America: Rusting From the Bottom Up

A sad illustration of America's fate.

When I was a young man I had no interest in politics at all, even laughing about a particular colleague who listened to talk radio all day long while he worked. I often wondered how he could listen to various hosts talk for hours on end. Then one day I listened on my way home, and boy, were my eyes opened.

I'm not sure it was a good thing at times, what with my blood pressure now requiring daily medications to keep it in check, but part of that is also attributed to advanced age and poor diet. Nevertheless, I am helpless now to escape the grip of politics and the insane world around me as our politicians seem intent on destroying the country I have always loved.

Liberals are a frustrating lot, seeming to have an endless array of angles from which to attack our institutions and brainwash our young. It is hard at times to keep up, but try we must lest we all perish at their hands. Liberals have made it a bit easier in recent years as their collective hubris has compelled them to free themselves from the shadows from which they once operated, much like the Taliban stepping from their caves with a new sense of invincibility. While some still wince at the mere mention of Socialism, others have thrown off their cloaks to proudly display the Socialist cape. (I saw a car the other day in my once predominantly Conservative enclave bearing the likeness of Che Guevara!)

Common Core in our public school system is a perfect example whereby the left feels free to gain control of our children right out in the open. It's gotten to the point where Liberals in schools feel that the children belong to them until they decide to let their parents have them back for a while. Case in point is the Tennessee father arrested  in November when he tried to pick up his kids early from school. (Pay particular attention to the quote from a school official at the end of that article, in which he mentions the "safety of our kids".)

The real problem now lies not in the colleges -- where kids were indoctrinated in Liberal ways after most of their formative years were behind them -- but in our elementary and secondary schools when their minds are most impressionable. The efforts were always there to some degree, but never as overt as they are now. When we now have curricula that asks students  to delete two articles from the "outdated Bill of Rights" as an exercise -- particularly ironic since many of them are not even taught what the Bill of Rights are -- we have a fundamental problem with education.

One of the things that problem helps create is a mentality of entitlement that we now see itself manifested in the ridiculous demand for a king's ransom for an entry level job. (Remember those?) Kids are taught not only that their evil parents are responsible for "catastrophic climate change", but also that they themselves are all special and deserve a trophy. So the kids naturally extrapolate from that mindset that when they get out of school, even with nothing more than a high school diploma, that they should be paid enough to live on their own in a nice home.

Nowhere are they taught -- save, perhaps at home -- that they may have a tough go of it while they work hard and build experience and a reputation as a good worker. No, they are led to believe that dessert comes before dinner.

McDonalds workers are striking for $15.00 per hour, and the Democrats are stirring up Walmart workers and protesting alongside them at times. Yet watch them wail if they ever get their precious "living wage" and Walmart and stores like it either close up shop or start charging Lord and Taylor prices. Hell, give them all twenty dollars or more per hour and watch them try to shop without the affordable stores.

All these poor workers -- being led by the nose from Democrats -- will find is that they will have protested themselves right into a living hell when they must rely on the government for their existence. In the meantime, all the children coming up behind them will be equally indoctrinated in the same way, will grow up and see the abject failure of what their predecessors had wrought, and demand more, and this pattern will continue until our streets look like those of France.

Is this what our Founders fought for? Is this what our parents and grandparents fought for? I think not, and it's time we got the federal government out of our schools and begin teaching not only life skills to our kids, but the integrity by which they recognize the value of hard work and then the reward. Teach them that failure happens and it's okay as long as they strive to do better next time until they succeed. Teaching them that failure also deserves a gold star is the wrong message. Their little egos will quickly learn the true value of what success actually means.

People, wake up, I beg you. If we continue down our current path, our grandchildren will not only have a massive debt from which they will never escape, but an America -- if that's what it's still called then -- that none of us would recognize.

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