Restoring Right and Wrong

I think we would all agree to a certain extent that the America we know today finds a growing percentage of our population as somewhat spoiled or feeling entitled. I’m not sure that you can blame the individual citizen for that as much as you can direct a certain percentage of that blame toward both parenting and government programs.

Today’s parents inherently want to see their offspring have life a step above how they remember their own experiences. I’m not sure whether that means they should have a better “XBox” experience, cellphone or automobile than they did as the benchmark, for it seems material items may be the target. That’s unfortunate, for if the material things in life are the most important to this next generation, we may all be in trouble.

My parents were first-generation Americans, having been born of immigrants who made their way here without the many benefits that even I may have been fortunate enough to enjoy. I can honestly tell you that I don’t ever remember being cold or hungry in my life, and I never had a $150 pair of jeans or a pair of $200 Air Jordans. 

As many of you know my dad was a barber, and I recall the passionate debate he and my mother had regarding the need to raise the cost of an adult haircut to $1.25 and the need to keep a child’s haircut at fifty cents, rather than raise it to $.75 in 1960. “Bernice, parents would let their boys grow hair down to their collars rather than pay an extra 25 cents for a haircut,” I remember my father saying. 

My dad passed in 1966 from cancer, and the Beatles years might have sealed that argument had he lived longer. Young men today might find it insulting if they would be required to go to a barber rather than a stylist, but many things have changed in life!

For some reason, recent generations seem to feel they are entitled to privileges or even recognition for things they haven’t earned. We only have to turn to the “every kid gets a trophy” movement, which seems to have become a new standard in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, they seemed to become the new norm instead of impressing the value of hard work and the ability to deal with success and how to cope with disappointments in life.

Instead, we should be looking to improve self-esteem in our children while instilling within them that competitive spirit that drives them to give their all to any challenge that lies before them as they celebrate a win with grace and a loss with dignity. That certainly would go a long way to crafting better men and women for leadership positions in the future.

Isn’t this what we should be doing to ensure our future as a Republic, one which has strong institutions which provide a solid foundation for our Democracy? We must move forward to strengthen accountability in government, as the goalposts have been moved on what is right and wrong by those who wield power at the highest levels.

Taking back those basic values of right and wrong will go a long way in our quest to restore some of what is wrong today, but every journey has to start with a first step, and this will be a big one.