Why conservative parents raise progressive children

There is a WND columnist named Dennis Prager whose writing is, I believe, outstanding. Last week and this week, he wrote a two-part column that absolutely nails why conservative parents often end up with adult children who are progressive, and who reject all the values with which they were raised.

The first column is entitled Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children.

The follow-up column is entitled If You Want a Conservative Child.

Some quotes to highlight:

• "As a father, my purpose is not to pass on my seed, but to pass on my values." [Pride in our children comes not just with achievement, but with character. As Dr. Laura once said, the world is full of smart kids. What we need are more good kids.]

• "But the village – i.e., American society – has radically changed... 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)." [Which is why I'm SO thankful we have no television reception and have homeschooled our girls.]

• "[I]t is best that your child not go to college immediately after high school. One reason colleges are able to indoctrinate students is that students enter college young and unworldly. It is very rare that adult students are convinced to abandon their values and become left-wing. Why? Because they have lived life and are much less naive. For example, someone with life experience is far more likely than a kid just out of high school to understand that the best formula for avoiding poverty is to take personal responsibility – get a job, get married and then have children – not government help.

• "Teenagers who spend a year before going to college working – in a restaurant, for a moving company, at an office – will mature far more than they would after a year at college. And maturity is an inoculation against leftism." [The inference -- that progressive values are a sign of immaturity -- is a whole different subject.]

• "The more your child knows, lives and adheres to the principles of [Judeo-Christian religions], the less likely he or she will convert to leftism, which has been the most dynamic religion of the last hundred years. For example, it is a fundamental belief of each of these Judeo-Christian religions that the root of evil is within the evildoer. But it is a fundamental belief of leftism that people murder, steal and rape overwhelmingly because of outside influences such as poverty and racism. The moment your child understands that people who commit evil are responsible -- not poverty or racism -– they cannot be a leftist."

• "[D]on’t be preoccupied with instilling high self-esteem in your child. It is the left that believes that self-esteem is a child’s right, something that parents and society owe children. Conservatives believe that everyone, including children, must earn self-esteem. Indeed, the belief in earning –- rather than in being given –- is conservative."

• "It is not all that hard to produce a son or daughter able to withstand left-wing indoctrination. You just have to understand that it doesn’t happen automatically."

A recent email I received accused me of being full of pride. He's correct in one regard: I am very very proud of our girls. They are carrying on the conservative values Don and I hold dear.

Hollywood vs. Real America

There is a television series that's just hit the prime time called (pardon my language) Good Christian Bitches (later modified to Good Christian Belles after the understandable outcry). It's made by the creators of "Sex and the City," so I guess that tells you something. We don't have television reception so I've never seen this latest example of Hollywood art, but I gather the basic premise is to show how Christian women are nothing but a bunch of biblical hypocrites. Ha ha -- it's so amusing, don't you think, to watch women be catty? And placing them in a church environment just seals the deal, in the opinion of Hollywood.

(Just as an aside, imagine a Hollywood brainchild called "Good Jewish Bitches" or "Good Muslim Bitches" and see how quickly the producers would get flayed. But hey, it's open season on Christians.)

This show is apparently full of splendid advice, such as "cleavage lets your cross hang straight" and other useful suggestions.

As I see it, this is just the latest example of Hollywood's absolute disdain for Middle America and its values. I was going to link to a trailer to demonstrate my point, but after watching it I didn't want my girls to see the shocking content, so I found another, slightly less racy trailer (here). And keep that in mind: the first trailer I found was so shocking I didn't want my girls to see it... yet this show is now on prime time television, where young people all over America can hear the catty language and watch the degrading situations played out in this sitcom.

As with any television show, the actors and actresses involved are drop-dead beautiful. But what good is all that beauty if its purpose is to ridicule and scorn an enormous segment of our nation? Its whole essence is the mockery of values, particularly Christian values. Such ideals as modesty and chastity are held in contempt as unattainable and unrealistic (and unnecessary) goals. The nuclear family is shown as dysfunctional (of course) and a source of oppression for women (of course). It's considered "empowering" for women to dress like skanks and seduce men away from their marriage vows. It's sole purpose, apparently, is to illustrate (with the help of lots of cleavage) how religion is bad.

But no one ever talks about how religion is good -- how many lives have been turned around, how many overwhelmed people have found solace, how many challenges have been overcome because of faith (and this doesn't even examine how many souls are saved).

What it comes down to is Hollywood's persistent ambition to demonstrate how secular life is vastly superior to religious life. The pious are hypocrites and idiots. All devout church-goers are in reality closet deviants bent on fulfilling their animal urges. And somehow, in some way, Christian values are to blame for it all.

Now this petty and superficial television show is moving into the prime time, where countless numbers of young people, whose faith may still be fragile, will fall under its outwardly-beautiful and glamorous sway.

So anyway, this morning I was writing this blog piece and getting on my high horse when I got bumped down to earth by a sobering piece written by columnist Dennis Prager. It seems he and his wife, who are traveling in Australia, met a young waitress from Iran who was raised Muslim. Due to the violence she saw around her while growing up, she now considers herself an atheist.

"Nothing produces atheists like despicable religious people," writes Prager. "They do far more harm to religious faith than all the atheist writers and activists in the world put together."

This statement made me wince because there are far too many times when Christians are seen in a similar light. While I can't go into details, let's just say I'm in a position to see a LOT of chatter back and forth between the political left and the political right, between atheists and Christians, between progressives and conservatives. Many people will claim that conservatives are more verbally restrained than the name-calling and vitriol that marks the left; but I'm here to tell you it ain't necessarily so. There is just as much mud-slinging, name-calling, and nasty language coming from so-called Christians; and it serves to reinforce every bad opinion atheists could ever hold of us.

As a Christian I am held to high standards, standards I continuously fail to meet (which is where forgiveness of my sins is so comforting). Nonetheless those standards are there, and I must strive toward them. I must guard my tongue and my (typing) fingers from falling into the classic human failings of gossip, name-calling, and hypocrisy. In other words, I -- and every other person who calls him or herself a Christian -- must be ambassadors for our faith. We must represent the goodness and mercy of Jesus, not the gossip and slander that GCB illustrates.

I'll fail, of course. But at least I have a Higher Authority to whom I can lift my fallen eyes and beg forgiveness.

But you still won't catch me watching Good Christian "Belles" any time soon.

A speech every high school prinicipal should give

I lifted this article written by Dennis Prager (whose writing I much admire) off the WorldNetDaily website. I thought it made a lot of sense. Which, of course, is why it will never happen.
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He writes: If every school principal gave this speech at the beginning of the next school year, America would be a better place.

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.

The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity – your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.

If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values – e pluribus unum, "from many, one." And this school will be guided by America's values.

This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism – an unhealthy preoccupation with the self – while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interesting in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America's citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here – it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English – but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property – whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can't speak without using the f-word, you can't speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as "nigger," even when used by one black student to address another black, or "bitch," even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way – the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago – by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky – to be alive and to be an American.

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

I love my manly man!

As many of you know, I'm a great admirer of men. Specifically, Manly Men. Here's my man working hard to provide us with firewood to keep our house warm this winter.







Isn't he handsome?


One of the reasons I love men is I'm worried that so few of them are being raised nowadays. Folks like our neighbors (who have two sons) know the importance of fathers, especially when raising sons. (The mother calls her boys MIT's - Men in Training.)

Here is an excellent column by Dennis Prager, lamenting the lack of Good Men. He writes, "Every society has to answer a few basic questions in order to succeed and even in order to survive. One of them is: "How do we make good men?" The reason for the importance of this question is simple: Males untutored about how to control their natures will likely do much harm. Conversely, males who are taught to how to control themselves and to channel their drives in positive directions make the world a much better place. The good man is a glory of civilization; the bad man ruins it."

Well said.