Pete Riehm
Passing generations are always and typically concerned and critical of the younger generations, but for the current generation, it’s different. It’s not just wide-eyed curiosity, unbridled energy, and youthful exuberance. Our youngest generations are increasingly deprived, poorly educated, and too often maliciously manipulated. American youth are in real danger and the country is already suffering for it.
Kids today are deprived of the freedom we enjoyed just a few generations ago. Until about 30 or 40 years ago, most neighborhoods were safe, so the kids could play outside until the street lights came on. They rode bikes all over town, went fishing on lakes, and hiking in forests all without their parents. Kids could be kids. They developed a sense of adventure, learned to make friends and cooperate with those less friendly, but most of all they became independent with a genuine sense of the real world because there were consequences for poor choices. Fortunately, those consequences were only cuts and bruises or perhaps stitches or a cast, but young people were afforded the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Today, children are deprived of the opportunity to fail and learn. The world is too dangerous and sick now, so we dare not let them out of our sight. We should protect them, but now we overzealously insulate them from the real world. Everyone gets a participation trophy, so our kids don’t learn how to win or lose. They are deprived of that inspiration to strive for excellence and they are also cheated of how to cope with failure. If you never fall down, you never learn how to get up.
Since President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979, education in the USA has been steadily declining. The USA used to lead the world in math and science, but now we lag most of the industrial nations. Worse, we are failing to teach our children to read and write; if they don’t learn to read by Third Grade, the probability they will live in poverty sky rockets. Despite concerted efforts the past few years, university enrollment in math, medicine, and engineering are declining. Some can still get a good education, but the masses are falling farther behind every year.
A substandard education is negligent, but miseducation is criminal. Somehow students today don’t learn about our Constitution or how our government works. Too many don’t learn about our heritage and history; or worse, they are indoctrinated with revisionist tripe that America is a racist nation built on slavery. That’s utter nonsense that’s designed to teach young Americans to hate their country and rather prefer global citizenship.
Social media may connect people, but it’s also paralyzing people into senseless stupors. Tik-Tok and others are turning idleness into a competitive sport. On one hand, they encourage otherwise creative people to channel their talents into useless silliness; and on the other hand, these mediums are occupying the masses and keeping them from doing any productive activity – it’s turning young people into hopeless dolts.
While social media dulls the mind, drugs and alcohol alter the mind. Substance abuse has become the most debilitating force against our young people. Addiction is destroying lives and families in every community, but instead of trying to decrease the attraction and availability of drugs, pop culture glamorizes drug abuse and even pushes to legalize more drugs. It’s all a cynical deception that recreational drug use is harmless and conceals the reality that most drug users become addicts and that they and their families suffer, but our younger generations are having to learn these facts the hard way.
If American youth didn’t have enough problems, they are now being confused about sexuality. Traditional values are shunned as bigoted and young Americans are being misled to believe gender is fluid and perversions are acceptable and normal. This only benefits the depraved, but those trying to live normal lives find life chaotic and even disastrous when they think they can be content and prosper without any moral foundation.
Young Americans are beset by deleterious forces from every direction; they are under assault by globalists to be dependent and passive and by leftists to be immoral and ineffective. It’s all an evil campaign to defeat the USA by weakening the nation’s youth; our enemies both domestic and foreign want to sever our younger generations from the traditional values that made America strong and successful. They seek a weak America that will forfeit freedom and accept globalism.
If patriotic clergy, parents, and grandparents don’t start reversing this trend by teaching our youth the truth about God and Country, our enemies won’t have to defeat our posterity because they will have cultivated accomplices under our noses. It’s time to stand for truth and the American way; and most important, pass on our grand God given legacy to our youth.
“And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 11:19).
Pete Riehm is a conservative activist and columnist in south Alabama. Email him at
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
