How Things Change Out From Under Us
Anyone who has been around for a while and who pays any attention to the news sees many disturbing changes. Recently, I read a report that two children, ages seven and eight, had an altercation at school during recess. They were carted off in handcuffs by the police. The teachers or principal had dealt with the boys’ disagreement by calling in the law.
I wonder if the kids now have felonious assault records that will cancel their Second Amendment rights when they come of age.
When I was a kid there were no age limits to the Second Amendment. We all had firearms before we reached puberty. Anyone with the money could purchase a .22 caliber rifle at the local hardware store. If you were too young to see over the counter, the proprietor might call your parents to get an OK. You could purchase .22 caliber ammunition and shotgun shells at most any gas station.
None of us ever shot anyone or any farmer’s cow or mule. There were no gun accidents among my armed companions.
My grandmother never batted an eye when I walked out of her farmhouse with my grandfather’s shotgun. Guns were just a routine item. We all learned gun safety from the Boy Scouts. My grandmother only became concerned for my safety when I became the proud owner of a spirited horse.
If the attitudes that exist today had been around when I was coming along, my entire generation would be felons. I had my first altercation at the age of three. Bullies were ever present. A kid had to steel himself against them. At six years of age I learned that, Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers bravado notwithstanding, an older and stronger kid was just that. Fortunately, my mother was there to rescue me.
In our neighborhood elementary school, to which we all walked or rode our bikes from kindergarten on, recess was where one’s mettle was tested. One of our classmates, Robert, was much bigger than the rest of us and became overbearing.
Generally, our fights were wrestling matches. The first to get a scissors or a headlock on the other party would prevail. But Robert was a boxer, and as he was a head taller and long-armed, he was a problem. One day Herbert had enough of Robert, and a fistfight emerged. It was the first time we saw blood. Herbert was game, but Robert had the reach and the punch, and Herbert got a bloody nose and a busted lip.
The fight lasted a fairly long time, but the playground monitor, Mrs. Humphrey, a pretty young woman who taught the second grade, finally broke it up.
No police were called.
Robert won the fight, but it was the end of his bullying. Herbert, who was about 14 inches shorter, had stood up to him and continued the fight until rescued by Mrs. Humphrey.
Fighting was just normal. It wasn’t a police issue. Notes might have gone home to parents to explain the cut lip and bloody nose, but fights were just part of growing up. A person had to learn how to stand up for himself.
Standing up for oneself was a theme of an ad that ran in the magazines of my youth. The ad appeared in the form of a comic strip. There were several versions. The one I remember most was the one in which the 97-pound weakling takes his girl to the beach. The muscular bully kicks sand on the skinny guy, and, when the weakling protests, the bully pushes him down. His girl bemoans his lack of manhood. The weakling orders the ad’s product, Charles Atlas’s muscle-building program.
Soon the weakling is a different man. He is back on the beach, encounters the bully, and KO’s him with a right to the jaw. The girlfriend is overflowing with adoration for “a real man."
Today, this ad would probably bring a lawsuit or an arrest for inciting violence.
Certainly, the bully would be arrested for assault for pushing the weakling to the ground.
The transformed weakling would be arrested for assault for letting the bully have what was coming to him.
When I was in high school, a rich kid, Fate, who worked out with weights and whose father brought in professional boxers to give Fate boxing lessons, decided that he wanted my girlfriend. He spread the word that, after school, he was going to beat me up.
An older and more experienced student with a Napoleonic turn of mind advised me. He explained that I was unlikely to fare well if I worried all day about the event, which would be worse for having a big audience. The trick, he said, was to surprise my antagonist by striking first. Physical-education class would be the opportunity, he said. Fate and I were the quarterbacks of the opposing teams. My mentor said, “Pick the moment and let him have it.”
I did.
Fate was the better fighter, but he had relied on intimidation instead of skill, and it had not worked for him. Where there had been confidence, there was now uncertainty. He was unsure of the outcome, and this gave me the edge.
The fight lasted the entire length of the P.E. class. The football coach in charge of the period did nothing. Fate got the worst black eye of his career. Miraculously, I emerged unmarked.
I kept my girlfriend, eventually married her, and fathered two wonderful children with her.
This sounds like bragging, but the point is entirely different. Today, Fate and I would be carted off in handcuffs. We would have assault records. We would have no Second Amendment rights, and every time there was an assault in our town the police would pick us up for questioning.
Fate was no worse for his black eye. It probably taught him to escape from hubris. He went on to be a quarterback for the University of Georgia.
I went on to become assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
If the police had been called, they would have just watched the fight.
Today, even pretend fighting can result in expulsion. Not long ago there was a news report of a six-year-old who, playing cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers at recess, pointed his finger at classmates and said, “Bang, bang.”
The school determined that the six-year-old was a danger to his classmates.
How times change. We were never without our cowboy cap guns and holsters until we had attained sufficient coordination to be accepted in the neighborhood football and baseball games. In the third or fourth grade I took a .38 caliber Spanish revolver, for which I had traded a World War II helmet, to school for show-and-tell. The teacher asked if it was loaded. “No ma’am,” I replied, “this old pistol won’t fire, besides, you don’t load a gun unless you are on the firing range or on the hunt.” “Unless,” I added, “you are a soldier at war.” I demonstrated that the pistol wasn’t loaded by opening the gate and twirling the cylinder, just as Randolph Scott did in the movies.
The teacher wasn’t perturbed. It was a tame item, really. The previous week, Buddy Sikes had brought a copperhead to school in his backpack thinking it was a garter snake.
This article first appeared in the May 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
I would like to acknowledge the (perhaps) unintended irony to this column's appearing--as it does--on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine HS massacre. According to contemporary standards and "sensibilities," that kind of carnage from a mere decade ago should have been routine during the "violent" age of Dr. Roberts's long-ago reminiscence, when students took unloaded firearms to school for show and tell.
The proverbial hunting rifles in the gunrack were visible in trucks at my school during deer season and to a lesser extent all year round. The paranoia of those in the 'system' today speaks of a collective mental deficiency and a toal lack of common sense. Where do they get such nutcases?
Several years ago, I called the county sherriff's office over a disruption of the peace. The deputy arrived over two hours after it was all over, and when I was discussing with him what had happened, the neighbours, small, little dog, who played with little kids all the time, who looked the opposite of dangerous, and who couldn't harm any adult if he tried his damndest, walked up, apparently a little nervous at the cop's presence but obviously wanting to play or be petted. The deputy grabbed his gun instinctually, not pulling it out but ready to do so instantly, cut me off in mid sentence, and kept saying 'Is that dog vicious?!! Is that dog Vicious?!!' until I finally said, 'No, he couldn't bit a biscuit'. That ended the conversation, and I wondered where they got this lunatic who was so 'trained' that he couldn't see the reality of the playful dog right in front of his eyes, but instead imagined a vicious animal.
Welcome to the gelded age, everybody. The wimps reign supreme, but hey, look on the bright side -- it's perfectly OK to slaughter one and a half million defenseless unborn children every year despite the fact that we'll need these future taxpayers to support self-indulgent, narcissistic baby boomers.
As far as the schools have deteriorated, we'd be better off as a nation of ignorant hicks than educated slaves.
Mr. Roberts,
Based on your article, we had similar childhoods. We, however, had no Kindergarten. It was right into the first grade.
Our senior play, twelve years later, was A Hillbilly Wedding. The script called for a gun to be fired off stage. The gun we used was my father's breach-loading, single-shot 12 gauge. He simply cut the shot out of a No. 6, and one the boys fired it out the backdoor of the gym which also double, with its stage, as a "theater."
In 1974 I was in grade six. We had to do a school project that consisted of making a movie with real film and edit it for a projector to make a presentation to the class. The story we invented was a story of kids burning the school down. We actually made a cardboard school and set it aflame in the parking lot while filming the event. Today I am sure we would be arrested with and sent to a foreign country to be tortured. The actual result was probably a good release of pent up emotions as we cheered while the cardboard school burned flat. I think we even received a passing grade.
The point PCR makes is just one of a long list of disturbing trends that have taken place in my lifetime. I find it difficult to view the future without chilling apprehension. My grandparents would be shocked at what we seem to accept as normal. The very fact that someone like the present occupant of the White House could actually be voted into office leads me to believe the worst is yet to come.
"We all learned gun safety from the Boy Scouts."
You mean this was left up to a non-government organization? The Boy Scouts are a good example of an "intermediary institution," that helps improve and order society by educating and training youth. It is no wonder that the left has been attacking them for the past decade. I'm sure they'll be going after the 4H club next. God forbid children should learn responsibility and independence.
Dr. Roberts takes a turn spinning a Roger-McGrath-like reminiscence back East. I am too young to have any such colorful memories of school--just dumb rote, although we still had a little fighting that the teachers simply broke up, maybe with detention.
Unfortunately, families seem different now as well as the schools that Dr. Roberts writes of.
I have no doubt many of the readers of this website and Chronicles could recount similar experiences, but Mr. Roberts (whose articles are always insightful) has hit upon something here that has long puzzled me in thinking about the seeming prevalence today of episodes of gun violence against innocents and on a large scale. Guns were far more available to people in the past -- e.g. be it because .22 caliber rifles could be sold to children at the local hardware store or because there was a shotgun or rifle behind the kitchen door of most every house -- and such calamities were unheard of. Unquestionably, guns were far more present/available back in the day. So, what has changed? The guns haven't, as the basic workings of modern firearms are strikingly similar to those manufactured even a century ago. It must be the people, then, right? Something about people has changed to make them more inclined to act out in such a way. Whether it is the tendency we have to ply "unruly" children with mind-altering drugs, or the influence of "violent immigrant syndrome" [sic] described by the folks at Vdare.com, or just the increasing influence of evil in a post-Christian society, I don't know. But you can bet the solutions offered by our overlords won't be helpful or to our liking, because people who would call the police to break up a row between two pre-teen boys don't have a clue.
My take on this trend is that it is part of an attempt to criminalize self-defense in general (as has been done in Great Britain). I always assured my son that he would be in no trouble with his parents for defending himself at school, no matter what the school authorities might do.
Mr. Allen, you are on to something. When I first was growing in Prince George's County, MD, a sprawling suburb of Washington that had been mostly tobacco farms in 1900, deadly violence was rare. But this began to change about 1970 and has intensified today to where Prince George's County often leads the country in suburban violent crime. Some would say that that Prince George's demographic changes combined with gang warfare over the distribution and profitmaking of illegal drugs is the major cause. Four or five generations of illegitimacy haven't helped.
I think Mr. Thomas Peter Allen @10 is on to something. The take it for granted attitude of Americans of the commonality of gun ownership rights and use that Mr. Roberts described has changed. I was generalizing a reason, and I could only come up with the idea that we have and are being historically disengaged from our past, somehow. Mr. Allen has offered a few reasons, but one that might be significant is the gradual affect of Liberalism (with its concommitant influence on the rise of Statism, for our best interests, dontcha know?) on American society over the past 100 years. For example, would a Janet Napolitano have had the opportunity or temerity in, say, 1910 or even 1946, to warn American police agencies of the danger of single-issue (i.e., gun rights or pro-lifers) right-wing extremists and not have been laughed out of office by the very people she was warning? Today, these police agencies are gearing up to profile and defend against those Napolitano has mentioned.
This seems to be a fair account of things as they used to be. However, the fact that kids back then could handle firarms in a responsible manner does not mean the kids of today can do it. Likewise, kids might have known what was fair and proportionate use of their fists to defend themselves, but kids of today do not.
The blame lies with the entertainment industry, and the parents who let their kids immerse themselves in it. As children watch thousand of hours of violence on TV, and play extremely violent computer games, they lose the ability to understand, or measure, the damage a fist or a gun can do in the real world.
Today, if a teenager wants to get a weapon, he might be dreaming of an automatic assault weapon rather than a .22 rifle. If a teacher does not break up and report a fight on the schoolyard he runs the risk of, say, the bigger kid jumping with both feet on the head of the smaller kid who is lying on the ground.
So, while nostalgia is a fine pursuit in itself, the clock can not in this case be turned back. Many young people today do not know the difference between real and fictional violence, and parents, teachers or authorities cannot let them work that out by experimenting on each other.
Dan @14 "If a teacher does not break up and report a fight on the schoolyard he runs the risk of, say, the bigger kid jumping with both feet on the head of the smaller kid who is lying on the ground."
Partly true, Dan, because that's not a risk the teacher runs. Here are a few he does run by intervening in a fight: getting his own ass kicked--perhaps fatally--by one or both of the combatants, not to mention one or more spectators; getting sued by the parents of any kid he touches for any reason; getting shot by parents, relatives or homies of any kid he touches (or later by the kid himself--or herself); losing his job because of whatever well-intended action he takes; losing his employability...well, you get the picture. These are all real-world risks, not paranoid fantasies.
I spent 8 years teaching HS in government schools, starting at the age of 41 in 1991--pre-Columbine and pre-a lot of other things. Even then, I vowed two things to myself before my first day: 1) That I would never intentionally touch a kid for ANY reason, and 2) That I would never intervene in a fight, no matter what. Whenever I came across a fight during those years, I would do my best to call all spectators away from the event. Naturally, my successes were limited, but I never suffered any of the consequences cataloged in my first paragraph. I left the field after 8 years having never intentionally touched a kid, a lot wiser, and none the worse for wear. And I would never go back, at least to the government schools.
@10, et al., it is perhaps proper to look for direct blame, and that is a good way to start, but your points reminded me of a story my girlfriend just told me last week.
She is a member of the Junior League and was listening to a presentation by a fellow member on childhood obesity. The woman went through the tremendous growth(sic) in the problem and cited the advent of fast food during the 1970s as the root of the cause. My girlfriend wondered aloud to her table, "What about women leaving the home and entering the workforce?" The other women agreed, and one of them brought it up to the speaker, who immediately became snippy and defensive.
"I am a working mother and putting food on the table is just one more thing I have to do," to paraphrase her. The women thought this was a politically correct and, therefore, false answer but full of information nonetheless.
Indeed guns and fists have not changed. But as some of the other comments point out, the children have.
When the parents stopped being parents to their children (rather than friends or other weirdness), and the families stopped being at least familiar communities where parents knew each other and each others kids, then all sorts of nonsense started happening. Cops breaking up normal fights, obscene gun violence in schools, wimpy boys, and aggressive girls are just symptoms of this real problem.
I don't know if movement feminism has hurt women, men, or children the worst.
now folks we have loads of integration. which brings other issues.
blacks in particular, and some wets, are larger as youths than regular americans. and more violent. and then they sometimes get held back, making them even larger than their classmates. this makes the literal head stomping a real possibility. not to mention theft and property damage. as well as homo rape (and teachers getting raped). not saying that stuff never happened before integration. but all that is more common now.
as are classroom and playground deaths. because the integratees dont have the common sense, upbringing or innate decency to leave their deadly weapons at home or in their ride.
if we wont control our borders and streets is it any coincidence that control of our schools has slipped out of hand.
about the 2nd amendment rights, the left doesnt want white people to have guns. and blacks and wets dont care if theri gun rights are yanked, because they spend a lot more time breaking the law anyway... what's one more broken law to them - they dont plan on growing up anyway.
Josh Cooney,
You are behind the times. The States at the insistence of the Fed have completely coopted 4H. Religion has been completely expunged and most projects are evaluated first for their political correctness. Only savvy leaders of small groups get what they want for their groups.
Treed by a black bear, stalked by a panther, charged by a mama sow, scared witless by a tree-top full of wild goats, run over by a deer, thrown into utter terror by a covey of quail, put to run by a "possessed" fox, challenged by a cotton-mouthed moccasin on more than one occasion, cast into the abyss by a cat squirrel: these are all tales, as true as well as tall, that a boy with his gun lived out and lived through. They are always in wont of a telling in the proper season: when the woods are white with dogwood blossoms, when wild azalea blooms or when the whippoorwill cries to its mate "Chip married the widow! or "Dick climbed the white oak!" or some time like that. Guns and boys go, or at least went, together for "high" adventure.
Edmund Burke said that cultures and civilizations had reached equilibrium through many generations and even centuries. And was a product of the Creator. To try and logically explain and comprehend this equilibrium is as useless as trying to comprehend the Creator. Progressives attempt just this and upset the equilibrium by their logical meddling. The problems that arise from this meddling can be summed up in the old cliché, the cure is worse than the disease. Since fanatics and zealots, driven by a fervent self-righteousness, view themselves as building a better world, they never see the ill effects of their actions as proof that their convictions were wrong. Instead, they see it as proof that further change is necessary. Burke envisioned our world long ago.
Dr. Roberts' bittersweet essay reminds me of an incident I wrote about a couple of years ago in which the ENTIRE town police force was mobilized to arrest our teenage neighbor, who had gotten into a fist-fight with a kid his own age.
We live in a town of about 8,000 souls in western Idaho -- yes, Idaho: the Gem State has succumbed to the blight of modernity, at least where the State's official campaign against unruly masculinity is concerned.
I'm in my 40s. While in high school on the other side of the state, I witnessed several episodes in which the faculty arranged for kids to have it out in a controlled environment, generally in the wrestling room. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, this wasn't considered abusive or even that unusual; today it would be fodder for an entire week of breathless, scandalized media coverage and a whole raft of lawsuits.
The apparatus of suppression that criminalizes adolescent male fistfights is an appendage of the same state that bombed Christian populations in the Balkans, wiped out entire neighborhoods in Baghdad, and incinerated the Branch Davidians. Obviously, the people running it see nothing wrong with the use of pitiless lethal violence -- as long as it's sanctioned by the State and consecrated to the State's greater glory.
This principle is underscored by the coda to the incident recounted above involving my next-door neighbor. He was able to arrange probation for the supposed crime of winning a street fight by volunteering to enlist in the Marines, so that he could go kill some hapless Iraqi trying to defend his home from the world's most powerful bully. Otherwise, as Dr. Roberts points out, my neighbor most likely would be saddled with a criminal record forever debarring him from the ownership of firearms.
This is Amazing, HILARIOUS, deeply ironic and true: There are some Teachers, esp. those from the welfare communities, who LOVE fights. They run to the fight, try to break it up, try to get scuffed up a little, THEN claim Disability for the longest time. Sit on their hiney watching TV and collect a full check. Oh, that aching neck! teachers swear it happens here in Texas.
It is nice to know that there are some who read Edmund Burke.
Also, it is nice to remember our youth, when we had something terribly lacking today--discipline by parents and not by heavy-handed police.
#21 by Will - the incident involving your unfortunate neighbor reminds me of the absurd hypocrisy of the state wonderfully described by Arlo Guthrie in his 1967 hit "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" wherein the main protagonist incredulously inquires of the masters at the govn't induction center; "I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug?"
How sad this Amerika has become.
@20, MAP: Excellent comment. James Burnham, author of Suicide of the West, would have definitely agreed with your observation, "Since fanatics and zealots, driven by a fervent self-righteousness, view themselves as building a better world, they never see the ill effects of their actions as proof that their convictions were wrong. Instead, they see it as proof that further change is necessary." He would have affirmed that this is the method by which these Liberal ideologues are self-killing the West.
Though I'm not sure if I agree with every comment here, I'd like to add that being unable to express your anger at a bully just makes it fester. And the handcuffs wouldn't help a lot either. And this is just a metaphor for all the other abuse we're expected to soak up - when it is almost as if by design we are supposed to correct the situation. But that is just not permitted most of the time.
It doesn't surprise me that nowadays there are so many atrocities - people are so wound up, with no way of working it out.
When I was in high school in the 70s, we all had pocketknives in our pockets, and the teachers knew and didn't care. I don't remember any knife attacks, even though there were fights. Nobody would ever have considered getting out his knife during a fight. Today a knife, even with a one-inch blade, gets a student expelled. And the chemistry experiments I did would bring a visit from the Department of Homeland Security. Sad, just sad.
In the mid 70's, I brought my pocket knife collection to show and tell.... a few months ago, I read IN THE LOCAL PAPER, a student was expelled for giving another kid an ASPIRIN under the "zero-tolerance" rule. Not sure which was more absurd, the actual rule or that it made the news.
I turned 6 in 1940 and I remember the loaded 16 Ga double beside the front door. I got my first BB gun at my 8th Xmas, and I bought my first .22/.410 over & under over the counter at Sears, Santa Monica at 14. We were brought up before TV, in reality. I've never had to point a weapon at anyone, though I obtained a CCW in my 50s.
It's not the same America.
Oh, I almost forgot; I was in an Explorer Scout unit that was sponsored by the Venice Division of the LAPD. Our major sport was shooting our own guns in the small pistol range in the basement, down the hall from the isolation cells. We had excellent training and close supervision. But, nobody asked how we got our guns to the station and how we carried them home covered in gunshot residue. I can't recall a single incident of any adverse nature. That was in the early 1950s; I don't think Venice is as calm today.
Dr Roberts story is part of the broader evolution of 'more govt' in our lives. In his days (and mine; I'm 73), matters were usually settled locally and without 'govt' (laws and police) involvement (intervention?). You might say we looked 'sideways' at friends local 'official (school, city)for our guidance, needs and limits. Now most people tend to look 'up' to the federal or state govt for financial and legal salvation, and these 'upper' govt orgs are certainly looking down at us. The DC folks have taken over (or control) many state functions because they can make money out of thin air, and we know 'he who has the gold, makes the rules'. Thus, your local personal relationships (reputation, support when in need, etc) mean less, and laws mean more. Social pressure to behave well means less than avoiding arrest. The hippie culture of 'do whatcha gotta do', and 'get used to it' are the basis for misconduct (rudeness, theft, violating rights of others). When confronted, a violator is more likely to say 'sue me or shutup' than be embarraseed (concerned about his reputation) and back off. Bad lessons trickle down from our new bosses and mentors in DC. Namely, if they can lie, invade and kill in other countries, why not us mere citizens locally?
It's all on my site at http://www.forward-usa.org.
Regards, Dave
I was certainly pleased to have had the opportunity to read Will Grigg twice tonight. First over at LewRockwell.com, then here in the comments section of Chronicles. Always poignant, most interesting, and very well-written. And always a pleasure. Pro Libertate!
When I was a young boy in school, I never took a gun to school. Well, not true. I had a .22 that was at home, less than a block away. I did take a Daisy BB gun to school as a "force multiplier" to our periodic rockfights. Our teachers finally stepped in to stop the nonsense before someone got really hurt.
I did have a Kamp King pocket knife that I always carried. Sometimes, I'd spend my recess time sitting under a tree whittling with the other boys. Of course, there was a bully, Dane, but one day, one of my friends finally had it out with him and he never bothered anyone after that.
Those were good days. I miss them.
The number one problem is Marxist government schooling. It teaches obedience, suspicion of each other, conformity, herd behavior (through peer pressure and bullying), acceptance of social "place", undermines parental traditions, values and teaching and dumbs down. Instead of actually educating kids they do the opposite and waste time on behaviorial training and drug, UN, "green" propaganda, and state worship. There is a reason the government crats want to extend the school year and begin "schooling" at ever younger ages. The most astounding thing is taht all this is proven and documented but people still send their children to be "socialized" by these "change agents". But that is because parents are now Marxist state worshippers without even knowing it.
(See anything written by John Taylor Gatto, Samuel Blumenfeld, Charlotte Iserbyt)
The previous poster was right on about 4-H. It is now a governmental outfit with change agents overseeing the groups. They demand kids jump through hoops to get points for "ethics" and "community service" while the crats in charge do all kinds of UN ethical stuff like demanding an extra $25 for each kid in "horse" 4-H, only the kids with horses. Some farm families have 5 or 6 kids and this is a real hardship. Supposedly it was to pay the wages of two new crats who do who knows what who knows where. Slimebags extorting from kids and families.
Re- #21
Hello, Mr. Grigg. It's good to see you posting comments here.
Let me begin by saying I am far from being a fundamentalist, but the fact of the situation is that this country began changing for the worse when religion and God were driven from the schools and from the politically correct public arena at large. I'm constantly amazed by the filth I hear and see portrayed on television now - things which would have been unthinkable back in the 50's or earlier 60's. Yes, I'm sure video games have a part in violence today, but I believe it all stems from the general moral decay in this country which began with the State sanctioned expungement of God and decency.
Another angle on Mr. Allen's take:
Individual acts of mass violence have always existed, and always will. In 1927 the schoolhouse in the small town of Bath, MI was blown up by the treasurer of the school district (http://daggy.name/tbsd/index.htm)
These events are the exception, not the rule. However, given the state of today's mainstream media, events like this are sensationalized and amplified - and they're happening in your living room. We're bombarded with images of the exception, to the point that we feel like they're the rule.
The message is clear: It happened there, it can happen in your town. Your children are not safe. Don't let them play outside, instead, plan their play around coordinated activities.
It's a program of fear, and it's fundamentally changing people's worldview. Turn off the TV, it's bad for your mental health. Let your kids play.
PCR: Great article. I too had to face a bully, away from junior high grounds, but I did recall another event that today would bring in DHS I'm sure. I made a stink bomb and set it off under the bleachers at a football game. It made a great clowd of very bad smelling smoke and I got a big laugh at watching the "parting of the waves" as it wafted up through the bleachers. It was a hoot and nobody got hurt. Pray for our country that men with common sense are raised up. I fear that those like us and Ron Paul who are old enough to remember, are becoming in short supply. Keep up the good work.
regards,
Phil
In the author's childhood, kids weren't being routinely chemically controlled with mind-altering psych drugs which carry FDA "black box" warnings about suicidal and homicidal tendencies, particularly among children.
http://ssristories.com/
This is only the tip of the iceberg. American medicine is waging a war on childhood, starting from birth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox
Roberts has it right: it's the american police state vs kids.
Used to buy my 22 bullets at Woolco and head out the road with my inexpensive but trusty Winchester model 190. One time a Sheriff's deputy pulled up and said "Hey boy whatcha shooting there" he looked at my gun, exclaimed it was a fine looking weapon and then proceeded to tell a hunting story from his boyhood. He then went on down the road with a parting "you be careful"
Also, In high school a demo group from the 82nd Air borne did a show for the student body in the gym. For there attention getter they opened up on the bleachers with a Browning belt fed machine gun full of blanks. Everyone was startled but no one became psychologically traumatized and as the last few spent cases clattered about the gym floor we all started laughing. Them days is gone.
@2: The "nutcases" come straight from the collegiate "education" departments -- which as PCR, Walter Williams and others have long noted, comprise the very bottom of the intellectual barrel. Add the poisons of affirmative action & feminism, and it's no wonder >90% of govt. school teachers & administrators are feeble-minded leftist loons.
@5: Today Alice Cooper would probably face conspiracy charges for singing "School's been blown to pieces!" (from "School's Out," 1973)
Today, the government tries to make everyone a felon. It is a form of power and control of the masses. The more Americans they can turn into felons, the less Americans with guns. It's a disaster waiting to happen, because, if the gov't succeeds, it will be the total undoing of the USA.
I remember as a child of about eight or nine standing in line at the bank. The man in front of me had a pistol on his hip. I think I was the only one who noticed. This was in the late 1940's. Try that now and see what would happen.
In high school, I learned the way of controlling a bully was to confront him first. And I was smaller than most of my classmates. The elementary school was just below the high school. During recess, the teachers (all women) would nestle together on the steps and gossip. The kids would be yelling, fighting and cussing. They would throw rocks at the high school students walking by. This was easily changed by hiring male teachers. They would play with the kids and control them. In Virginia today, most teachers are female. (So are most school bus drivers). Women are smart and compassionate but usually not as good at disciplineas men.
It is not simply that men are encouraged to act like litte boys or even women. It is that fights break out less often these days, but when they do, people are much quicker to go to a weapon. There is quite a lot at stake. People who do know how to defend themselves were generally taught self-defense of the Oriental style by a Tae-Kwan-Do, an art made to teach one how to kill an assailant with bare hands and one that ought to be confined to confrontations with street felons.
Why is this? There are probably many reasons, but one of them is surely the total atomisation of American society has made it impossible to trust anyone, as there is no telling whether or how he will be held accountable or how far he will go. The classic town bully could only get away with so much, of course; the wimpy skinny guy did not, in all probability, actually fear for his life so far as such a confrontation was concerned. These days, if a man threatens me in most parts of the United States, I have no idea where he comes from, whom he knows or how far he will go.
Moreover, he may well be the type to make a threat and then, when I thwart him, call the police!
Yes, the government would love to control us all from the cradle to the grave, but it is also true that the atomization and the vicious crime wave that followed throughout the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's preceded the zero-tolerance enforcement. We did not like the results, but we asked for a magic solution instead of fixing our families and our parishes and we got what we wanted, and frankly deserved.
Mr. Roberts writes cogently of our society's present state of chaos and loss of traditional common sense about the nature of boys. This state is the end product of well thought out and carefully crafted changes in masculinity and feminity expectations designed to destroy the male/female balance of humanity to create a never before existing entity, sterile unisex grunts fit to serve a class of self deemed superiors.
Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, writes about sensitivity training, "Kurt Lewin is credited with being the 'father' of sensitivity training in the United States....he launched a host of well-funded studies that eventually led to the first American-based high-stress, spirit-breaking, encounter-style, behavior modification facility, the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in Bethel, Maine. The NTL later became formally aligned with the National Education Association (NEA). This and Lewin's 'sensitivity training' changed America's educational system and civil society forever, as acceptance of 'encounter' techniques by supposed bastions of the education establishment like the NEA, the Education Department, and even many churches served as further incentive to produce a new kind of child of the future, in which the rights of the child, as set forth in the famous document by the United Nations, superseded the rights of the parent and other adults. These rights, of course, included sexual and other 'liberation' that pushed children into adult roles before they were ready and without the maturity or guidance to assume such roles."
It all ties together and results in these mighty strange breakdowns of common sense in the most normal of daily encounters. Those of us old enough to remember how different our youths were should not scratch our heads in wonder about the differences we see in today's young people, we should rather research and get to the bottom of the whys behind them. The materials are widely available and if we love anyone other than ourselves we'd better be willing to turn off our TVs and start thinking how we can make ammends for our leaving our children and grandchildren in the hands of powers who love them not.
Wow, this brings back memories. Both painful and pleasant.
We too left our houses in Western Pa. with out guns on our shoulders.
We also fished and trapped, had apple, tomato and snowball battles.
We often "met at the flagpole" and there was no felonious behavior, just dukes. I came from a poorer neighborhood but loved to read and always had my nose in a book. You can imagine how that worked out. Point being, it did work out, eventually.. We had virtually no crime in our poorer neighborhood, because that's what it was, a neighborhood. We didn't know or care who our Congressman was and Washington was some far away place where the President lived and that was also great.
Sure do miss America.
One last thing which still holds true. On opening day of deer season, in Pa., there are ONE MILLION men and women in those woods armed with high powered rifles. One state.
Thanks
Correction: my 24 was supposed to be addressed to MAP @ 19 vice 20.
Many interesting comments, and most must contain at least a germ of insight. I am the mother of (now grown) sons, and someone who grew up in the middle of the last century in a rural and rough-ish community herself. I want to also point urgently to the brutalization of young people that has bled out into our communities because of the drug war. Young men are criminalized and brutalized, and are in and out of detention facilities. Families are fragmented, and boys have many fewer models of male responsibility or right conduct by upright men. This leaking of violence and cruelty into society affects us all, not just the individuals who are caught directly in the net. The drug war in this sense is a war on us all.
Great article. In reading the commentary, it seems unanimous that we're not looking at the same country that existed thirty or more years ago.
I've got another one for you to consider, if you're still reading this far down the string. I grew up in northeast Ohio, but have been living in the Northwest (Montana, Washington, Oregon)since 1973. Sometimes when I encounter things that seem really different, I'm not sure if it's time or place. But something happened a few years ago that convinced me it's time, primarily. My wife and I visited my sister for four weeks over the Christmas-New Year's holidays. In that part of the country, that time of year, it snows several times a week. Now this is where I have a point of reference. I grew up just a few miles from where my sister now lives. It would not be possible 40 years ago to have a snowfall remain fresh and pristine for more than, oh, about two and a half minutes before it was totally tracked up by kids out playing. I watched in amazement as snowfall after snowfall came, and the snow remained untracked anywhere outside of driveways and strip malls. Absolutely no one but this old fogey walked outside in the snow. No one shoveled any sidewalks--ever. I NEVER, in four whole weeks, saw any kids outside of stores and cars. The whole scene was so bizarre, words fail to express my dumbfoundment. I know there are kids there--maybe not 2.6 per household, but a considerable number. I was truly shaken by this episode. And I think there is more than a casual (or is it causal?:-)) link between the two phenomena, that of our abhorrence of childish violence and the seclusion of our children.
Theodore Van Oosbree, Comment #10, made a very important point: "My take on this trend is that it is a part of an attempt to criminalize self-defense in general (as has been done in Great Britain)."
Mr. Roberts,
I am of your generation and persuasion.
Thank you for your good articles, Sir. And thanks to Lew Rockwell for distributing many of them.
Rev. James Rogers,
Texas