In an interesting coincidence, Dean Esmay is blogging about the banning of 'Huckleberry Finn', the socialist agenda of Gramsci and the overmedication of boys. I think the three are related and they as indicators of a certain amount of flabby flatulence in our society, not to mention groupthink.
Over at the YMCA there's a very healthy girl's basketball league. Every weekend, the gym is chockablock with female adolescents whisking back and forth. They run their little plays and pass the ball as best they can in the gym under long banners with the words 'Respect', 'Citizenship', 'Fairness', 'Trustworthiness', 'Responsibility' and 'Caring' ak the six pillars of character. Or rather I should say The Six Pillars. As any parent in a modern suburb must know, the Six Pillars are the copyrighted brainchild of the Character Counts organization, one of those stupendous civic organizations deToqueville admired of Americans.
Over at our local elementary school, there are no such banners. You see, since they are members of Character Counts, they are prohibited from going to the local flag store and have such banners made up. Instead they must buy them from Character Counts at something like $300 a piece. I know this because my wife suggested that the PTA save money by going to the local flag store, and the principal rejected the idea. This demostrates a conflict between Fairness and Trustworthiness. Is it more important that children have banners or that Character Counts makes a buck for their monopoly on values?
I bring this up because Americans' affiliation with civic organizations and general do-gooderism is often in conflict with common sense. And there are few activities that require the use of common sense than parenting. (I shudder to say 'parenting' because it makes it sound like a skill that can be improved by a few night school classes and membership in a civic organization). But you get my drift. Tending the Nuke (nuclear family) is a very important job, but by definition, it is something that is best taught by other families. It takes one to grow one, and not necessarily a 'village'. Part of being Old School is the implicit understanding of Family First (and feel free to make your own banners, we're fair here.) Which means sometimes you do things out of respect for a family tradition and value which isn't necessarily codified into the mission statement of some 501(c)3.
So when it comes to raising boys and girls, a parent has to rely on their gut and their extended families and other parents in their communities. Moreover, society needs parents to do just that. Parents need to rely on each other to do right and exemplify doing right. So how can it be that we get to a point at which we need to spend $300 to have an organization sell a concept to a public school to reinforce something that families ought to know? Well, there are good and bad reasons.
The bad reasons have to do with a long history of being brutally oppressive to people because of their families. If your family is named Wong, chances are (ha, chances are..) you will have a loaf of turds put on your plate called 'assimilation'. You want to be an American? Eat this, it's good for you. Forget your family traditions, you in America now boy.
The good reasons have to do with our motivation, once we establish something of value and permanence, to share our success with others. To build an open and free society means to build a strong commons. It means retaining a foundation against the frailties of human beings. Because when peril is near, anyone, indeed everyone is vulnerable.
The problem is that these motivations metastacize when they are institutionalized. What is simple bigotry one old immigrant family against the new takes on a whole new sinister dimension when a union is the bigot. What begins as a pledge to uphold virtue and value from one family's largesse becomes something entirely different when pledges and credos become ritualized. But none of this is so scary as when one of those institutions for good or bad reasons begin to replace the thinking of the people it was designed to serve. An institution should serve a reminder, not serve a whole plate of thought. An institution should nudge us forward, not make us march in step.
So when specialized institutional knowledge starts to creep up on common sense, that's when my neck hairs stand up. And this is exactly what I see in the overmedication of boys, and the copyrighting of character values and the subordination of family honor to institutional fidelity.
I started this piece to go on about boyhood, and in particular the boyhood of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and what it meant for them to buck the system and think for themselves. But I reason that if you understand what I've said up to this point, there's nothing I can say that Mark Twain hasn't. I just want to draw our attention to the conflicts inherent in trying to make the world safe.
The world will never be safe, so let our children develop their own wits. Let's try to keep our about us and employ them with honor without deferring so readily to those turds that are supposed to be good for us.
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