WRESTLING WITH CHANGE

                I had breakfast at the Village Inn with a friend the other morning.  During small talk about human behavior and world events, he mentioned something that resonated and I said, “Hey, that would be a good subject for a comment on my blog.”

                Later that day I called him on the phone and asked, “Do you remember what you said that I thought would be a good subject for a comment on my blog?”  He thought for a minute and replied, “I can’t remember.  Next time bring a note book.”

                My friend is a liberal from New York.  I am a homespun conservative.  We are both the same age, in our late, late seventies.  What we don’t have in common politically (resulting in some interesting, sometimes heated opinions)   we are compatible when it comes to correct principles and values acquired growing up in the forties and fifties.  It was heart-warming to know that kids in New Jersey and New York were raised with the same work ethic and same respect for authority, country and especially our elders, as we kids on the farms and in the towns of Utah. 

                My old pal and I often compare how things have changed since World War II, not just in our technology but thinking.  As it applies to technology, in the forties Model A Fords were still viable means of transportation.  Look how automobiles have changed since then.  Probably the most momentous changes have been in the realm of communication – cell phones, computers and the Internet. 

                Music is a form of communication and in the opinion of an “old timer,” meaning me, who grew up when Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Teresa Brewer, Patty Page and their contemporaries represented the very best music had to offer – I have a hard time understanding how our youth have allowed themselves to be captivated by the boom, boom, hypnotic hard-rock and rap trash they call music. 

                I think it can be said that the automobile and aircraft industry has progressed enormously; I can’t say the same thing about music, and if that offends you – tough!  Compare how the Four Aces and Four Freshman of yesterday looked compared to the uncouth, barbaric, half-clothed, tattooed musicians that cater to our youth today.  These scummy looking “pinheads,” dressed like hoodlums, trying to out-shock the competition, are treated like heroes.  In reality they are nothing but “festered pimples” compared to the youths who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima, Saipan and the beaches of Normandy on D Day, June 6, 1944. 

                In Mexico, along the Texas and Arizona borders, drug lords are at war with each other, fighting over the right to addict American youth.  How stupid is that?  The kids of my generation experimented with booze and cigarettes but the thought of consuming marijuana, cocaine or heroin was repugnant and considered to be about the most moronic thing someone could do.  What happened?  What changed?  Whatever happened it was in the sixties when unwashed, long haired, foul-mouthed, half naked kids calling themselves “hippies” rebelled against their parent’s generation.   

                I’m a misfit in this high tech, fast paced, over populated, liberalistic, socialistic world.   The surface of the earth has changed but the people haven’t, although they think they have.  It is still the rich against the poor and the poor against the rich.  It is still the powerful against the powerless.  The Seven Deadly Sins are alive and well, and rule over the majority of the people:  wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. 

                In June 1948, Joseph Stalin blocked Berlin from the Allies.  It was the first crisis of the Cold War. On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea.  It was Communisms’ first test battle against democracy.  Then it was Viet Nam.  The Communist menace hovered over America until the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. 

                In my lifetime there has always been a threat, a peril, an enemy seeking to destroy the American way of life –Nazis, Imperial Japan, Communism and now ……  you guessed it, Islam.  Only the menace has changed.

                The debate over the mosque at Ground Zero involves much more than religion, rights, constitution, sentiment and what is good form.  It is a line in the sand that is dividing America.   A liberal element wants to make friends with Islam, even accept Sharia law, in spite of the fact that a radical Islam is out to destroy America.  Much of that same liberal element is opposed to the Arizona Immigration Law.  They argue that once an ethnic group is forced to carry “citizen” papers, all Americans will eventually be compelled to produce papers.  It suggests a police state.  It’s also a stupid argument. 

                I heard on the news the other night that 2 out of 5 Americans are ethnically, non European stock, and politicians are competing for their vote, in case you haven’t noticed.  And in doing so, many Americans think these politicians are adopting socialistic agendas to give minorities special consideration all for the vote and don’t care that they are selling conservative America down the river. 

                America is changing, there is no doubt about that, and it will never be the same.  We have a Black president who in between taking advantage of all the perks (parties, vacations, golf, and tourism) available to the Commander In Chief, he subordinates himself and America to dictatorial Islamic countries.   It seems his foreign policy is to apologize for what, I’m not sure, unless it is being American.  On the home front he seems to think that the way to solve America’s economic problems is to spend its way into socialism by making federal government bigger and more powerful so it can distribute the wealth. 

                We Americans are quick to forgive, forget and tend to think only the best about our antagonists.  As a result we have been caught time and again with our pants down:  Pearl Harbor, Stalin and Communism, North Korea, China’s entry into the Korean War.  And when we commit ourselves we often do it with one arm tied behind our backs, like Viet Nam. 

                I could go on discussing the arguable wisdom and need for invading Iraq and Afghanistan but I think I’ve made my point.  We have spent almost as much time conquering and subduing Iraq as we did in the Second World War and Korea combined – Iraq is still not subdued, and it seems we are no further ahead in Afghanistan  than Russia was a decade ago.  Our prescience in the Middle East is arguably flawed, when the average IDF buck private could have predicted what we would be up against when we invaded Iraq. 

                In Israel the school children are taught the lessons of the Jewish Diaspora, especially the Holocaust, least they let their guard down.  Surveys in the United States reveal that very few of our youth know who we fought in the Second World War.  Too many of our youth, instead of worshiping men of substance, integrity and accomplishment, men who walk in the footsteps of Jefferson, Paine, Lincoln and Patten, lucid men of character, our ignorant youth worship slatternly rock music bums and decadent movie stars like “Hanoi” Jane Fonda.  Good god, we even have politicians who revere Mao Zedong.

                Barak Obama and his entourage of liberal socialistic thinkers have awakened  silent America resulting in a backlash, spearheaded by what is referred to as the Tea Party faction.  For my grandchildren’s sake, I hope it’s not too late to save conservative America.   

                Post Scriptum:  What is happening in Hill vs. AUB, et. al.?