ALAN writes:

In response to your excellent remarks about the imbecility called “gay marriage,” Bill R. wrote that Americans now live under “a tyranny that grows harder by the day.”  I agree essentially with that statement.  But may I suggest that that tyranny was not forcibly imposed on the American people by a monster government; it was the American people who made their government into a monster by surrendering more and more power to it over a span of years, partly by intent but largely by default.

The Leftist regime of anarcho-tyranny that surrounds us today is a long-range consequence of default on the part of many people in the so-called “greatest generation”; of their failure to recognize and oppose revolutionary schemes promoted by the Fascist Left in the 1950s-‘60s.  Most people in that “greatest generation” were decent and patriotic and did much to their credit.  But in the midst of economic prosperity,  material comforts, and new technology, they became rather too comfortable and acquiescent.  Too many of them yielded much too easily in those years whenever the Fascist Left pushed against them, whether in the form of the “youth revolution” or agitation for feminism or “civil rights”, or “student protesters” or “war protesters”, or rock and roll “music” or the lowering of standards in speech, dress, and manners.

What an extraordinary act of surrender that was:  The first generation of parents in American history to yield authority to their children; to invert the traditional parent-child relation; to accede to their children’s whims rather than enforce the traditional moral standards they had inherited; to copy the example set for them by their children, in speech, dress, manners, music, and behavior.  Examples of that surrender can be seen in certain television programs from those years featuring even talented entertainers like Lucille Ball and Ozzie Nelson, examples that would multiply after 1964.

Of all the silly spectacles I have seen since the 1960s, none has been more appalling than the infantilization of grown men and women—achieved with their own assent and approval—and their increasing deference to their children.

As the British philosopher Philip Atkinson has argued, when parents seek the approval of their children, we can be sure that civilization is on a steep downward course. Diana West advances much the same argument in her excellent The Death of the Grown-Up (2007).  Both are right.

That surrender of parental and patriarchal authority is one of the principal reasons why the U.S.A. today is unrecognizable to people old enough to remember what it was before, say, 1964.  Allan Carlson has suggested that the year 1964 may have been the most significant year in the revolutionary makeover of our nation.  [ “Was 1964 the Most Important Year—Ever?”, here.]

I agree with that judgment, having been there and remembering it as well as I do.  Of course I am not saying that there was nothing wrong in American culture before 1964 or that there was nothing right in the years afterward.  I am saying that the ratio of moral and cultural virtues to vices was much greater before 1964 than it is today.

With that thought in mind, here is yet another to add to the long list of examples of the astounding contrast between America pre-1964 and America today, chronicled in the archives at The Thinking Housewife and View from the Right.  This one concerns the character of public schools:

In 1954, the St. Louis Board of Education published an 18-page essay in favor of promoting moral values in the St. Louis public schools, including:

— Clean speech, thought, and conduct
— Honesty
— Goodwill and kindness
— Loyalty
— Respect for elders
— Respect for the rights and property of others
— Responsibility
— Truthfulness
— Reverence

[ “Suggestions for the Teaching of Moral and Spiritual Values in the St. Louis Public Schools”, Saint Louis Public School Journal, January 1954 ]

That was then.

Did something happen between 1954 and today?  Yes:  Entire generations of American white men agreed to surrender their traditional patriarchal authority—in the workplace, in government, in the law, in the military, in schools, and in the family.  Secondary and tertiary consequences flowed from that—all of them suicidal for American strength and pride and beneficial for the Fascist Left.

Observe the chain of consequences:  When authority at the top is yielded and when people under that authority have no “moral chains” (Edmund Burke) to restrain them, school boards will do as they please, teachers will cheat and lie, students will do whatever they please, and their parents will defend their children—evasion of accountability at every step along the way down.

The St. Louis Board of Education’s achievements between 2003 and 2011 include:

— 44 vacant buildings, many of which were vandalized
— School board members engaging in shouting matches
— “Pimp education” rap snacks becoming available in public school cafeterias
— In one high school, blacks fighting each other and getting shot
— In another high school, girls engaging in dozens of fights
— In a third high school, “students” fighting each other in the cafeteria
— And one high school administration caving in to threats of trouble from thugs by cancelling a dance
—And one high school administration caving in to threats of trouble from thugs by cancelling a dance

I challenge anyone to find reports of equivalent mayhem in the St. Louis public schools in the 1930s, ‘40s or ‘50s when they were still run by white men who had not surrendered their masculine authority or their determination to enforce rules and standards.

And let’s not overlook the cheaters and liars on the payroll of the public schools in Atlanta, not to mention similar or worse episodes of incompetence or contempt for moral standards in the public schools of Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Los Angeles.

All those moral values that St. Louis teachers in 1954 judged worthy of encouraging and upholding are now systematically trashed, if not by “students” in public schools then by their parents or by their teachers or by the paper-shuffling opportunists and mediocrities who infest school boards.

Compare especially that 1954 recommendation of “clean speech and thought” with the profanities and vulgarities that many “students” celebrate daily in hip hop “music” and that are used routinely in conversations, radio, television, and motion pictures.  Most of the “students” who do such things are black thugs, lowlifes, or wannabees, with a small percentage of brain-dead whites thrown in for good measure.

There is a large racial element in that culture-wide degradation, but it is mostly a consequence, not a cause.  The cause was the agreement by whites to lower standards throughout the public schools and the culture at large or to surrender them outright.

And note also that 1954 endorsement of “respect for elders”.  Can any trace of such a thing be found in American public schools today?  Or anywhere in American culture today?  Didn’t “respect for elders” get thrown out the window along with penny candy, and corner confectionaries?

How to account for that descent from competence in public schools into decadence in public schools in less than a lifetime?  How could schools that promoted moral values and good citizenship in 1954 agree to absorb unprecedented ugliness, moral rot, and hatred of rules and standards?

I doubt that our enemies would have encountered much more resistance from Americans if they had held a press conference in 1964 and announced:  “We are Fabian Socialist change agents and we are here to erase your nation, your culture, your history, your standards, your schools, your borders, and your sovereignty—and we will do those things with your cooperation and your enthusiasm.”

Of course they have been extraordinarily successful in achieving those goals.  And it is made much easier for them by legions of home-grown do-gooders, “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike.  [ Do-Gooder: noun;  An aggressive subspecies of homo saps animated by an insatiable lust to meddle in other people’s lives, which lust they conceal behind innocuous-sounding phrases like “We are here to help you”.  Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton said of such creatures: “No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.” ]

Thirty years ago I concluded that government power over schools should be disestablished and that government should be gotten out of the education business and kept out.  This is not a utopian idea.  It could be done over a span of ten years if American parents, teachers, and taxpayers had the will to do it.  But far too few of them have that will, and the others are too soft, comfortable or brainwashed even to imagine such a possibility.  Of course the most militant opponents to that idea would be the teachers’ unions and entrenched bureaucrats who enjoy feeding at the public trough.

Nothing can be done to restrain feminized, sap-headed boy-men from surrendering the nation they inherited.  But those of us who know better must never stop writing and speaking in defense of our inheritance and in opposition to those fools—in firm, unapologetic, and uncompromising resistance.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your eloquent comments.

I have to demur, however, when it comes to blaming the “greatest generation.” It had no real authority to keep Christian moral customs in place. Those customs were inherited from Catholic civilization. Over time, Americans lost touch with the reasons for these customs and the philosophy behind them. They couldn’t understand them any longer. Even things like why stores were closed on Sunday seemed pointless and mystifying. Ordinary Americans were so imbued with the idea that morality and religious truth are individual affairs, with each person his own infallible authority on these matters, they could not effectively resist, and did not want to resist, the courts and legislatures when they formally demolished the laws that supported these customs. Social atheism had replaced the individualistic ethic of Protestantism.

There was nothing to hold this great moral and social inheritance in place.

— End of Initial Entry —

Mary writes:

I don’t blame the greatest generation, who were the last true innocents and the last to bow to authority. They were the first generation to be exposed to technology and media on a mass scale, and in turn the first to experience passive entertainment, which has had an enormous influence on American culture. The greatest generation loved the movies and Hollywood and who wouldn’t have in the days of WWII? They took refuge from their worries at the movie theatre. But for every Bells of Saint Marys there were many more Streetcar Named Desires.

And the greatest generation innocently allowed that insidious enemy, the television – the anesthetic of the masses – to have unprecedented access to and powerful influence over their households. They were spoon-fed ideas about culture and society, psychology and morality, and on and on, by appealing and attractive and funny tutors. “Teen” culture and education, messages about divorce and adultery, depictions of drug and alcohol abuse, criminal as “victim”, sordid tales of all kinds were brought into the home through television in the 50s. It wasn’t all Howdy Doody. Families were being divided while they watched together. This decade was the “softening” decade that would set the stage for the distastrous sixties, but the greatest generation had no idea because into the early sixties Americans retained their innocence for the most part.

(A few quick facts: “….The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one…”* “…Between 1949 and 1969, the number of households in the U.S. with at least one TV set rose from less than a million to 44 million…”** “…According to Nielsen [in 2015] there are 116.3 million TV homes in the U.S…”***)

Linda N. writes:

I misread Alan’s comment as “we’re now living under a tranny that grows harder by the day.” Yikes! Speaking of which, will Thinking Housewife fans be watching the much-bruited Bruce Jenner / Jennifer Bruce coming-out special on Friday? Those of you who still own a demon TV, I mean.

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