This is well off track from the OP but I want to respond to this as the subject is near and dear to my heart.
Well I'd love to be wrong about this, truly I would for my daughters sake and the love I have for this country. What you said about respect us true, and goes much deeper than just this generation. There is nothing wrong with the current generation of kids that we the parents didn't cause. I know because in two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan I have personally seen some of these young people do amazing and extraordinary things, just like the generations before them, when they were led correctly.
It all goes to leadership. Any failures in young people today are also our failures as leaders, not only theirs as individuals. When we create the kinds of media and society these kids are growing up on...what did we think would happen? We went from Andy Griffith to the Family Guy. We went from American heros like Matt Dillon to Snoop Dogg. We went from respect for life to abortion for minors without even parental consent. We went from a President Nixon resigning in shame over a lie about what he knew, to a president that felt no shame at all and argued with the law over the definition of the word "is", to now a president who does not feel bound by the law at all! We went from parenting being about discipline and time with the kids to nowadays where parenting is about giving the kids stuff instead of time, and drugs instead of discipline. Shame no longer exists, pride in accomplishment or the fruit of labor is considered unjust, and making the most basic moral judgment about another's behavior means you are a bigot or racist regardless of facts. This is madness no society can long endure.
What did we really think would be the outcome of all this? If many young people now are self centered with no respect for others or the American way of life, well that is what we taught them. I am neither surprised or optimistic about where that leads.
At a Ferguson protest in Denver with many high schoolers in attendance, an ill motorist ran over 4 police officers in an accident. Some of the students there laughed as one officer who is now fighting for his life was dragged down the street. You cannot effectively police on a widespread scale those kind of completely unprincipled and amoral people within the constraints of the Constitution...and I refuse to live in the kind of police state it would require to bring such lowlifes into submission. Not to mention we must somehow gather new police offices from this same generation. So yes, I believe there is a reckoning coming.
The liberty I believe all men should have the opportunity to raise their families in can only exist in a country with moral values. John Adams said of the document he worked so hard to help create : "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The government created by our Constitution will only be constrained by that document if the people in Government are moral enough to follow it. Tyranny will be avoided in any country only if the citizenry are responsible and moral enough to hold their government accountable to the rule of law instead of using government as a weapon to take money or power from their fellow citizens.
Frankly, like any addict, I think it will take hitting rock bottom and finally realizing what we have lost before we begin to understand anew the true value of that traditional moral code we have given up in exchange for the new American gods of tolerance, political correctness, convenience, and entertainment. Kipling called these new gods the "Gods of the Marketplace".
I want desperately to be wrong by the way. But I do not believe we can escape the consequences of following the gods of the marketplace as Kipling put it.
I'm not much into poetry, in fact this one poem I mentioned is the only one I ever cared for. It's called The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling. In the old days when kids were taught in one room local schoolhouses they used copy books to learn their reading and writing, and the headings they copied were moral precepts you could found a life on, live in peace with your neighbor with, and preserve liberty with. The headings were quotes from the Book of Proverbs, the founding fathers, and plain common sense. The poem is a dire warning against abandoning those timeless principles, and I get something new from it every time I re-read it. It chronicles how man always seems to followthe gods of the marketplace who are selling what is trendy or attractive or politically correct instead of the TRUTH of the Gods of the Zcopybook Headings. Would this country return to the Gods of the Copybook Headings again!! Maybe everything we need to know really was once taught in kindergarten.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Our situation is dire and will become more so, but it is not hopeless. We can turn back to what we once knew again. We just need to have enough patriots to lead the way.
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