced by ethnic, racial, gender or "world citizen" identity; and the power of the state will expand further as the power of the individual inevitably contracts. It's hard to believe most Americans really want that.

I left out a couple of Prager's examples of when he was a boy, but Just John's got a related post, and this section relates, from "School 1957 Versus 2007":

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English:

1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, and goes to college.

2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

When I was a boy, my father taught me never to give up: "You're a Douglas," he told me, and we never feel sorry for ourselves, or turn away from a challenge. So, that's just what my family does, and that value has always stayed with me, even when I seemed to be faced with insurmountable odds in my life hurdles.

All of what Prager and Just John lament, I think, is the secular collapse of traditional values (and perhaps the hegemony of political correctness). Yet, I have to think that the great silent majority holds out hope for preserving these traditions. In the meantime, I'll continue my fight for dignity, honesty, and respect to others, particularly our elders.

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(Side Note: I stopped on the 405 freeway this morning, on my way to the office, to check on a woman who had crashed into the back of a big-rig. The traffic kept moving past her and no one seemed to be stopping. The truck driver has just pulled off the side of the road, and as I drove by, I thought they might need some help, perhaps just a cell phone to call 911, since the bustle of traffic kept moving by, I worried that assistance might be delayed. The truck driver said he was fine, that he was calling emergency response. I ran out to the vehicle and spoke to the woman, who was reeling back in pain and shock, and I said we were calling an ambulance for her. She thanked me but couldn't look back out the window. I wanted to hold her hand, to reassure her that she'd be okay, but her window was just cracked. I checked with the truck driver one more time, and he thanked me for stopping, and I continued on my way to work. I'm not sure why I stopped, but I think it was the look of the woman, with her airbag deployed, head back and gasping, which tugged at me and made me almost cry for her misfortune. It was spontaneous. I think I just wanted to help, to see if there was anything I could do - that is, to do the right thing. Those are my values.)