Millenials Are A Mess

I saw an article entitled Why The Millenials Are Doing So Poorly and figured I should find out just how badly my kids are doing.  The article features a photo of a kid in a dunce cap.

Just so we know who we're talking about, according to the Pew Research Center, Millenials are those born 1981 to the present.  The Baby Boomers are defined by the years 1946-1964 and the Gen X-ers  are those born between 1965 and 1980. (Millenials are sometimes split into Generation Y born between 1975 - 1992 and Generation Z born between 1993 and present.)  Finally, the Silent Generation is the 1928-1945 group.

The results of a Pew Research Center Study are at least part of the reason that Mark Bauerlein from Emory University, the author of the article, is in abject despair about this age group who he essentially trashes in this article.  I read the Pew Research article he refers to and I even took the Pew Research Quiz to find out how "millenial" I am and I couldn't agree less with Bauerlein.  He's writing on Minding The Campus, a website whose focus I share (or thought I did), but, frankly, an academic is an academic. Nobody is ever okay except them.

A quick Wikipedia check of Bauerlein reveals him to be a convert to Catholicism and a liberal or libertarian on social and political issues.  He wrote a book called The Dumbest Generation.  He sounds a lot like Michelle Obama on The Tonight Show talking about knuckleheads.

Bauerlein notes that Millenials tend to vote as Democrats, give Obama a fairly high approval rating, lean favorably toward activist government.  But on the "quickie"quiz, Millenials identify as politically conservative in roughly the same proportion as the other age groups.

Bauerlein writes that Millenials "judge politics by how it affects them, and we see that personal-only perspective in their social focus."  While it is the case that a high percentage of Millenials have some sort of "social networking profile," it is also the case that a lot of people must be on electronic devices a lot of the time;  I text as much as a Millenial, I play video games as much as  Millenial (oh dear), read a daily paper as much as a Millenial (rarely if ever) and watch TV as much as a Millenial (rarely if ever).

A defining characteristic of Millenials according to Pew Research studies is disaffiliation.  Millenials "are at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics."  I find that to be anecdotally true among the Millenials I know including my own kids.  I don't think that's necessarily a bad trait.  Yes, it could reflect apathy or malaise but it may also reflect a healthy skepticism of the lines that have been drawn in the sand for the Millenials by their predecessors.

Millenials didn't come from nowhere.  They're  inheritors of a popular culture and a set of values that they didn't create or even help to evolve as did many of us Boomers, whose children the Millenials are.    Heaping criticism and disdain on them as Bauerlein does is mis-placed, uncharitable. Low marriage rates among Millenials, low levels of social trust, skepticism that God exists, where did it all come from? We have the opportunity to influence, mentor and educate this group. And the responsibility.  Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, must cross paths with hundreds of students a year.   As Catholics, if that applies, and it apparently does to Bauerlein, we're called to evangelize the culture.

Get out there and get to work, man, and stop crying in your beer with grumpy articles like this one.

First "Stupid" Then "A Knucklehead"

Several years back, when it came time to do the college search, our oldest son decided to apply to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  Living in Manhattan, coming from an international private school, and, for us, a family with no military background, it was an unusual path to take.

It generated not a few comments from those unflaggingly progressive New York City neighbors and friends of ours, most of whom had nothing particularly nice to say either to our son or to us as parents.  One especially angry neighbor stopped me on 14th Street just in front of the post office to ask what was going on and she (yes, it was a woman) finally could contain her distress no longer.  Her face red and her stance belligerent, she yelled after me that "only a 17-year old would be stupid enough to do something like that." Shortly thereafter, when our son was a first-semester plebe at West Point, then-Senator John Kerry delivered his own version of what most of my neighbors had been saying a few months earlier. Kerry told a college-age audience that they needed to be smart and get a good education lest they get "stuck" in the military.

Well, our son did do "something like that" and while he's not "stuck in Iraq" he is now a 25 year old soon-to-be captain in the U.S. Army.  He's been a platoon leader, planned missions and conducted training sessions. He handles and is responsible for equipment valued in the millions of dollars.  He lives in beautiful country, but he's 3,000 miles from the rest of his family.  He works long hours with modest pay.

And according to First Lady Michelle Obama he's a knucklehead. 

Oh, it's not just our son by any means, and she wasn't singling out knuckleheads in the military.  She was more sweeping in her characterization of young people as a group of knuckleheads.  I happen to have three in my family.  As Mrs. Obama puts it, my kids would be among those young people who are "cookin' for the first time and slice their finger open."  Presumably, according to the first lady, when my kids and their goofy lot aren't bungling something in the kitchen,  they're out "dancing on a bar stool," drunk enough to fall off and get a concussion I would imagine. And since they're all knuckleheads, they won't have insurance so they won't be able to get their finger stitched up, that is, if they're even smart enough to think to go to the doctor.

The First Lady's shallow humor was a push for her husband's Affordable Care Act, delivered at the expense of the young people who helped send Mrs. Obama and her husband to the White House.  Her hapless remark, like Kerry's "botched joke," has been covered by a variety of sources and there's not much more I can add except to shake my head in the disappointing knowledge that the first lady has a lot in common with my neighbors and friends of eight years ago.  They were merely speaking their minds when they let go with their opinions on young people joining the military just as Michelle Obama let us know who she thinks is stupid.  While I applaud them their honesty, I find it remarkable that these unflattering, critical labels roll so easily off the tongues of, well, liberals who pride themselves on being tolerant and well-educated and smart.

Michelle Obama On Living Out Your Faith

I know it's an old article, from 2012, a year and five months old to be slightly less than precise, but who can resist Michelle when she's "speaking truth to power" and talking about Jesus as an example for our lives.  I just read the article again after seeing Mrs. Obama's wise words quoted regarding Liberty Ridge Farms, a business that is doing just what First Lady Michelle is advocating--living out one's faith every day of the week.  Moved to speak about Christ, clearly Michelle is not an angry black woman.

“Our faith journey isn’t just about showing up on Sunday for a good sermon and good music and a good meal. It’s about what we do Monday through Saturday as well, especially in those quiet moments, when the spotlight’s not on us, and we’re making those daily choices about how to live our lives.

“We see that in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t limit his ministry to the four walls of the church,” she said. “He was out there fighting injustice and speaking truth to power every single day. He was out there spreading a message of grace and redemption to the least, the last, and the lost. And our charge is to find Him everywhere, every day by how we live our lives.”

The owners at Liberty Ridge Farms remained  true to their beliefs not just on a Sunday when it's easiest to be faithful, but on a weekday when they explained to a probing caller that their business couldn't host a same sex wedding.  Now they're involved in a lawsuit and being asked to pay damages. 

Michelle talks about "our faith journey" though for all she and her husband are now affiliated with a faith journey, minus their perfunctory Easter family visit,  the Obamas are presumably among the 60% or so of Americans who seldom or never attend church.  (That's  except for the 20 years when the Obamas weren't really regular attendees at that Jeremiah Wright church in Chicago and didn't listen anyway when they were there.)  The President's administration is notably hostile to the practice of religion in the public square--exactly what the First Lady is advocating here--with its HHS mandate, its attempts to limit religious freedom in the military, its disinterest in America's commitment to religious liberty globally and the President's narrow interpretation of what religious freedom and the First Amendment mean.  From an article in First Things:

Barack Obama once asserted that “our deliberative, pluralistic democracy demands . . . that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”   

As the article points out, this is precisely what our democracy doesn't call on us to do.  Our "religiously motivated. . concerns" are our particular religious beliefs, particular to us, to the dictates of our conscience.  They are, as James Madison writes, our property to which we have that God-given right as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Referring to President Obama's commitment to religious liberty internationally, which differs not at all from his commitment to religious liberty domestically,  the article goes on to say,

The current administration, while it has delivered some nice speeches on the subject, has invested its energy and resources in the promotion of “LGBT” interests, not religious liberty. Obama took two and one-half years to get his ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, in place, and even then she was buried deep in the bureaucracy, with little authority or resources. Clearly the Obama administration has subordinated religious liberty to the international pursuit of what it believes to be superior rights claims. 

Michelle reminds us that what's important are "those quiet moments" when we make choices about how to live our lives. Speaking truth to power.  Fighting injustice.  Finding Christ "everywhere" by "how we live our lives."  Saying one thing but meaning another.  Probably.  Deception comes in many guises and turns of phrase.

Brawn vs. ?

 

More about the differences between the sexes.

From Blackfive, Deebow asks if you have to work at being as stupid as Col. Ellen Haring at the Army War College.   Why, yes, you do because you have to defy the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" repeatedly over a period of many years in order to firmly convince yourself that the sun really does rise in the west, that black really is white and that women certainly are just like men if you will only first strip men of the masculine traits which uniquely define them.  That is, once you re-define the world according to your own terms, you can be as far off base as Col. Haring.

In this article by Col. Haring, reported on here,  the colonel gets to the heart of her argument by calling into question what makes a good combat soldier.  Once she's pointed out that decorated hero Audie Murphy was physically unfit --by today's standards-- and that North Vietnamese soldiers are the size of women, she decides there's no reason to "rely on traditional notions of masculine brawn that celebrate strength over other qualities.”  Precisely.  Traditional notions are dangerous for feminists like Haring because tradition relies on the fact that physiological differences in the male body, like testosterone for starters,  account for greater male strength.  If she can define strength, brawn, out of the equation, women can play the game too.  To be sure, the colonel notes that  "Combat specialties, it turns out, are inherently endurance-based occupations. Evidence in hand, they [Canadian Forces] shifted from strength-based standards to endurance-based standards, and far more women began to qualify for combat specialties."  But as pointed out here, though women may qualify, they will likely not endure.   And as noted here  (8th paragraph), even if able to endure, they may not show. Now why in the world would a woman be more likely to have concerns about her family than a man?  Something about being a woman?

As argued elsewhere and in the comments to Haring's article, there is no reason to have women in combat roles other than to satisfy the politically correct, feminist entitlement argument that because they want it they should have it.  As Deebow writes, " . .  no matter how calm, creative, and quick thinking the fairer sex is, there are still less of them that can lift that 81 baseplate and walk it to the top of a mountain carrying a full combat load and their own gear than there are dudes who can do the same." 

But, even more to the point, brawn has a role to play, not just in being a soldier, but in being a man.   It's important not to define out of existence traits that make men manly and women womanly.  In fact, we can't.  Those "Laws of Nature of Nature's God" prevail. Society has a stake in the sexes knowing how they are different and in maintaining standards for traditional male roles vs. traditional female roles.  Will every man fit the stereotype?  Will every woman fit the stereotype?  Of course not, and those who don't will need to find their place but that doesn't mean the standard isn't useful. Along with re-defining soldiering, Colonel Haring might also wish to re-define the law of gravity, but if she chooses for some odd reason to jump from a 10-story building, she will likely find that she still goes down. With a splat.  

 

NYC Schools Distribute Plan B

Here's another example of New York leading the country in progressivism as our governor proudly trumpets we do so well here in the Empire State. 

About 50 schools in The Big Apple are dispensing Plan B to students, no parental approval necessary unless a parent is fortunate enough to receive an opt-out notice from the school as given to the parent by their child.  The article is a mish-mash of sketchy background information and quotes by teen-age girls who have no idea what they're talking about.

This article,  a slightly more balanced coverage of the issue,  calls the distribution of Plan B Bloomberg's "stealth war" on teenage pregnancy.  It's actually more like Bloomberg's stealth war on young, uninformed females from lower socio-economic backgrounds.  What does it matter to the mayor if 16 year old girls from the Bronx are sexually active and then ingest high levels of hormones to prevent their 'unwanted pregnancy?'  At least he doesn't have to get either his heart or hands dirty by actually caring about the girls and what they're doing.  Give 'em a pill and call it a day.   I've already written about this as stealth population control here. 

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

It is a mouthful. There's a whole book on the subject by sociologist Christian Smith and co-author called Soul Searching:  The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.  It examines the religious life and leanings of teenagers through conversations and interviews, but I think this readable article  which contains a lot of pithy information must be a pretty good stand-in for the book.

Mr.Smith describes this 'religion' (which he's careful to point out is not a religion any one teenager would every claim as his own, but is rather Smith's term for what he uncovered) as having five characteristics.   To paraphrase:  1) there is a God who created the world and watches over it,  2) God wants people to be good, 3)  the goal of life is to be happy, 4) God isn't involved in one's life and isn't usually called upon unless there's a problem, and  5) good people go to heaven when they die.
 
As Smith himself points out by the end of the article, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD for purposes of this blog) can be said to describe not only the spiritual lives of American teenagers but the spiritual lives of any number of adult Americans who have
passed on their particular brand of sketchy Judeo-Christianity to the next generation.  "The religion and spirituality of most teenagers actually strike us as very powerfully reflecting the contours, priorities, expectations and structures of the larger adult world into which adolescents are being socialized."
 
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a little bit like a new word that enters a language.  For a time the word hangs on to its history and everyone knows where it came from so to speak.  (So for us ancient types, we know that the word 'xerox' evolved as a verb meaning 'to copy by machine' because there was a company Xerox that invented the machine.)  But after a time,  the word's history becomes only so much baggage and falls away.  The word becomes just another word to its new generation of users.  Its original meaning may even change completely and end up as an archaism studied only by fuddy-duddies interested in ancient history. 

The MTD faithful know a little bit about the history of their 'word.' They know there's a Bible, sort of.  They know there's an all-powerful God, kind of,  and they know there's something good about being good, for some reason.   But the whys and wherefores of their new religion are  history, only so much baggage that has fallen away, no longer of interest for its new generation of users.  Words coming and going and changing meaning along the way is one thing.  Language has to behave that way to serve the needs of its speakers who use it as a tool.  Moral teaching isn't supposed to behave that way.  It's foundational, true at once and for all time and it changes its users who use it as a guide and model.

Though perhaps unbeknownst  to the Therapeutic Deists, the Judeo-Christian bedrock is still there underneath all their feel-good add-ons.  As Smith writes,  "It [Moralistic Therapeutic Deism] cannot sustain its own integral, independent life.  Rather it must attach itself like an incubus to established historical religious traditions, feeding on their doctrines and sensibilities, and expanding by mutating their theological substance to resemble its own distinctive image. "

If the MTDers were to take a look at the source of their mutated religion, they might see how much  more sense the real thing makes and how much more they might gain by believing in the whole truth rather than the bowdlerized fairy tale version.

 

Deebow Speaks - Women in Combat

Molly Pitcher In Combat

I have no first hand experience in the military, let alone in combat, which causes some to peremptorily declare that I can't be against women in combat because, with no military experience,  I'm not eligible to have an opinion on the subject.  This is of course not good thinking.  Plenty of people are against all kinds of things with which they have no first-hand experience.  People who have never starved decry starvation, confirmed bachelors declare marriage a waste of time and secular humanists rail against organized religion though the last time they were in a house of worship,  if at all, is when Mother and Dad took them as mere babes. 

Anyone can be for or against something based on principles, beliefs and logical, common sense reasoning in addition to relying on experience.  Speaking of the latter,  here is someone who can talk about the senselessness of women in combat based on his experience.   It all makes sense, but here is a taste of Deebow's thinking:

This idea that we can reshape our force by allowing women to be snake eating Navy SEALS and make us more combat effective is the pinnacle of Libturd thinking.  General Dempsey believes that the US Army can make standards in these unique career fields "gender neutral."  Well General, they already are.  You have to be able to demonstrate for the Blackhats that you can do the buddy-run carrying the man next to you until they say "ENDEX" and not end up with stress fractures in your hips and shoulders. You have to be able to do as much as the man next to you in your boat crew, for as long as the Navy SEAL screaming at you from the top of the berm tells you to do it.  You have to be able to carry your battle rattle, and maybe that of your wounded buddy, for miles and not completely destroy your body doing it.  The battlefield is an unforgiving place and you don't get safety stand downs when you get hot and tired and the fighting doesn't stop just because your needs aren't being met.

Joan of Arc in Combat



 

Parent, Child, Marriage

The same-sex marriage movement is presented innocently as nothing more than endorsing the 'right' of same-sex couples to marry just as heterosexual couples marry.  Supporters of same-sex marriage are quick to label any opposition to their view as bigoted, homophobic, hateful and just plain old stupid.  Those of us on the other side of the aisle look upon same-sex 'marriage' first as an oxymoron, but moreover as a move to re-define marriage, to toss out the traditional notion of marriage and to reduce the uniqueness of (heterosexual) marriage to naught, to profoundly change what is natural and normal. 

This slightly dry and tedious article illustrates how same-sex unions and same-sex 'marriage' include re-defining the relationship between parent and child.  Better to start at the end of this article with this quote,

As the sociological bonds between parent and child are perverted through a redefinition of marriage, it seems the resistance to breaking the biological bonds wanes as well. Replacing the marital act with various assisted reproductive technologies dehumanizes children and treats them as commodities to be manufactured and marketed for the pleasure of adults.

and read backwards.

At The Bottom of the Slippery Slope

I wouldn't have come across this article except for the fact that I'm a Family Research  Council (FRC)reader---oh yes, they're the "hate group"--and so I was able to get Jillian Keenan's perspective on why social change shouldn't stop with same-sex marriage.    Jillian Keenan is she who had the "courage" to write about her spanking fetish published in the paper of record.  That's news.  In this article, Keenan writes that legalized polygamy would be good for women, good for immigrants and good for shoring up our constitutional right to religious freedom.

Keenan takes the following line to try to defend her enthusiasm for legalizing polygamy.  Since heterosexual marriage has its flaws and two-parent families are no longer the norm for Americans anyway, why penalize those who want the choice of being married to multiple men or women.  And, since we've already opened the door to everything else why not add legalized polygamy as well?  As she says:   "Divorce, remarriage, surrogate parents, extended relatives, and other diverse family arrangements mean families already come in all sizes—why not recognize that legally?"   Ideology obviously trumps reason here.  And it can also create strange bedfellows.  Keenan favors legalized polygamy because she wants to defend the rights of her Mormon fundamentalist friends.  I'm guessing she voted for Mitt Romney? 

By her way of thinking, Keenan also keeps company with her opposition,  those who argue that same-sex marriage will open the door to polygamy and other types of sexual relationships regarded as harmful to society.  We're right!

ShowSplash

In an abrupt departure from topics normally covered here, I would like to post a short advisory about the company iMovies Ltd and their related company ShowSplash. Have nothing to do with them.

They are supposedly based in London. Based on my experience with iMovies and ShowSplash over the past year, they seem to be a fly-by-night operation, wholly without integrity and a comprehensive rip-off.

I've spent the past year trying to sort out how and why we were charged approximately $50 a month over a 10-month period for supposedly signing up with ShowSplash. No one in our family recognizes this site though our name certainly appears on the account. We must have connected through a site of another name and have failed to check or uncheck the appropriate hard-to-find box which offered us membership in this deplorable operation.

When I called ShowSplash to dispute the charges on our bill, I reached a call center in the Caribbean.
That seems to be all there is to this 'company'--a call center with young women who have a supervisor who is never available. More astounding yet was when I was told that their manager doesn't make or receive phone calls! Nor does he have a telephone number! Really!

After numerous phone conversations to the Caribbean I sent a letter to the London office. No reply. Then I sent several e-mails to contacts listed on both the ShowSplash and iMovies Ltd websites. I got a reply saying they would be happy to help and gave me a phone number. Guess where that number led--yes, the call center in the Caribbean.

I sent another e-mail and received a reply saying that I should feel free to contact them again. Yes!

By some miracle, if not the intervention of a higher power, I received a call today from the manager in Barbados. Yes, he finally returned my call of April 24, 2012, just a mere seven months late. Also today, I received a voice mail from ShowSplash which said that they wanted to resolve the problem, but they couldn't get in touch with me. The woman who called left no return phone number and the call came through as 'unknown number.' Yes, really.

Supposedly, the manager is sending the refund I requested next week.

iMovies Ltd.

In an abrupt departure from topics normally covered here, I would like to post a short advisory about the company iMovies Ltd and their related company ShowSplash. Have nothing to do with them.

They are supposedly based in London.  Based on my experience with iMovies and ShowSplash over the past year, they seem to be a fly-by-night operation, wholly without integrity and a comprehensive rip-off. 

 I've spent the past year trying to sort out how and why we were charged approximately $50 a month over a 10-month period for supposedly signing up with ShowSplash.  No one in our family recognizes this site though our name certainly appears on the account.  We must have connected through a site of another name and have failed to check or uncheck the appropriate hard-to-find box which offered us membership in this deplorable operation. 

When I called ShowSplash to dispute the charges on our bill, I reached a call center in the Caribbean.
That seems to be all there is to this 'company'--a call center with young women who have a supervisor who is never available.  More astounding yet was when I was told that their manager doesn't make or receive phone calls!  Nor does he have a telephone number!  Really!

After numerous phone conversations to the Caribbean I sent a letter to the London office.  No reply.  Then I sent several e-mails to contacts listed on both the ShowSplash and iMovies Ltd websites.  I got a reply saying they would be happy to help and gave me a phone number.  Guess where that number led--yes, the call center in the Caribbean. 

I sent another e-mail and received a reply saying that I should feel free to contact them again.  Yes!

By some miracle, if not the intervention of a higher power, I received a call today from the manager in Barbados.  Yes, he finally returned my call of April 24, 2012, just a mere seven months late.  Also today, I received a voice mail from ShowSplash which said that they wanted to resolve the problem, but they couldn't get in touch with me.  The woman who called left no return phone number and the call came through as 'unknown number.'  Yes, really.

Supposedly, the manager is sending the refund I requested next week. 

Same Sex Marriage - Another Look

Dress Code Equality For All

I wasn't sure whether to tag this Inside Higher Ed Quick Take 'For Fun,' 'Weasels' or 'Homosexuality.'  Perhaps a new category, 'Going to Hell in a Handbag' as some put it,  would be required here. 

I reproduce the article in its entirety:

The University of Oxford, responding to concerns about equity for transgender students, has dropped the dress code that has been in place for students at some formal academic events, BBC News reported. The current rules, which will end August 4, require male students to wear a dark suit, black shoes and a white bow tie and a plain white shirt and collar under their black gowns. Women must wear a dark skirt or trousers and a white blouse. The rules were criticized as forcing transgender students into traditional gender roles.