‘We the people’ will lead
Matt Pearl
I cannot stand to write about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Ben Carson — we’ll let that pile fester for awhile, then bring the conversation back up in weeks to come.
Instead, my mind has been upon the youth of our communities.
Obviously, our young folks make positive contributions to our society and our towns. But overall, the parent side of me has begun to ask myself questions about how our children are being reared here in the good old Midwest.
What sparred this was a Monday interview with King City High School alum and Oklahoma University athletic department member Merv Johnson. It was my first meeting with Mr. Johnson, and I found him to be a fine, kind, soft-spoken man.
You remember those guys, right? The kind of folks who did their talking with their actions and their virtues, instead of with their incessant jabber and negativity. We’ll feature a story on Johnson in the next few weeks, and it’s something I advise you to force your teenage kids/grandkids to read.
Anyway, Merv talked about having as a young man to get up with the sun and do various chores as required on the farm. He spoke of 12-year-olds doing a man’s day of work, and how that shaped his work ethic and erased the athletic opportunity gap between himself and others in his field of collegiate sports.
Essentially, hard work and mental discipline trump raw ability. As soon as we remember this and employ the virtues of hard work in our own lives and instill them in our children’s, we won’t have to wait for Trump to offend us or for Sanders to promise us fool’s gold.
We won’t have to rely on the assistance of a government that can’t balance its own books. We won’t need saving.
We’ll put ourselves in position to be self-sustaining, relying upon our sweat, our family’s love and support, and the good Lord’s promise to us.
When I see dads teaching their kids to work, mothers instructing them how to behave, and brothers and sisters helping one another to have comfort and confidence, I say it does not “Take a village to raise a child.”
Rather, when we’re doing things right, it takes a parent to raise a child, and strong families to improve the village.
Chores are not punishments. Spankings are not hateful beatings. Work is not abuse. A parent saying, “No,” when the situation requires such is not an act of cruelty. Presidents are not kings, congressmen are not gods, and you and I need to remember that everything that was ever good with America began with folks doing what was right.
I cannot end hate, war, and racism. But I can elect not to be the source of any such poisonous elements to our society. In my house, we will not hate. We will not cause violence upon others. We will not choose to treat human beings this way or that based upon their color.
So who cares if the blowhard builds a wall? He won’t be able to do it anyway.
Free college promises from the democratic socialist? My kids will be prepared to work for it, so when that pipe dream falls through, we won’t have our entire future invested in it. Did you ever meet anyone whose life was ruined because he or she had to scrub dishes or work in a warehouse to pay the bills during college? Me neither.
Here’s the deal: the world can lean left or right, and things can be going great or going poorly — if we are working to do what is good and right, we will survive. We may be rich, we may be poor, or we may be (as often is) neither. But we will be Americans.
Our government is led, as the Constitution promptly states, by We the People.
