Longing for Approval

Here, I think, is the crux of the matter. We have spoiled several generations I fear. It began with the Greatest Generation which returned from a truly horrific war against truly evil people with a powerful desire to protect their children. I know veterans of that war who never told their families what they went through in that war. They jumped every time a car backfired or thunder boomed. They lived with nightmares and did not want their children to ever experience anything like that.

And they spoiled them. We saw the results of that back in the 60s. Some of the kids did good things like march in Civil Rights demonstrations and face the Democrat batons and fire hoses. Others spit on returning soldiers. 

They in turn spoiled their own children – at least a significant number did. And so it went down the generations. One thing I learned as a parent and teacher is that if you do not set firm limits on a child’s behavior, the child becomes anxious, angry and restless. They go on to raise another generation trying to give them what they think is missing. Unfortunately, it never occurs to so many of this last generation of parents is that what their kids were looking for were limits. They needed to know that their parents and their society had expectations for their behavior. In the absence of boundary setting by parents, teachers and authorities, kids escalate their behavior until someone finally does say, “Stop!”

Sadly, by that time it is too late. There is a reason the prison population has grown so fast. Too often parents abandon their duty to teach their kids that there are things they cannot do without consequences and leave it to the cops to do so.  With three strikes and you are out laws, the kids we have raised to be slow learners, soon find themselves in a prison cell for a very long time.

Those with some modicum of self control, grow up with a vague sense of longing for approval. They didn’t get it from home. The community failed them so they are angry with those who raised and taught them that they weren’t worth disciplining. Discipline is how we meet the test to become adults. If we are not tested, we don’t feel like we were worthy to be inducted into the ranks of adults.  By extension, since their family and community failed them, they also are angry at their whole country since it doesn’t seem the country is ever going to hold them accountable in any real way.

So what we are seeing is a generation that is looking outside our borders for approval. If these uninvested man children (or woman children) link up with the global socialist movement it is because they hope the world’s approval will make them feel approved of.  By rioting, looting and burning, they feel they have earned their membership in the global progressive community and by extension, have earned the opprobrium of the peoples of the world who have not yet failed them.

Sadly, there’s always that look of shock on their faces when the global socialist actually do lower the hammer. It never occurred to them that testing the limits of totalitarians could get them such severe consequences.

We can only train up our children in the way they should go and pray we raise enough of them to stave off the horrors of the collectivist state that they think they will love and that will love them.  The rigorous demand that everyone in the group believe the same things, say the same things and even dress all in black with masks is appealing to uncivilized quasi-adult children.

It’s really sad. I’m worried we won’t be able to hold out as that generation has chosen a party that is willing to lie, cheat, steal and even murder in their quest for power. The party makes them feel good; gives them a sense of unearned moral superiority.

God help us all.

Tom King
Puyallup, WA