The air conditioning in my car has been on the blink this summer. One day it’s great, the next some funky noise precedes hot air blasting through the vents. Not a fun condition as we approach a record-setting 42 days of consectutive 100+ heat. Oh… have I told y’all it’s hot in Dallas?! Yes, I’m sure I have moaned about it a few times. We’re striding into August, so cooler days beacon from a seemingly distant, but promising September.
When I picked my car up from our friend Clay at Inwood Motors (the superstar car fixer-upper), he told me he couldn’t get to the bottom of our problem. He did drive my car for a while trying to figure it out. When I got in the car, I got to enjoy the talk radio he had been listening to. I got an earful of Hannity on my drive home.
I rarely have the luxury of talk radio – the kids moan that it’s boring. But today I was by myself and I partook. The topic? Our nation and it’s trajectory toward socialism. Now, I have no interest in going all political. But the topic of London’s riots was raised. The fact that the kids have the audacity to so boldly riot, kill and steal lead to the inevitable question of how did they arrive at such a spot. Hannity and his guest kept going back to the word entitlement. They were using it in the context of government entitlement, but his guest took it a step further and hit on homelife.
Can we avoid the same disaster? Can we guard our society against moral apathy? Against blatant self-centered apathy in so many arenas? I thought it an interest issue and couldn’t help bringing it back to our own MOAT effort to equip vs enable. I’m convinced that we can stop so much of it by making our kids step up to the plate at home.
As I sat in my driveway, listening, I checked my email to find the following UK DailyMail article forwarded to me by my friend Chuck. As a society, I want to say we are so far away from where these folks have found themselves. Then I think… I HOPE we’re far away. Here’s a small blurb from the end of the article that blasted the youth that have incited unthinkable atrocities. Click here (Max Hastings) if you’d like to read the whole thing.
…I recently received a letter from a teacher who worked in a county’s pupil referral unit, describing appalling difficulties in enforcing discipline. Her only weapon, she said, was the right to mark a disciplinary cross against a child’s name for misbehavior.
Having repeatedly and vainly asked a 15-year-old to stop using obscene language, she said: ‘Fred, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a cross.’
He replied: ‘Give me an #@%*ing cross, then!’ Eventually, she said: ‘Fred, you have three crosses now. You must miss your next break.’
He answered: ‘I’m not missing my break, I’m going for an #@%*ing fag!’ When she appealed to her manager, he said: ‘Well, the boy’s got a lot going on at home at the moment. Don’t be too hard on him.’
This is a story repeated daily in schools up and down the land.
A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolizes their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.
If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.
So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalized sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.
They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.
They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.
Hmmm… As we pray for this situation, might learn from our neighbors across the pond and keep on keepin’ on – even if it’s a simple as forced laundry labor.
Thanks for walking the road with me.
-Kay
Are the days gone when a kid not only could find a job, but was expected to work… even serve? Let’s not only hope not, but change the tide.
