Cathleen,
Well put. I have often pondered this question myself but I don’t think the blame lies exclusively with “all” parents of today’s younger voting age children. I personally believe that while the Greatest generation certainly won World War II among other great achievements, the parenting that occurred after the return from overseas by too many of these folks was poor and spawned the hippie/counterculture revolution of the sixties.
I always sort of figured the greatest generation was exhausted from 4 years of brutal war and sacrifices and didn’t have the energy to give disrespectful Johnny a spanking when he deserved it. Johnny then grew up defiant, entitled, selfish and disrespectful of authority and he met a bunch of other similarly raised Johnies and Janes in College to protest with. Now these people are senators, newspaper editors, judges, TV and movie producers and university faculty members…and US Presidents all in their way harming our culture of greatness. They are also the parents today that aren’t doing their job of raising functional, educated children.
These poorly raised baby boomers never really lived in anything but prosperous, largely safe times and too many of them now take for granted the peace and prosperity that capitalism and a muscular US foreign policy produced. I’m sure many barely even believe that communism or socialism are bad. They don’t know their history or human nature and they’ve never experienced how bad it was under these systems. They think Bush really was a fascist that committed war crimes too.
Humans are always doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Such a tragic condition. Look what’s happening now and it is the result of the very safety and prosperity earned by blood on the battlefields of world War II.
Just remember what came after the Great depression….
