Some Things to Think About
Morally responsible people sacrifice in the present to invest in the future. Irresponsible people impoverish the future to enjoy more of the present. Which describes the United States today?
Voting decides nothing. It does not prove that the people rule. It merely makes a selection of which politicians will get the opportunity to pursue their self-serving agenda.
The American War of Independence and the conquest of the nearly empty North American continent to create the United States was once celebrated as one of the great heroic achievements of history. It is now being taught as a crime by those enjoying its benefits. Perhaps this is not surprising since the descendants of those heroic Americans have long been outnumbered by those who came later.
I have lately been reading World War II memoirs. Men like Churchill and De Gaulle and even to some extent Eisenhower were literate and knew much history. They were able to write of the huge conflict with understanding of the motives and actions of men and governments in historical context. Can anyone imagine Bill Clinton, the two Bushes, or Obama doing the same, of writing anything other than superficial platitudes?
People have a genuine desire to know the truth, but it has a lower priority than other desires.
We should never underestimate the power of pure inertia in public affairs. It is a primary characteristic of bureaucracies and cowardly politicians unwilling to upset their apple carts.
I am so old I can remember when you could get a large soft drink for a nickel, a big ice cream cone for a dime, and a hot dog or grilled cheese sandwich for 20 cents. A kid could get into the movies on Saturday for 9 cents and a gallon of gas was about 35 cents. A youngster who got one toy and a bag of fruit, nuts, and candy for Christmas was quite pleased and one 10 cent comic book could keep you happy all day. Most boys had a .22 rifle and could shoot by the time they were 10 or 11. And there was NO TELEVISION.
Entries(RSS)
Morally responsible people sacrifice in the present to invest in the future. Irresponsible people impoverish the future to enjoy more of the present. Which describes the United States today? (end quote)
iT'S not about that, now, though it's more true than not.
You, i'm sorry to say, aggravate me now. You're a bit obstinate. Lead us Out - can you? I don't like losing for no reason. Can't you catch up to real time, past intact. If not, and you 'really' cared for others, wouldn't you say so?
But to whom? You have no people. You're a non-existent, in reality, pseudo-abstraction, ... -?- I'll accept your sword now [yet] again. How often must we go through this exercise? ... Oh, the wise, old owl Pose protects you, even with your own?
I'd just shut-up then...: the wise, old owl in the oak took note; the more he heard, the less he spoke. ... you're boring, not in a 'good' way. Tom's borderline, I think he's wondering which way to 'go'.
You guys are so bogusly preciousTH you can't even take this impersonally and just start to grapple and wrestle back, you take yourselves 'too' seriously...
...
It 'means' nada... can you take a punch... biTHch? ... not yet? ... Clyde? oh, I know you've got to be 'respectable' for the possums. ... -?- tickle-tic kle, mama's boy. That's these times, boy, old boy. ... What now? ... Get back, get back to where you once belonged.
Another insightful post, Dr. Wilson.
I particularly appreciate your point about previous leaders such as Churchill and DeGaulle; whatever one's opinions of them as political leaders, they were men of learning and erudition. Their works are worth reading not only because they grasp history but also because they can compose coherent and readable prose.
I cannot imagine anyone even wanting to wade through anything written by our recent presidents - platitudes, banalities and warmed-over PC talking points wrapped inside turgid and illogical text.
Some of the same comparisons, I would suggest, apply to military leaders; going back to the Civil War generals and up through WWII, we were blessed with men who were well-educated and well-read and thus could produce valuable works. That is certainly not the case with today's retired warriors.
Off your medication?
Dr.Wilson, Great post as usual. Where would you rate Gen. Grant's autobiography? I understand your obvious reservations on it from a Southern perspective but in terms of his understanding of history and offering a Northern perspective of the war how would you rate it?
For Obama, fortunately, the staged fraud will have more than enough willing liars to write his hagiographies. No need to trouble Bill Ayres for an encore. To follow up on the above comment,whatever one thinks of the WBTS Grant's autobiography is uncommonly well-written. I would also recommend Hoover's recently released writing on FDR's march to war and more war.
ASM, It is generally understood, I think, that Grant's memoirs were ghost-writteen by Mark Twain. I have read only parts. So far as I can say anything, it seems a straightforward soldierly narrative. Doubtless omitting much that would make himself and his side look bad.
Yurick. Why don't you get a job?
Taylor. We are yet to here anything from you other than personal insult. Never a rational argument. You are obviously a spiteful little twit who should be removed from this forum.
Certainly Twain assisted as friend and editor but "ghost writer", I think overstates. Grant was very fair and generous in his assessment of the South's military performance and courage even if he ignored or downplayed events that may have made him seen in a less positive light. That's common it seems to every autobiography.
I think Mr. Taylor's insult was directed not at Dr. Wilson but at the strange Mr. Yurick. I don't remember seeing Taylor's name before; perhaps he has attacked less deserving targets in the past.
I was just told yesterday by a Indian(with a dot not feather) the Old South was uncivilized and it deserved being beaten around the head. It is depressing to stand on land once part of a wilderness, tamed by the very people a third world immigrant now vilifies for having fought for self determination. The Sea people have arrived in force and we are going the way of the Hittites.
I am dissapointed to find a few low brow social media types peruse this site.
Bryan Fox
I've relegated Michael Yurine to the comment blacklist, yet left his comment up, so others who join this discussion will see what y'all are referring to. He's snuck in several times before, so I can't guarantee we've SEen the laST of hEEM.
Dear Mr. Taylor, I apologise for my hasty misunderstanding. I assumed the comment was directed at me rather than Yurick.
Of the anti-virtues which thrive in the anti-culture in which we are embedded and which, regrettably, is embedded in us, the most prevalent is the inability to postpone gratification. It leads us to fornicate rather than marry; to go into debt in order to consume; to vote for or support the one who promises us the most the quickest - true of the "welfare mom," the corporate CEO looking for opportunities of graft and corruption among the plethora of internal improvement projects,or the "farmer" looking for cheap loans, grants and land-bank considerations. The list could,of course, go on.
I am a descendent of those Americans who spilled out of the palisades of Jamestown, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine and took the fragile culture of the West into the new idiom of the American wilderness with their Bibles, their guns, their axes and their plows; yet, a few years ago, when I inquired of an attorney whether or not I should seek relief before a court on a certain matter he said that since I was a male, a Southerner and a Christian that I was neither of an entitled class nor of a protected class. He suggested, given my pedigree, that there might even be a considerable bounty out on me. Suffice it to say, he was recommending not going to court.
I hold to a fragile hope that it matters for whom I vote for the office of sheriff; beyond that, I know that it does not matter. Even the office of sheriff is, however, questionable. Two years ago, during a election, I contemplated voting against the incumbent. His opponent talked a good conservative line and even visited my house, on a Friday, and drank coffee with me as we discussed the issues of the election as they related to the office which he was seeking. I was impressed. The next day, I was among some compatriots manning a booth at a festival beset with scores of political candidates campaigning among the T-shirts and candy. The opponent, to whom I had given fellowship the day before was coming down the line of booths on both sides of the road, glad handing; however, when he got to our booth, he passed us without acknowledging that we, the four of us,existed. His less than benign neglect spontaneously registered with all four of us. A few minutes later, the incumbent, a "person of color," descended from the Cane River French and one of the bond servants, came by. He shook our hands, bought a T-shirt with a Bonnie Blue Flag on it, and said that he hoped to see us again in the Christmas parade, noting that our heritage group was an important part of the community which he protected. Now, the four of us knew and know politicking and how disingenuous the most meaningful phrases can be; yet, all of us switched our allegiance, as far as our vote would go, that day. I still hold out hope for the office of sheriff.
I, too, remember a nickle coke or cold drink, generic for any soft drink. Long before Barnes and Noble put in their coffee shops in which one can read without buying, Tiley and Montgomery Grocery in Pollock allowed us boys (Girls were never there!) to sit in front of the funny-book stand and read funny books as long as we were buying cokes and candy. We consumed coke, candy and Sgt. Rock with his Easy Company in the funny books. On Saturdays, we would become Sgt. Rock and Easy Company and play war, up to and including, I hate to admit, BB guns. The commons is now dead, gone with the wind; but it was still alive, really alive,when I was a boy. With our .410's and .22's, along with Bowie knives and machetes, we hunted, we fished and we roamed the creeks. We collected beer cans, threw them in the creek and sank them with guns and when there were no guns, with rocks, singing Johnny Horton's "Sink the Bismark." We had heard that armadillos could hold their breath under water and that they would walk on the bottom of a creek. One day, again sinking the Bismark, we say a young armadillo near the creek. We ran it down and caught it and ceremoniously threw it into the creek into the deepest hole we knew of. We waited not unlike Brer Fox waiting after he had tossed Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Well, about ten minutes later and about thirty yards down the creek, the armadillo emerged like a German U-Boot breaking the surface and waddled into the brush. The critter was lucky that on that day we had no guns; we would have fired on that "German submarine." We proved as far as we were concerned that armadillos do hold their breath and do walk on the bottom of creeks. With the new trespass laws, boys cannot get to creeks. Such are the times.
Dear Webmaster--Thank you. Mr. Yurick is as close to intolerable as anyone I've run across in the blogosphere and apparently incapable of human language.
Dear Dr. Wilson--I did not know that you believe Mark Twain ghosted Grant's memoirs. Nor had I heard or read that belief expressed forcibly by anyone else. I haven't read Grant's memoirs, I admit, largely out of skepticism of their truthfulness and also that their high reputation as good writing flew in the face of the pedestrian prose of the fragments of Grant's orders and personal communications I'd run across in my paltry adolescent reading about the war.
I especially appreciated your last paragraph in this posting. You are of an age with my sister, who is a couple of leap years my senior (I and my siblings were born in successive leap years--not by design, my parents stoutly maintained). In short, you're not that much my elder. Yet the only one of your litany of child-appealing commodities that I recall as you recall them is the ten-cent comic book. (You don't mention the five-cent candy bar, let alone the one that delighted me, Three Musketeers, whose ad-slogan was "Twice as much for a nickel!") Everything else you mention I remember as costing a fifth to twice as much. To me, the discrepancy between our recollections indicates how completely World War II destroyed what was left of pre-modernity.
Thank you sir,I am afraid that a long day at work,plus a wirlwind visit from my Grandchildren left me little patience to suffer fools. I enjoy your posts and greatly admire your stalwart defense of the Southland from your post we share some of the same memories and expierences
That is too bad. I was looking forward to a few more chuckles today.
Mr. Peters - in a post to another thread I noted that a number of elected Sheriffs representing all 24 members of the Maryland Sheriff's Association testified in favor of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Their testimony can be found on Youtube if you Google Maryland Sheriffs Testify in opposition to SB281 / HB294 "Gun Control Legislation." The Maryland FOP also are opposed to the gun control measures. Rank and file law enforcement officers side with the citizens in keeping their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution.
To see the video, you may need to go to Youtube.com and search for: MD Sheriffs testify on HB294.
Far be it for me to interrupt this conversation, but I am wondering if things are amiss there in Rockford? First, some time ago Fleming loses his Daily Mail column, and activity on the site slows to a crawl compared to what it was perhaps 2 years ago - then I come on the site this evening to see that 'Chronicles Unbound' had its final show.
Though I didnt notice anything wrong in the latest Chronicles, it makes me concerned about your publication and this web site. Bad things to come?
Mr. Peters,
That there may be a "bounty out on [you]" verily proves how valuable you and your example are to us members of the remnant; we who remember what was good in America and resist its further destruction.
"Boys cannot get to creeks."
I don't believe I've heard sadder words since my mother left us, two months shy of her hundredth birthday, in 2007.
@DM, I can see why you might reach that conclusion, but rest assured, nothing could be further from the truth. We are just trying to make the best use of our time and resources, which means focusing on our primary objective: Chronicles. We enjoyed doing the show, but it required too much time for three of us to juggle. We made a commitment for one year, and we decided to end the show. The Daily Mail's "Right Minds" section simply downsized, which affected many columnists, not just Dr. Fleming. As for the website, you may recall that we did extensive survey work a while back. Our goal with the site has always been to promote Chronicles and convert website readers into subscribers. We were a little disheartened to discover that many—a vast majority of—folks were happy to read the website for free and ignore the magazine. In fact many free-riders requested, even demanded that we give them the entire magazine for free online. The good news is that we have major, game-changing things in the works with regard to the site. I can't share the details yet, but in the months to come we shall see some very exciting things at chroniclesmagazine.org.
Although I don't always agree with Dr. Wilson, I buy his books and encourage others to read him. I'm finishing "Forgotten Conservatives" and will pass it on to my son who is increasingly dissatisfied with the monotony of popular commentary. Whatever happened to the rebellious spirit in youth ? Men as pilloried as Wilson and his fellow paleo-cons by the officially approved "scholars" should attract their consideration. But I'm concerned that young Americans just swallow the official lies.
Alright, thats a bit reassuring, though as I have said to Fleming in the past, I would recommend posting more pieces that fire up the passionate discussions that this website used to have more of. Traffic used to be higher when you guys had these, and some of them were very memorable. There is no need to detract from the magazine to do this; you could have original pieces on the website that are internet-only.
Dear Webmaster,
I don't know – waiting till the next day to see if any one commented on my comment is already a pretty exciting game for me.
The term "game-changer/ing" usually connotes a modification of status and power relationships. If the Cubs get a .300 hitting, 50 steals, golden glove leadoff hitter and a Hoyt Wilhelm quality closer, it means they can be taken seriously as a professional baseball team and as a possible World Series contender (although of course, Cubs being Cubs, a way will be found to avoid actually winning it.) In the realm of webzines, game-changing sounds like making it a pay-to-pontificate site, as is, e.g., Foreign Policy; or worse – much worse – more social media oriented.
Up with the old! Down with the new!
Please Mr. Jacoby. If the Cubs become series contenders, my cousin, who shares a first name with Dr. Wilson, will become insufferable. We had quite the "battles" growing up because I was a Milwaukee Braves fan. (He is a Bears fan and I am a Packers fan, too.) In addition, he works crowd-control for Cubs home games; I'm not sure he would be up to the task if the fan base was following a series contender! He might lose a job that he really likes.
If I have to choose, my heart tends to follow either the Buffalo Bills and Yankees or the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins. And don't hate: if you had grown up in the Empire State and spent the better part of your childhood dreaming of living under palm trees before you eventually did, you would be in the same boat.
But the dirty truth is that, whether your team is the Yankees or the Indians, and whether the star players went to USC, to UM or to CU, the whole shabang illustrates another Great American Oxymoron of the types spelled out by Dr. Wilson back in 2008 (educational / equality; ruling / majority; Fox / News), and it is: professional / sport.
The problem today is not just that boys can't get to creeks, which is bad enough, but that even if they could you have to worry about boys traveling off into the woods alone, period. My dad ranged near and far with his pack of buddies in the woods around Gardendale, AL, in a way that I expect was close to what Dr. Peters describes. Boys who trek into the woods today, though, are hard pressed to find many friends to go with them (at least in my personal, limited experience) and are in danger of running into any handful of dangers like hidden Meth labs or local pedophiles that weren't nearly as prevalent back in the day. Where I live (and I think this is true in many other places), there simply is no community. I don't know most of the folks who live around us and they don't know me. There is no town center, no community spirit - nothing. Most folks keep to themselves and even the ones with kids never have time because they're busy carting the kids off to some practice or meeting of some sort. People know other people primarily through shared events and not through where they live. This is what communities are that are born after the advent of cars, Walmart, and Facebook, I guess. Perhaps everyone who lives around here is a good egg, but I have no way of knowing and presume to be cautious, perhaps too much so, when it comes to where I let my boys roam.
And in a world where boys are getting suspended from school for wearing t-shirts with guns or shaping pop tarts into guns - I think a social worker would cart my carcass off to jail if I let my boys roam around unsupervised with a BB gun let alone a .22. I have given the oldest a slingshot to practice with - but his muscles haven't developed enough yet to get any real damage out of it.
At least we have fun all together whenever we get the chance. But even I don't wander too far into unknown territory without being prepared.
And I will say the one blessing of growing up in a military family is that moving to a new home every 3 years prevented me from ever becoming attached to any professional sports team. That's at least one monkey I haven't had to get off my back. I'm not anti-sports, but I just can't get over how much time and energy folks at work spend in discussing games played by a bunch of pampered and immoral millionaires. Even the women talk football now. Good grief.
Webmaster,
This is not really here nor there, but I thought I would mention that when I was sitting in a Chick-Fil-A the other day I tried to use their free wifi to check the Chronicles website. It was banned from access because it is a "known website with hateful content." While I'm sure it was the choice of the webservice that Chick-Fil-A uses (Norton web security or some such) and not the restaurant itself I thought it noteworthy, especially after all of the pro-Chick-Fil-A commentary Chronicles produced a few months back during the Chicago flap and subsequent and ill-named "buycott."
Mr Cornell, my mother-in-law (now deceased) and her friends would roam the woods around Waukegan, Ill. where she grew up with their .22 rifles. I have her old rifle in my gun safe. It was made before serial numbers were required. I didn't have a rifle, but I did have a bow and would roam the sand dunes on the shore of lake Michigan looking for small game. Never shot anything, though.
I lived on the southwest edge of Kenosha, Wis. growing up. No woods around, but there were a lot of farm fields and horse pastures. My friends and I used to steal tomatoes and corn at times, but never vadalized crops. We would also bring carrots, apples, or sugar cubes when we went to see the horses. The old Northshore train line ran near my house and we would take long hikes exploring the small creek that ran parallel to the tracks. A favorite pass-time was catching garter snakes. We once had my sandbox filled with about 100 of them. The girls stayed away because they feared we would put them in the sandbox.
For MOSES Nicholas: recently I read somewhere that people who followed a favorite sports team had fewer health issues than people who didn't. I agree that you should not be a fanatic, but there are worse things to be than a fan. Personally, I tend to follow sports that I played in my youth and follow teams that I grew up with. I was a three-sport jock (football, wrestling, and track) in high school and played Babe Ruth league baseball in the summer. (I once tried out for the Pittsburgh Pirates who had a farm team in Kenosha.) Kenosha has the oldest velodrome in the U.S. and had bicycle races that we all watched every Tuesday night in the summer. I still follow professional bike racing. I understand that drugs have contaminated all professional sports.
In my mis-spent youth, I was also a competitive weightlifter. I trained with one of the best U.S. weightlifters for about six-months when I was stationed in Newport, RI. I got some coaching from one of the best coaches in the country at the time. My friend was eventually disqualified for drug use after winning a silver medal in the Olympics. I am sure most, if not all, of the weightlifters were using drugs. One year, I managed to win my weightclass in the Maryland/South Atlantic Association of the AAU championships, where the competition was lower-caliber, without taking any performance enhancing drugs.
Mr. Van Saint: at no point did I denigrate those who follow a favorite sports team, nor would I. Nevertheless, I doubt you'll dispute me if I posit that the health benefits you have reaped from each hour of your laudably rich participation in sport have far exceeded those you may have reaped from each hour of watching or reading about a sport team. I remain firm in my conviction that professionalism is incompatible with sportsmanship and that the world would be far better off without pro teams. If I don't begrudge those who look forward to a few minutes with "The Home Team" on a regular basis, I nevertheless think it good to remind ourselves from time what the "pro" apparatus serves. (It is definitely not God; it is the other master.)
I played Association Football ("soccer") in high school, in the American Midwest. The tiny private school I attended did not have an American football team, but one still felt to a surprisingly high degree that highly unfortunate false dichotomy so pervasive in the Midwest: that males must be either wimpy nerds or dumb jocks. Despite the academic and religious instruction at our school, I know the absence of football was a major turn-off for a number of boys (and a number of girls who wanted to cheer for them) whose families would otherwise have been interested in enrolling them.
The problem with professional and, in America, collegiate sports is that they turn sport into an artisan specialty in which singular, precise talent is the only quality necessary in order to play. Accordingly, tremendous time and effort must be put into training from a very early age, and adolescent males who are academically gifted are often discouraged from participating in sports because the time and energy needed to compete with the über-specialists for playing time would destroy their grades and their chances of a bright future. Sport, something which should be very important in the education of a young man, is too often relegated to the lower half of the bell curve, and it's a vicious circle that's only gotten more vicious in the last few decades as higher education costs have spiraled upwards and professional sports have become even more commercialized.
Mr. Cornell,
There are two separate problems: that children can barely go anywhere alone for fear of the evil that is loose upon the land nowadays; and that so many of the natural places that they would want to go to are now private or government property and hence off limits. This restriction is antecedent to and therefore more fundamental than the dangers from the bad actors out there. Most likely, it was the takeover by government and absentee private owners, creating badlands where once there were good lands, that drew in these types in the first place. If the meth labs, perverts, etc., decamped we would still be locked out by trespass law, another example of tyranny for the law abiding and anarchy for criminals.
I've long been outraged at the first condition, but the second, what Mr. Peters calls the loss or enclosure of the commons, still takes me by surprise now and then. The moral collapse unfolded in the media spotlight; the loss of free spaces, the taking away of our natural heritage, was mostly hidden to the vast majority of us who live in urban and suburban places. That's why the revelation that boys can no longer commune with these secretive and like minded little bodies of water – for creeks are but rivers in their boyhood – that they used to come to in a spirit of kinship, to nourish their spirits, cast my spirits down.
I'm no Saint, but I agree with you MOSES Nicholas in almost all that you have said. (I know that you have previously commented on your name, but I cannot remember what you said. Please forgive me for using your full name as written; no insult is intended.)
In my youth, the only training I received was from playing sports with my friends, until I got to high school, a Catholic one. I learned to play football well enough to get a "free" college education, although I could have gotten the education without playing football. (I was recruited by and attended the Naval Academy, graduating in the top third of my class. I was on the Dean's List and the Superintendent's List for high academic performance while playing football. My decision to go to the Naval Academy started me on the path to where I am today, a relatively good spot, happily married for almost 44 years now, with my wife and I able to afford a comfortable lifestyle and pursue our interests while helping our children when needed.)
I agree with you that tremendous time and effort is being devoted to training by some in order to be competitive in sports. I don't know what we can do about that. I think there are many things worse than professional sports, but I agree that we would be better off without them.
We should provide everyone with more opprtunities to engage in sports for recreation and enjoyment, or do we already do that? For a number of years I was a coach for various youth sports that stressed participation of all skill levels. I know there are a number of night leagues for various sports where I live. I remember that my aunt and her son bowled in amateur leagues and I believe that this sport is still available today. I think there are oportunities for sports for sports sake for those who are interested.
I have to admit that I regret that I did not devote some time to learning to play a musical instrument when I was young. I don't know if I am able to do that now, but I might give it a try. My wife plays the piano. (We provided piano lessons for our children but they didn't pursue it very far. My sister's son, not an athlete, is an award-winning organist who teaches music. His wife is a voice coach.)
Mr. Jacobi,
We here in Louisiana lost the commons in the seventies with a rewriting of the Constitution and the subsequent property and tort laws which, among other things, outlawed boys, feral pigs and wild cows from the woods and creeks of Louisiana. Once we were free to grab our guns and walk and explore for miles across scores of property lines; now to step off the public right of way of a road is to trespass. With our mother's milk, we learned not to over hunt or over forage the commons and to respect the property on which we were guests. For generations, kids camped, swam and fished in Dean's Hole just off Hwy 8. Sometimes we shared it, very carefully, with a herd of feral pigs wandering through; they kept trails on the creeks which we boys used as our paths to adventure; now, the old hole is fenced, overgrown and off limits. No more boys to clean it out each spring; no more hogs to wallow out the sand; even the catfish who jealously maintained the hole during the winter but fled our set hooks in April and our noise in the summer cannot get up the creek from the river anymore; for further down stream the creek has been dammed and perhaps damned with a pumping station for the thirty folks in the cities much further south.
Mr. van Sant,
It sounds as if your qualifications extended beyond your simple athletic abilities.
I am proof that any clown can make it through our glorious alma mater.
Certain Senators are proof that any idiot can, , ,
Mr. Van Sant,
Was that Navy coach by any chance named Frank Masters? He retired as a Master Chief after a career that included a tour in the brown water navy in Viet Nam and as the first fitness coach for the Seals. When I trained with him he was in his seventies and there was no keeping up with him in crunches, pushups, and chinups. He had been a world record holder in his weight for the press.
May I suggest an analysis of our contemporary circumstances? Those who settled this land, and sacrificed for the future did so because of living in a different environment than we find ourselves. They were part of a group or tribe, if you will, who were engaged together in "forging a new nation." Being together their satisfaction came, not from consuming, but from building-building together. Today we are not together. We live as individuals with no concern for anyone not a friend or family member, and often not even for them. As such, we have no contract with the future, or with those who will live in it. So we have no compunction about spending their income on ourselves. Though some might argue that many families remain conscious of their heirs, and the difficulty they will face, too few have the economic understanding that enables them to see the damage they are agreeing to do for their present benefit. If they were living together as a group, as once was the case, there would be present one or more wise elders who would educate them and ensure the correct course for the whole group. Tradition would ensure he or she would be respected, unlike today.
Mr. Van Sant (sorry about misspelling your name): thank you for your thoughts. Regarding the question of "what is the solution?" I think we need to go after the NCAA. It is college sports that provoke the spectacle of overly-competitive high school sports, and "college sports teams" as part of a major league bring absolutely nothing to the schools in question except cash, which given the admonitions of Our Lord isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Besides, as we all know, universities are already wallowing in cash from overpriced tuition - and squandering it on luxury amenities for resident students and Gender Studies departments.
True, one can play sport for sport's sake. But in a small town, what adolescent male who's interested in football is able to do anything except try out for the school team? And given the social climbing associated with Middle America's high school sports complex, what incentive does he have to try anything else?
(Since you asked, by the way, "Moses" is my surname. Over here there is a tendency to put the surname in all-caps so that it's less ambiguous in situations in which the last name comes first, but that seems to cause confusion in cross-border situations when I'm too lazy to change the habit.)
Mr. Peters,
You could almost have ended your sentence with ... "outlawed boys..." . In fact, at first glance, I thought that's what you had done. To take away so much, so great a part of boyhood.... Well, our whole population is being replaced, the definitions of man, woman, marriage, and family are being revamped, so of course boys and boyhood had to redesigned to fit the new mold. Add in the new turbo-charged tort laws, an insidious device for turning neighbor against neighbor, and here we are.
Thank you for the clarification about your name Mr. Nicholas. I realized right away when playing for Navy that college football was big business. That is why I had no regrets when I stopped playing after my sophomore year due to a pinched nerve in my neck. [That pinched nerve still bothers me and I am about to start some physical therapy in order to avoid surgery. My right knee (football) and shoulder (wrestling) often remind me of my high school days. My bad back is probably due to my weightlifting days. Fortunately, I never suffered a concussion, largely due to the coaching I received in high school.] My high school coaches were teachers first and coaches second. My old high school now calls itself a "Christian Academy." After noticing that it allows girls on the wrestling team, I left a note on its website suggesting that they should call itself a "Secular Academy."
Dom - all of the "notable" alumni that I can think of, with the exception of Adm James Bond Stockdale, who I met after one of his talks at the Academy, have been a disappointment. I stopped wearing my class ring after they admitted women to the academies. I met some of those women when my wife and I sponsored the sons of some of my classmates during their time at the academy. My wife and I, and especially our daughters, were struck by how unfeminine those women were.
Oops. And then I didn't read what you said about your name correctly, Mr. Moses. Sorry. I must be getting too old for this. I'm totally confused.
In the March 18 issue of Fortune, Nina Easton notes that Roger L. Martin, dean of the University of Totonto's Rotman School of Management, proposes using Professional Footbal as a model for capitalism. Martin believes that businesses should focus on products and customers like the NFL focuses on winners and losers.