# 121
“Today’s Fairy Tale”
IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
August 28, 2012
If you had the choice, would you encourage someone? Would you discourage someone? Of course, you would encourage another. Yet, today there abounds a fairy tale that robs the younger ones of us of their ambition, their drive, their aspirations, their very lives.
“How is that?” you ask. The answer is before our eyes, yet too few of us recognize the portent of it. Promised help is tempting, and addicting. If you doubt it, take a hard look at what has happened since the 1960s. The once close-knit black American families have fractured into a shattered mosaic of single mothers and absent fathers. Pre-marital sex and living together without the benefit of marriage, once labeled unacceptable, now beckons young people and is flaunted by their idols in entertainment and sports.
It’s as if the conjugal act is just that, an act — devoid of any commitment. Any competent observer will tell you that the basic building blocks of any civilization consist of three elements, and a fourth if the people are especially fortunate. The first three are family, faith and language. We have seen family attacked from every quarter and aberrant behavior lauded as something to copy. Faith, when viewed by the liberal portions of our society, is seen as a weakness — not for the strength believers draw from it. Language is threatened in a myriad of ways.
Proper speaking is not exalted in our schools and profanity heard in the hallways today would never have been tolerated in the generations that brought us “the greatest generation.” I cannot begin to calculate how much money we spend on children who cannot speak English. It is an anathema, since moneyed folk send their children abroad to be “immersed” in a foreign tongue. But what do our schools do? They invest millions upon millions of dollars across this nation teaching bi-lingual classes and try to convince the general population to do less is some sort of discrimination.
Someone needs to ask these so-called educators why the only language spoken among planes and controllers worldwide is English. I can imagine the answers. You see as long as twenty years ago, I spent a fair amount of time as an adult student in university master’s classes taught by instructors who put forth a stilted “politically correct” approach to schoolwork and students. I could see the forest for the trees, since I had reared three sons, one of whom was an undergraduate at the time I was getting my master’s degree.
Speaking up as an adult gets you nowhere, because professors often view you as a threat. Furthermore, since the only things you can salvage from classes like that are your grades; you shake your head (mentally), bite your lip, and count the days until the term ends.
Now, when I see the results of all this “correctness”, I wince. Standards are so much lower than when I went to school. I had a better education in the eighth grade— except for higher math — than seniors do today. History is shortchanged, and so are the students.
Without recognizing the red flags for warning signs of what might be just “down the road”, young people are hobbled and rendered unable to fend for themselves politically or economically.
I titled this column “The Fairy Tale” for a reason. I firmly believe that our young people are in danger, not because of America’s values, but in spite of them. Told they are “discriminated against, “minorities”, or “at risk”, they see themselves catapulted into a hostile world where — with encouragement — they would have succeeded. Entrepreneurship is alive and well; but, for the most part, the younger generation doesn’t know that.
If they are poor, they are promised support. If they are uneducated, they see no improvement in public (in truth, government) schools. Nobody demands excellence. What makes that such a travesty is simple. If you expect nothing, that’s precisely what you will get.
If people are discouraged and despondent, they are coddled. The once-proud movements among the churches in our cities are crowded out by gang violence. Sadly, far too many of our youngsters are in cemeteries long before their time.
Outreach is alive in the inner cities, but the media seldom focus on it. Instead, anchors count the bodies and describe the latest murders on the nightly news and seldom challenge to the community at large to bring pressure to bear on the thugs that ruin lives and devastate futures. In short, threats and violence work.
When young people feel lost and lack goals, some element of the government offers to reinforce their angst and provide some sort of “help” to assuage their plight.
Is this the America built by the blood, sweat and tears of our forefathers, their wives and children? I think not. If you want a picture of what happens when government takes over and individual incentive dies, study Russia from 1917 until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Unless one has — for want of a better term — skin in the game, it’s a lost cause. Working and saving for something instills pride and a sense of accomplishment unsurpassed by any form of assistance. Contrast the stability of neighborhoods with property owners with areas designated as “public housing.”
Upward mobility is still possible, but if you believe what the media spouts, everyone is stuck and cannot rise to a higher level. What’s more, the envy and enmity now launched against very successful people is inexcusable. This is robbery and strikes at the heart of the American Dream.
Undoubtedly, you will hear people decry what many term “American Exceptionalism”. They term it a fantasy. If it is, then let them explain why hordes of people from around the world — downtrodden to the highly educated — yearn to come to America.
We have been that “shining city” of which President Reagan so eloquently spoke for generations. That light has dimmed over the past few years, but the spark is still alive. We need only to fuel it by abandoning government regulations and embrace freedom.
Demand politicians from the local to the federal level get their heads on straight and stand for what we are in danger of losing: precious freedom.
Insist on excellence in all areas, from school to the workplace. Demand English as the primary language of America. Reject economic robbery by illegals. If that is acceptable, then burglary victims need to post signs asking the burglars to come back and get what they missed. Don’t allow our young people to be misled by the Fairy Tale that the government is the be-all end-all of everything. It isn’t.
In the end, we are a nation whose government is “of the people, by the people and by the people.” Think about it.