Today's kids are ruder than ever, and the "experts" suspect it may be a by-product of self-esteem training and modern parenting methods.

If you ever curse someone with the old standby, "I hope he has kids who are just like he is," chances are greater than ever that you'll get your wish. It just seems like succeeding generations now exhibit the "carbon-copy syndrome," where if you keep copying an original, the copies will have more and more flaws as time wears on (to you young'uns I'll say, don't worry, I put a great onus on my generation as well).

At MSNBC, Susan Gregory Thomas has an article about this degeneration of the generations titled "Today's tykes: Secure kids or rudest in history?" which seems like a rhetorical question. She provides some striking examples of child misbehavior and the poor parenting of which it was born, such as the following, "A commenter on a recent New York Times’ blog recounted seeing a preschooler purposely trip a woman in a crowded restaurant, and chortle, 'Mommy, did you see me trip that woman? I tripped her!' — with no corrective measure from the mother." Thomas then writes, "Many experts say today’s kids are ruder than ever. And it may have something to do with popular parenting movements focusing on self-esteem . . . ."

Really? Perhaps if they earn a couple more Ph.D.'s they'll know for sure.

Now, I realize there's no shortage of people who play amateur psychologist — and most of them have psychology degrees — and Thomas quotes many experts who propound various theories as to why our compassionate, Dr. Spock-shaped society is breeding real-life children of the corn. They mention factors ranging from the obvious, such as violent video games and American Idol's appeal among kids (the show's judges are the very essence of rudeness), to the slightly esoteric and probably somewhat stupid, such as "attachment parenting." Yet, they are so attached to the idea of being soft "scientists" — despite the fact that psychology means "study of the soul" — and so detached from Truth that they miss the obvious.

They could learn from a more traditional psychologist, a man named John Rosemond, who once said (I'm paraphrasing), "Years ago, parents viewed misbehavior as a moral problem; now they view it as a psychological problem."

The Truth is that any wise person could have predicted that a departure from traditional morality would cause chaos. Children are not born sporting halos. Rather, they arrive as barbarians, lashing out when angry, crying uncontrollably when in need. They are all subject to the Seven Deadly Sins, and they must be civilized. And accomplishing this doesn't require a modern self-help book, psychologist or new parenting paradigm; one only need look to tradition.

Parents first have to understand their role, which is not to be a buddy but a leader; a family is a monarchy and they are king and queen. They then must model good behavior, teach morals, protect the children from bad influences, and provide love and discipline — and they mustn't be afraid of the rod.

Yet so many today behave as if morality just takes care of itself, as if children will naturally grow in virtue as they do in height. But why would we expect such a thing? Virtue is defined as a comprehensive set of good habits, and cultivating them takes effort. After all, would we expect kids to develop good study habits without effort? And parents will spend good money on music or art lessons or sports training for their children, knowing full well that becoming good at such endeavors requires effort. But then why should we think it's any different with morality? Evolving from the barbarism of infancy into a civilized being is a process. This is why the Bible instructs, "Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."

It's also why you have to shudder when thinking about the kind of training children receive today: the self-esteem variety. Of course, it sounds like something positive, but it's nothing but a euphemism for pride. I have, for instance, heard of a school exercise wherein students took turns standing before their class and telling everyone why they're great.

When Thomas mentioned the self-esteem Trojan horse, she wrote of the kind of defiant, self-centered brats it breeds: "'They've grown up questioning their parents, and now they're questioning their employers. They don't know how to shut up, which is great, but that's aggravating to the 50-year-old manager who says, 'Do it and do it now,'' says Jordan Kaplan, an associate managerial science professor at Long Island University-Brooklyn in New York, in a USA Today article."

Yet Kaplan is part of the problem. Not knowing how to shut up is not "great"; it's a serious character flaw. We listen to our superiors not because they're superior, but because obeying just authority is a superior value. Society cannot function properly unless just hierarchies are respected, and this won't happen unless people are willing to subordinate their will to someone else's.

A prerequisite for this is the kind of good parenting that engenders humility. Children tend to be born prideful; they want to write their own ticket. They have to be purged of their pride and learn to follow rules that are not their own. This happens when parents demand obedience, for the children then become accustomed to deferring to another’s will.

This may sound harsh and stifling to modern ears, but it's actually the most loving of actions. To leave a child saddled with an all-consuming ego borders on criminal negligence. Pride is called the father of all sin for a reason: it's the one sin that blinds you to all others. Because if a person is prideful, he won't be willing to recognize his own faults, which is a prerequisite for correcting them. Thus, a prideful person may be damned to a life of relative failure, both in worldly matters such as work, and in more sublime ones such as spirituality. The Bible instructs that "Pride goeth before a fall" for a reason.

And it certainly seems like it's preceding our civilization's fall. So many of us just cannot admit that the last 50 years of social engineering have been a mistake and that grandpa, that backward old fogey, just might have been right after all.


Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.  

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Peter Steele said:

Re: My late father Peter Steele and his wife Jean Brittain Steele brought me to respect animals and people My late father spanked me when I did something bad - he was loving and stern man and my late mother homeschooled me when I was young because she did not trust the schools in the late 1940s. God willing they taught me to respect my elders and parents and animals. I have been very gentle to mother's orange tabby cat as she is now 12 years of age. Mother and I had her since she was 3 months old. I cuss very little watching my mouth.

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May 11, 2009
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Pat Henry said:

	Self-esteem Self-esteem is good and very necessary. And its foundation is knowing there are boundaries and knowing I have learned enough self-control to keep those boundaries. "Brats" are often _seeking_ a self-esteem and reason-for-being of which they are unsure.
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May 11, 2009
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danwhitehead1 said:

	Correct Bible quote With all due respect to Mr. Duke who is, as usual, 100% correct I feel compelled to point out that God's Word actually says: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18
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May 12, 2009
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Warren the writer said:

	... That's pretty close to the Douay-Rheims version: Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction: and the spirit is lifted up before a fall.
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May 12, 2009
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SCHNORCHEL said:

Ten Commandments From http://www.allabouttruth.org/10-commandments.htm: ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.' TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.' THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.' FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.' FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.' SIX: 'You shall not murder.' SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.' EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.' NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.' TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.' -------------- The Fifth Commandment is being violated. I am convinced that this social phenomenon is part of the Illuminati conspiracy foisted on us by Adam Weishaupt in 1779, in order to destroy our Judaeo-Christian civilization and replace it by a Satanic, self-destructive world that Weishaupt postulated with this Order of the Illuminati. Robert Welch tells about this in his essay "The Truth in Time, If you Want it Straight."

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May 13, 2009
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