I Remember a "GOOD" America...

(The following is a re-run, first published May 3, 2015.)

Our world is broken. Something is very wrong. And for the first time in my life, I’m afraid of what the future holds. They say that those “who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”. But when I look back, I don’t find anything like we are seeing today. Oh, we've had riots before. Senseless looting, burning, robbing, shooting and harming of others. Destroying of neighborhoods, loss of jobs, the harming of innocents. But nothing like this. Nothing like “my rights are better than your rights”. You don’t get to believe what you want because I don’t like what you believe." I keep seeing these signs on the back of cars, “Coexist”. But apparently “Coexist” only exists if we exist the way someone else wants us to believe or behave. 

This past week, during the Baltimore riots, a video of a mother went viral. She saw her 16 year old son on TV participating in the senseless violence, and went down and slapped the boy upside the head. And they got it on video. She got his attention, and he stopped and went home. We need more of that. Yet, suddenly there were outcries of child abuse. Abuse would have been letting the boy stay on the streets participating in the riots.

So what has gone wrong? Where is the breakdown? What happened? Here is what I think. We all got too big for our britches. Core values start at home. Yet, in today’s world, we have too many parents more interested in being their child’s best friend instead of being a parent. You can do both, but one has to take priority. The nuclear family has broke down. Mother’s seldom are stay at home mom’s like they used to be. There are more latchkey kids. Not to say that being a latchkey kid is bad. I was one. But more and more, parents are relying on schools to teach their kids. To raise their kids. To instill values in their kids. Now, I know there are a lot of great teachers in the world, but the quality of our schools has dropped. More and more, teachers are teaching kids to pass a required test. Classrooms are overcrowded. And corporal punishment? Out the door. Remember when, if you got in trouble at school, you were in more trouble at home? Not happening in today’s world. And this is key. If kids aren't taught to respect their parents and teachers, who are they going to respect?

It’s obvious they don’t respect themselves. They don’t respect authority figures, and wonder why. Let’s look at the authority figures. Sports figures who earn insane amounts of money. And those same sports figures are in trouble for abuse. For murder. They go bankrupt. Few set an example. Civic leaders who bankrupt their cities to line their own pockets. Government officials who only blame others for issues, never taking responsibility. Elected officials who make promises to make changes but fail to do so. Career politicians who have turned their offices into big business instead of a place for folks to go and be heard. But since almost half of our registered voters don't bother to vote, who is really to blame? 

I’m excited to have another grandchild born into this world in a few weeks. Yet, I don’t know if I want him born into this world. A world where if we get our feelings hurt we hire a lawyer and sue our neighbor. A place where if we are grocery shopping and happen to fall, we blame and sue the store. A world where we legislate everything rather than individuals working things out. A world where people choose to join organizations, then rather than embrace the beliefs and rules of the organization, sue to make them change. A world where people join a church and then sue to make the church change to be like other churches. A world where we can’t let our kids walk to school and we have no trust in anyone, including those who we elect and those we hire to protect us. We live in a world where police chiefs and sheriffs tell us to buy guns for our protection because they are understaffed and can’t be everywhere at once, and our elected officials tell us they want to take our guns away to keep us safe. And we live in a world where those in charge of the media, rather than investigate and report truths, work to sensationalize stories, to hell with the facts. What once were news stories are now just stories. A newscast should start with "Here's what may have happened in the world today...". It seems like we have too many good laws that aren't enforced, too many bad laws that are enforced, and too many laws dividing us as a nation, as a community, and as friends. We've got baseball teams playing in empty stadiums. We've got riots happening without all of the facts. This disruption has got to stop. Somehow, somewhere, it’s got to stop. I keep thinking of a Merle Haggard song:

Or maybe this line from an episode of “Night Court” says it best: 

“Everyone in America is a child of this Constitution and that makes us a family. I just want us to treat each other that way."

What say you?