We are living in an era of near total lawlessness. Mass shootings at schools, drive-by shootings and random beatings of total strangers, strong-armed robbery, the list goes on detailing unspeakable acts of cruelty inflicted on one human being by another, many times with little to no provocation. And then there are the more simple examples, like running a stop sign, not because you didn’t see it, but because you didn’t want to stop. “I didn’t want to, or I did it because I felt like it,” are answers frequently given by law-breakers today when asked why they did what they did. Perfect examples of the narcissistic “it’s all about me” feeling that a large segment of society reflects today. It’s the ultimate feeling of entitlement, to hurt or endanger someone else, because you felt like it. But why?
It is my opinion that all of these problems are occurring due to a lack of discipline brought about by liberal thinking and “humanistic education” in government schools and a lack of belief in a higher power – GOD – in our society. For over 50 years the public schools have been teaching kids that ” you are your own person”, “your not your parents slave”, “you can make your own decisions, etc.” This type of teaching has lead to corporal punishment being taken out of the schools and through busy-body government interference, the home. School administrators can no longer give an unruly student “a swat” with a paddle like they did in my day. (I’m 62.) Parents today are afraid of being arrested if they paddle their children, for fear the kids will tell their teacher and be reported to some alphabet agency that will come to arrest them for abuse. The paddle has been replaced by the “timeout.” Given to us courtesy of some pop-psychologists who claim spanking somehow “damages” a child, even though our Creator says “spare the rod and spoil the child.” How has that worked out? Obviously, it hasn’t. How can taking 15 minutes out of a child’s day be considered punishment, when time is all they have anyway? What’s 15 minutes, or even 30? I contend it’s nothing, and forgotten as soon as it’s over and the child resumes whatever activities he was doing prior to the “time out.” It doesn’t work on adults either with our prisons full of law-breakers who have an 85% chance of being a repeat offender.
What’s really needed is to look back on what worked in the past, and that was discipline. Humans need to know there are consequences to our actions. This needs to be taught from a very young age. Parents discipline children, who in turn grow up to learn self-discipline. My parents and grandparents paddled or used a switch from a tree, and even a leather belt to spank me when I was growing up. Being disrespectful, talking back, doing something wrong ” because I wanted to” got the seat of my pants spanked and spanked hard. Not being able to sit down on your stinging butt for 20 minutes was something I remembered and made me stop and think before I would commit that offense again. After that, even the verbal threat of “do you want a spanking?” was usually enough to make me reconsider my actions. To those who believe this type of punishment leads to kids becoming mass murderers or brutal thugs, I can assure you, I am neither, and would say history over the last 40 years or so bears out the fact that a lack of corporal punishment has bred more thugs and murderers. Let me clarify here also, we are talking about spankings for children, not brutal beatings with 2×4’s, or closed fist punches to the face or body.
The problem is not guns. There were guns in my home growing up, but I was FORBIDDEN to handle them without adult supervision under threat of severe discipline, so I left them alone. In my day, practically every home had at least one gun, yet we had no mass shootings. Even if there were no guns, there are still ball bats, knives, machetes, bricks and so on. It is foolish to blame an object instead of the perpetrator. We don’t ban matches because an arsonist uses them to burn down a building. We don’t ban cars because drunks kill thousands of people in accidents. These acts are committed by people with no self-discipline.
Can we turn back the clock to a more disciplined time? Yes. Will it happen? Probably not given the trends of the last 40-50 years. Society is much more liberal today, and as a result I believe we are on course to a total collapse into chaos, where it will be “every man for himself.” This will lead to further government intrusion and eventually a police state where innocents demand protection from those who would do them harm. Roving gangs of thugs taking what they want with more violence committed on law-abiding people who have been disarmed by gun control laws, like most of our biggest cities now. Not exactly the future I envisioned for my grand-kids.
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