Man
with No Manners, Characters with No Character, Children with No Anchor
Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/2/18
Sad
but true, humans have to learn to be human.
When they don’t, what we get is man’s inhumanity to man.
Inhumanity
takes many forms such as slavery, tyranny, disrespect, and general
incivility. Incivility has many
manifestations. Some of the prevalent
ones today are shouting down public speakers with whom you disagree, blocking
traffic, vandalizing property, and accosting prominent citizens in public
places.
In
1969 country singer Merle Haggard revealed his opposition to the anti-Vietnam
War, anti-establishment movement with his big hit, “Okie from Muskogee.” In 2012 sociologist Charles Murray (who knows
what it’s like to be shouted down), penned his highly acclaimed book, “Coming
Apart: the State of White America.”
Haggard sang of college students of the 60s who didn’t respect the
college dean. Murray chronicles events
from 1960-2010 and concludes that many college students still don’t respect the
college dean.
Something
obviously happened during the 50 year span Murray analyzed that allowed
incivility and disrespect for authority to continue. Permissiveness? Why, just
as Haggard became a target for the dope-smoking anti-war protestors, has Murray
become the target of today’s political left?
Perhaps it’s because Murray is an intellectual libertarian/conservative
who is hitting some nerves. (Haggard, of
course, was a deplorable.)
The
ancient Roman poet Horace often used the expression “laudatores temporis acti,”
meaning “praisers of the past.” What
aging generation has not claimed that things were better in the past? Today
Americans have more food, more healthcare, and more “stuff” than ever before,
but less civility. When it comes to
manners and respect for others, we can say we have seen better days. For two centuries our political leaders at
every level followed the dictum of England’s Sir William Harcourt that says to
function well, nations and their law making bodies must engage in “constant
dining with the opposition.” From 2001
to 2010, I observed this dictum being successfully practiced in the Georgia
General Assembly.
Today,
however, there appears to be no middle, no middle ground between the political/cultural
opposition, no place to dine. But
appearances aren’t always real. The
great divide, America’s cold civil war, is taking place not so much between
ordinary citizens out across the land as between the talking heads on
television. The majority of those
talking heads are defenders of the political left, particularly of the manners
that campus leftists are displaying.
Englishman
Edmund Burke argued that manners were more important than laws. One can understand this. The purpose of law is to make us behave. What are manners but the individual choice to
act mannerly? Lawful, mannerly people
hardly need laws. Yet, more and more we
live in a manner-less world. Laws are
necessary.
Long
before our current president crossed the line, uttering manner-less words no
presidential candidate had ever uttered, writers, movie makers, comedians, and
college campus activists were doing far worse.
Today’s television fare is as bad as Tinseltown, the standard fare of
both being profanity and moral garbage.
When did today’s entertainment and media elites, who pretend to oppose
the President’s crassness, ever call into question the culture that produced
him, the culture they engineered?
In
the 18th century novel “Frankenstein,” a scientist created a monster,
only to have the monster get out of control and turn on him. What was his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, to
say? That which he fashioned became his
enemy. Media elites and movie moguls
should reread “Frankenstein.” Their
“monster” turned on them and they don’t like it.
The
publishing business has affected manners and morality as much as television and
movies. My line of work requires me to
haunt libraries and book stores. Base
magazines, lurid novels, large measures of graphic eroticism, and filthy language
fill our libraries and bookstores. Most
fiction now presents characters without character, man at his worse, certainly
not his heroic, sacrificial best.
Writers of the not so distant past seldom depicted man’s
underbelly. They didn’t need to. They
had literary talent and could make their point with grace.
And
how do all of these dynamics affect children and youth? The next generation will always land where
the previous generation casts its anchor.
It will champion, at least for several decades, what the previous
generation championed. The
cultural/political left has championed the sexual revolution, a different
definition of marriage, transgender and non-gender silly talk, and freedom from
restraint.
Are
there any words more powerful than “Thank you” or “I’m sorry”? Such words are external indications of
internal character. They are actually
necessary if we are to avoid brawls, incivility, and the salacious “entertainment”
that has seeped into every corner of our society.
Roger Hines
11/29/18
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