A Disturbing Trend

You know something… we are raising a generation of rude people.

My wife and I were sitting, eating breakfast this morning, and I watched as a man came in and sat down in the waiting area… waiting to be seated.

Well… This being Sunday, it was not long before the usual Church crowd started wandering in, and the place started to fill up. While this man sat there, a couple elderly women came in, one of them having a noticeably hard time both walking and just standing there.

The afore mentioned young man looked at them, and instead of offering his seat to them, he did something that completely miffed me. He not only stayed seated, but he picked up his back pack and placed it on the seat next to him, thusly taking up two seats. All the while he kept looking at the two old women standing there.

After a could minutes, a man who was not much younger than the women, and directly across from the young man that would not give up the two seats he was taking up, stood, with some effort, and gave his seat to the eldest of the two women. Watching this the whole time, the younger man made no effort to follow suit and surrender his seat to the remaining woman.

My issue here is why could he have not given his seat up? I would have in a heartbeat, because that is the way I was raised. From the time I was very young, I was taught to respect my elders.

I think that if we took a good, hard, look at what we see going on around us today, we would see that many of the things that are happening with gangs and the trouble in our schools, can be attributed to two things; Lack of discipline and disrespect of our elders.

Face it… the laws that are in place these days and the way they prevent us from punishing our children by almost making it a crime to raise our hands against them, have made parents the familial representation of a Lame Duck. If a person does spank their kid, when they get to school all they have to do is say that their parents hit them. In some cases, that is all it takes to get the parent in trouble.

What kind of society are we creating when we cannot or will not discipline our children? NOT disciplining them is only creating a fantasy world in which they will be mislead into thinking that they will always get their way. This will create a dysfunctional and impotent society.

If we continue in this direction, we will not have to worry about threats from outside the country… the terrorist and Anti-American groups can just sit back and watch us get stupider and lazier, then make their move when we are too dumb and lazy to do anything about it.

If you are thinking I have gotten off my original thought, no… I have not. It all starts with discipline and respect. You have to respect those that came before you and that which they have to teach us… some of the information may become dated, but the core teaching will still be there. Our prior generations are our greatest natural resource, we need to learn as much as we can from it. It is also important that we, as adults, be allowed to punish out children as we need to. Punishment should be harsh… it should teach us a lesson, and in some cases, it should shame or embarrass us.

There is nothing quite as educational as a good paddling by your mother in front a your friends.

Only when we bring discipline and respect back into our homes and schools will we get back on the road to a great nation.