I’m sure every generation looks upon the succeeding with suspicion, apprehension and at times loathingly; yet, each generation is a product of the latter. Americans are looking in the mirror and don’t like what they see. Hey, I don’t remember that wrinkle. Where did that wart come from? How did that mole get there?
This transition from responsible, hard-working citizens to lazy, thumb suckers who can’t stand our country has gobsmacked many of us. I don’t remember this kind of vitriol and self-loathing when I was growing up. Maybe this attitude had been there the whole time and I just don’t recall. Sure, I remember Vietnam protesters and people burning flags, but we are way beyond that. This is a whole new realm of hatred.
I was a kid during the Spirit of ‘76. Our Bicentennial was celebrated throughout the country. Rock bands produced songs and published posters. I had KISS plastered on my wall. It was a time when one took pride in his country. Now look at the state we’re in. What a pathetic spectacle we’ve become.
As a student of history, I can confidently say there has always been factions: Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist; Puritan vs. Cavalier; Pietist vs. Liturgical and Conservative vs. Liberal. But none, until recently, have repudiated our founding. Sure, there were a few, such as Woodrow Wilson, who promoted a living and breathing constitution, however, he didn’t demonize our Framers to validate his point of view.
Today’s liberals are ashamed of our history. They see no value in the past; no lessons from which to learn and no one to revere except our “victims.” Hence, they must tear down any and all remembrances. The former mayor of New Orleans received an award for tearing down Confederate statues. Was this an act of courage? Courage is standing up against an irrational zeitgeist; Mayor Landrieu embraced it. Courage, indeed.
In order to cure a disease, one must determine its pathology. Radicals desire nothing more than to takeover the body politic. These pathogens don’t want to kill the host; they just want to control him and the least path of resistance is to attack his children.
Our public schools and universities are the cesspools in which ideologies breed. This isn’t a revelation in itself, however the times and agenda are. A century ago, radicals of a different kind controlled the educational system. Here is an excerpt from Murray Rothbard’s The Progressive Era:
The tensions between the Republicans and their pietist constituents was also growing to the bursting point because, while the Republicans were becoming more moderate, the prohibitionists were becoming increasingly fanatical. Originally, the prohibitionists had habitually referred to themselves as temperate, as men of temperance. By the 1880’s and 1890’s however, this was no longer true: the prohibitionists now spoke of themselves as “radicals.” It was no longer enough to attack hard liquor; denunciations of beer were now stepped up. The saloon came in for increasing vilification, violent raids were conducted on them, and Law and Order Legions in large cities acted to stamp out illegal sales of liquor. By 1885, there were 500 such local leagues throughout the country, with 60,000 members.
Not only that: the youth were becoming more pietistic and more militant prohibitionists than their elders. The pietist youth exuded a deep hatred for the saloons, expressed through Young People’s Christian Societies and interdenominational Sunday school programs. The W.C.T.U., partly through its highly successful mandatory temperance hygiene classes in the public schools, were able to enlist 200,000 youngsters in their youth affiliate, the Loyal Temperance Legion.
The success in radicalizing middle-class pietist youth is shown by the fact that ⅔ of all college students in the Midwest were enrolled in pietist denominations, and that most of them joined the highly moralistic Young Men’s Christian Association. The faculty and students at Iowa State University endorsed prohibition. Particularly remarkable was a presidential preference poll of undergraduates at the University of Chicago in 1892. The eventual winner, Democrat Grover Cleveland, obtained 52 votes, while incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison received 151 votes, and the Populist James B Weaver obtained 3. But the astounding fact is that the winner of the poll was the Prohibitionist Party candidate, John Bidwell, who received 164 votes.
I’m sure today’s youth would be surprised to find out Christian organizations were allowed in public schools. They might have had a tempering influence on today’s radicals. That’s probably the reason why liberals wanted them banned in the first place.
Nobody knows what will happen in the next 100 years. Maybe the pendulum will swing back to a state of normalcy. That’s if we still have a United States of America.
Source:
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/mitch-landrieu-jfk-award
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