How would you answer a younger person if they asked you why we all can’t get along today? We can retrace history, but their view is somewhat limited unless a younger person has lived history. They don’t transfer yesterday’s lessons of history to today’s applications. Instead, they accept the politician, journalist, and college prof’s ideology and place those values on generations from 200 years ago.
They know not what they do.
If younger people lived and understood history, they wouldn’t be tearing down historical landmarks or disowning their family and friends. They wouldn’t demand that you agree with their politics or be banished from the public square. Instead, they would look into primary historical sources, not the latest rag of the day. Millennials would study an authentic body of knowledge for a degree rather than an agenda-driven professor’s woke curriculum.
If young people understood history, they would treasure the wisdom of the elderly, not run to the latest revolutionary beliefs. They would dig to find real news, not fake news. Young people would not adopt the collective but would embrace rugged individualism as their forefathers did. They would consider those who fought and died for the freedoms they enjoy and not destroy the graves where our past heroes rest.
How can we all get along when half the country no longer embraces a shared history and hates their country? When patriotism is passe,’ American traditions and values are swept aside for those of failed ideologies.
When parents of younger people don’t practice delayed gratification, the children grow up to want the path of instant now. They look to the government to give them what took years to obtain in prior generations. When youth say “down is up” and “up is down” and “what is wrong is now right,” they develop subjective truth. We are guilty if we go along with “personal truth” over what is real. Their need to “feel good” instead of embracing maturity and dealing with life’s hard stuff is incentivized when we coddle, or worse, ignore their immaturity.
All of us just can’t get along unless we revisit afresh the Golden Rule, Constitutional principles, the two Greatest Commandments, and real history (from the perspective and literature of those who lived it). To demand, riot, and protest to get a perfect utopia doesn’t work. Tantrums never do. The gate to life is narrow, and the way that leads to it is hard. There is no easier, softer way this side of eternity. Our forefathers knew that and took the narrow road, as imperfect as they were. We would be wise to do the same.
This is Common Sense Civics and Citizenship. ??
