A New Year’s Resolution

                                           A New Year’s Resolution

                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 8, 2016

            Whereas Americans have seemingly given up on shaping the values and tastes of their teenagers, instead yielding to whatever the culture throws at them, such as the dress (actually un-dress) of Mariah Carey during her ill-fated New Year’s Eve performance, or the vile language dished out by prime time television,

            Whereas youth culture is now the dominant culture with adults of all ages dressing like youths and adopting the musical tastes of youths, thereby capitulating to teen culture instead of setting standards to which teens could and should aspire,

            Whereas said teen culture is sanctioned by public schools as witnessed by the music played in many a school cafeteria and at time-outs at basketball games in tight, suffocating gymnasiums, music that is never Debussy (“Clair de Lune,” for instance, that would inspire the young who could and would ingest it if only schools would offer it and stop giving them what they already have), never Wagner, never Beethoven, never anything Andy Williams-smooth, all because educators have swallowed the idea that to “reach” youth they must do things that will “rock you” (pound you, actually), thereby denying teens of richness that typical teen music does not and cannot provide, much of it being barbarous and sensual, certainly not music that anyone could fall in love to,

            Whereas today dress is deemed irrelevant even at funerals, weddings, worship, etc.,  rendering all we do informal and equal in significance, mainly because many pastors, principals, and other leaders (who are not being leaders) are succumbing to youthful tastes instead of shaping them, and are teaching youth that sloppy is OK (as in flip-flops, torn jeans, shorts, hairy legs, showy derrieres), implying that a little dressing up is silly, old-fashioned, and passé, disregarding the fact that dress matters for cops, the military, and for job interviews which it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about while you’re in high school,

            Whereas so much music is no longer even juvenile but outright teeny-bopper, and is short on thought or content but long on endless repetition of the same words and score, replete with sounds such as “oh-ee-oh-ee-oh” or “wah-ooh-wah-ooh-wah,” absent of claim, inspiration, or of anything else that evokes positive action, but is an end in itself,

            Whereas we now live in an age that normalizes the marginal, particularly with sexuality; an age in which parents are obeying their children, a reality that can be observed at the park, the grocery store line, the home; an age in which more and more parents are simply afraid to correct their children, in fear of child abuse charges; an age of utter cowardliness regarding t-o-u-c-h-i-n-g our own children, thereby rendering impossible any measure of “shock and awe,” said shock and awe being exactly what three-fourths of American children need but are not getting,

            Whereas America’s long-standing love affair with alcohol continues in spite of the death and sorrow caused thereby, as well as the spoiled careers of athletes, news anchors, entertainers, and political leaders, and as well as the stupidity and loss that results from alcohol; and being that the first drink is a rite of passage for American teens, said teens having seen their own parents drink, consider it no big deal to drink themselves, despite the destruction they know it leads to,

            Whereas public education is no longer the glue of American culture, with teachers’ unions still ruling the roost in most states and opposing parental choice; with facts taking a back seat to “critical thinking,” with multicultural emphasis gone wild at the price of western civilization itself; with education’s dark cloud of nomenclature (“strategies,” “paradigms,” “self-esteem,” “the child,” “therapy”), with memorization now considered a violation of human rights, and,

            Whereas “hope springs eternal in the human breast,” and since the only sensible action in any age is to look outward and upward,

            Be it therefore resolved (1) that we citizens will reclaim the role of parent, acknowledge the necessity and naturalness of family (everybody has a mother and a father) and point our children away from themselves and into the lives of others, (2) that we will fight any cultural influences harmful to the development of our children’s character and tastes, including music and entertainment, (3) that we will never fall for a modernity that denies ancient unchanging truths about ourselves, one being our need for parents, friends, and neighbors.

            Be it further resolved that we will be a neighbor to all whom we meet and will challenge our children to do the same, that our land may heal.

Roger Hines

1/4/17