thedrifter
06-11-08, 08:10 AM
When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
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, America was a freer society than it is today. If
Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern
their speech and behavior within one generation, they would have been
certain that they were being told about some dictatorship, not the Land
of the Free. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far
less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's
illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel
offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile
work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically
insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, all employers in California are now prohibited by law from
firing a man who has decided to cross-dress at work. And needless to
say, no fellow worker can say to that man, "Hey, Jack, why not wear the
dress at home and men's clothes to work?" An employer interviewing a
prospective employee is not free to ask the most natural human
questions: Are you married? Do you have a child? How old are you? Soon
"How are you?" will be banned lest one discriminate on the basis of health.
When I was boy, what people did at home was not their employer's
business. Today, companies and city governments refuse to hire, and may
fire, workers no matter how competent or healthy, who smoke in their
homes. Sarasota, Fla., the latest city to invade people's private lives,
would not hire Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy
if they applied for a job.
When I was a 7-year-old boy, I flew alone from New York to my aunt and
uncle in Miami and did the same thing coming back to New York. I boarded
the plane on my own and got off the plane on my own. No papers for my
parents to fill out. No extra fee to pay the airline. I was responsible
for myself. Had I run away or been kidnapped, no one would have sued the
airline. Today, fear of lawsuits is a dominant fact of American life.
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.
Ellie
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
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, America was a freer society than it is today. If
Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern
their speech and behavior within one generation, they would have been
certain that they were being told about some dictatorship, not the Land
of the Free. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far
less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's
illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel
offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile
work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically
insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, all employers in California are now prohibited by law from
firing a man who has decided to cross-dress at work. And needless to
say, no fellow worker can say to that man, "Hey, Jack, why not wear the
dress at home and men's clothes to work?" An employer interviewing a
prospective employee is not free to ask the most natural human
questions: Are you married? Do you have a child? How old are you? Soon
"How are you?" will be banned lest one discriminate on the basis of health.
When I was boy, what people did at home was not their employer's
business. Today, companies and city governments refuse to hire, and may
fire, workers no matter how competent or healthy, who smoke in their
homes. Sarasota, Fla., the latest city to invade people's private lives,
would not hire Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy
if they applied for a job.
When I was a 7-year-old boy, I flew alone from New York to my aunt and
uncle in Miami and did the same thing coming back to New York. I boarded
the plane on my own and got off the plane on my own. No papers for my
parents to fill out. No extra fee to pay the airline. I was responsible
for myself. Had I run away or been kidnapped, no one would have sued the
airline. Today, fear of lawsuits is a dominant fact of American life.
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.
Ellie