FRED ALMOST MADE ME CRY THIS TIME . . .

[indianasmith]

I don't always agree with Fred Reed, but I always enjoy his blog.  But this entry made me very, very sad.  Our children will never have the experience of growing up with the personal liberty and innocence he describes here . . .

http://www.fredoneverything.net/KingGeorge2.shtml


O America, what have we become?

[ulthar]

Beautiful.

[dean]

Wow, you guys need supervision to swim ANYWHERE?  [that's what I'm getting from that, I doubt that its as hard-line as that.]

Time's certainly are a changin'!  Just imagine: I'll probably be telling kids of the time 'back in the day' when the internet wasn't regulated... 

[Hammock Rider]

Wow, that was a good blog post. My brother, who has two young daughters, and I were just talking about this a few days ago. For us city kids it was bikes instead of canoes. We left the house after a breakfast, took off on our bikes and came back around dark because we were hungry.
   I think all this excessive supervision is bad for the parents as well as the kids. When we took off on our little Goonie adventures my mom was able to get some housework done and still play cards with her friends or just hang out and b.s.

 Thanks Indiana.

[Trevor]

Well, I grew up during a war in the then Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s and I also went to school at a time where it was not uncommon for kids to come to classes with pistols or revolvers in their bags, given to them by their parents for self protection. Indeed, my Dad's favourite thing was to unload his 9mm Uzi and hand it to me to carry, adding that I should go and scare the crap out of the neighbours, which I duly did. 

There was security but no overbearing supervision even during those terrible times ~ very unlike today where you have to know 24/7 where everyone is.

[Trevor]

When we took off on our little Goonie adventures

Did you tell the housekeeper about which drugs should go where? 

[Flick James]

Wow, that was a good blog post. My brother, who has two young daughters, and I were just talking about this a few days ago. For us city kids it was bikes instead of canoes. We left the house after a breakfast, took off on our bikes and came back around dark because we were hungry.
   I think all this excessive supervision is bad for the parents as well as the kids. When we took off on our little Goonie adventures my mom was able to get some housework done and still play cards with her friends or just hang out and b.s.

 Thanks Indiana.

Same here. For two years there was my trio that would spend our entire day riding our bikes everywhere. Some of the stupid s**t we pulled from time to time on our bikes makes me marvel one of us didn't suffer any broken bones, just lots of skin abrasions and bruises. 

[lester1/2jr]

I like Fred Reed. I really need to re up my subscription to American conservative. I am alot more libertarian than right wing but I like Amcon alot better than Reason.

[Jim H]

Well, I will say that in rural areas you do still see teenagers with guns blowing cans away unsupervised.  Probably not as common as it was back in his day, but in the more rural areas a lot of that kind of stuff is still very much a "who cares" sort of thing.  I think that in general a lot of the rural south is still much like he described.  It's just the more suburban and urban areas that have gotten so far from that.  From personal experience, the amount of police presence in many smaller suburban cities is truly ludicrous and excessive, as one example. 

I'd agree that a lot of the stuff hovering parents and society do in the end does more harm than good. 

[The Gravekeeper]

I did see a lot of that during the time I spent in a small, rural town. In the suburbs and the city, I noticed something. Kids there just didn't seem to be as down-to-earth as the country kids. I'm not saying that city kids are stupid, but well...part of the curriculum out in the country was dedicated to teaching kids about the potential consequences of various actions. Stuff like the fact that you could drown if you try to cross a frozen body of water that hasn't been declared safe. In the city, the dangers were presented as abstract ideas and we were never given rational reasons about why some things are a bad idea (instead of them saying "gangs are bad," they could have said "if you join a gang you're actually much more likely to get shot over something you may not have done as a warning to the rest of the gang/retaliation for something someone else in the gang did.")

Sure, bad stuff still happened out in the country, but I don't think it happened as often because kids were taught to actually look after themselves and they knew more about some of the risks they were taking. Well, maybe the fact that most of the "bad" things they did weren't malicious made a difference, too.

I do think the guy's wearing his rose-coloured glasses, though. Kids shot each other back then, too; it didn't happen as often and it didn't make the news nearly as often. Bad stuff happened all the time back then, but it wasn't as public as it is now. A lot of this over-supervision, in my opinion, came about as a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to stop some of that from happening. One of the real kickers, of course, is that since kids are no longer learning how to take care of themselves we're going to get a whole generation of adults that don't know how to handle real life at all.

[Newt]

One of the real kickers, of course, is that since kids are no longer learning how to take care of themselves we're going to get a whole generation of adults that don't know how to handle real life at all.

Sad to say, I could not agree more.   

The erosion of personal responsibility spills over into the realm of individual accountability.  We are already seeing that becoming commonplace. It's somebody else's job to look after us and it's somebody else's fault if we do anything that results in negative consequences for us or anyone else.   
 
Dang.  I should head over to the "Grinds My Gears" thread...

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Well, I will say that in rural areas you do still see teenagers with guns blowing cans away unsupervised.  Probably not as common as it was back in his day, but in the more rural areas a lot of that kind of stuff is still very much a "who cares" sort of thing.  I think that in general a lot of the rural south is still much like he described.  It's just the more suburban and urban areas that have gotten so far from that.  From personal experience, the amount of police presence in many smaller suburban cities is truly ludicrous and excessive, as one example. 

I'd agree that a lot of the stuff hovering parents and society do in the end does more harm than good. 

Well as far as blowing cans off the fence, we used to do that all the time when I was little. Me, my dad and my mom would go out together and some of our neighbors would get in on it too. We enjoyed (and still do ) responsible firearms use. We were always raised around guns and we never had an accident, not one.

Sadly, in this day and age of "I can do what I want, screw responsibility" there will be many more firearm-related incidents (shootings, accidents) that will be blamed upon those who support and defend gun rights.  This is because of the inability of society and parents (and adults) to comprehend the power they're holding in their hands, or how to properly handle it.

And more importantly, because they can't accept their own stupidity that most likely led to it therefore their willingness to place blame on those who support responsibility.

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Well, I grew up during a war in the then Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s and I also went to school at a time where it was not uncommon for kids to come to classes with pistols or revolvers in their bags, given to them by their parents for self protection. Indeed, my Dad's favourite thing was to unload his 9mm Uzi and hand it to me to carry, adding that I should go and scare the crap out of the neighbours, which I duly did. 

There was security but no overbearing supervision even during those terrible times ~ very unlike today where you have to know 24/7 where everyone is.

Being most of the Third World embraced Russian hospitality, you probabaly saw more than your share of AK-47's and Makarov's as well. Maybe a few RPG's too, I'd wager? Just asking.

[Hammock Rider]

When we took off on our little Goonie adventures

Did you tell the housekeeper about which drugs should go where? 

 

[wickednick]

I'm 29 and its sad to think that I am the last generation to know what it was like to spend my time out doors because we had no internet, no cable, no playstation or xbox. I remember my baby sitter taking me out to a field and look for garter snakes, catch grasshoppers as big as my hand, even chase pheasants.Now that field is houses and apartments one of which is the house my family later moved into.

I remember going to lake michigan and swim unsupervised, not only because my parents didn't mind that I was out and having fun but also because the lake wasn't the complete cesspool that it is now.

My parents were not big believers in guns, but my grandparents sure were and all their boys learned to shoot guns and bows. There was no questions asked when they went hunting or fishing, they just did.

The simplicity of life even in the 80's was so nostalgic and free in spirit. When people wanted to get a hold of you they would call you on the house phone or come visit your home. Now its all text messaging and face book, everyone has a phone, everyone can give their two cents on the internet and act like everyone reading should care.

No one really communicates anymore, at least not in a meaningful fashion. I get texts of repugnant images on my phone, read inane comments on face book, listen to people speak the same way they text or have to read it on a internet forum. Where is the beauty of a interactive conversation? I now have to wait for someone to text me back or or give their two cents about something I posted on some internet forum or even worse talk to some god damn machine when I need help with my cable. I want real live communication damn't, not faceless masses.

I find it rather disappointing that I have let my self get sucked into the modern world and all its trappings. Wonder what it would be like if I just left and traveled the world, get into adventures and all that jazz.