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| Peggy Noonan: We're Scaring Our Children to Death |
| 2007-04-27 |
| For 50 years in America, whenever the subject has turned to what our culture presents, the bright response has been, "You don't like it? Change the channel." But there is no other channel to change to, no safe place to click to. Our culture is national. The terrorizing of children is all over. Click. Smug and menacing rappers. Click. "This is Bauer. He's got a nuke and he's going to take out Los Angeles." Click. Rosie grabs her crotch. "Eat this." Ick. Click. "Every day 2,000 children are reported missing . . ." Click. Don Imus's face. Quick, go back to Rosie! Click. "Eyewitnesses say the shooter then lined the students up . . ." Click. An antismoking campaign on local New York television. A man growls out how he felt when they found his cancer. He removes a bib and shows us the rough red hole in his throat. He holds a microphone to it to deliver his message. Don't smoke, he says. This is what TV will be like in Purgatory. . . . Children are both brave and fearful. They'll walk up to a stranger and say something true that a grown-up would fear to say. But they are also subject to terrors, some of them irrational, and to anxieties. They need a stable platform on which to stand. From it they will be likely to step forward into steady adulthood. Without it, they will struggle; they will be less daring in their lives because life, they know, is frightful and discouraging. We are not giving the children of our country a stable platform. We are instead giving them a soul-shaking sense that life is unsafe, incoherent, full of random dread. And we are doing this, I think, for three reasons. One is politics--our political views, our cultural views, so need to be expressed and are, God knows, so much more important than the peace of a child. Another is money--there's money in the sickness that is sold to us. Everyone who works at a TV network knew ratings would go up when the Cho tapes broke. But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves. We are frightening our children to death, and I'll tell you what makes me angriest. I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. You can afford the doctors and tutors and nannies and mannies and therapists, the people who put off the TV and the Internet and offer conversation. In many cases, the makers of our culture don't even have children. If you have money in America, you can hire people who compose the human chrysalis that protect the butterflies of the upper classes as they grow. The lacking, the poor, the working and middle class--they have no protection. Their kids are on their own. And they're scared. Too bad no one cares in this big sensitive country of ours. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #13 eltoroverde, I new one of the victims. She was a lovely young lady looking forward to a carrier in chemical engineering. She was naive about the evil out there. She had no prior experience with violence, hence, she had no idea how to react. I feer we have sat idally by while the "hear no evil, see no evil, don't teach about evil" educational system has brainwashed our progeny. The mindset of "feeling" safe rather than being safe has triumphed in this instance. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-04-27 19:47 |
| #12 DG- Well said, indeed. How does ONE guy shoot off 170+ rounds, killing 30+ people, without anyone trying to stop him before he took his own life? With all condolence and sympathy due to the victims at VT and their families, I just can't get my head around that. My fear is that DG is absolutetly correct. And that does not bode well for our country or humanity. "There are no victims. There are only volunteers." |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2007-04-27 13:55 |
| #11 Home Schooling. Turn off the tube. Select the peer group carefully. |
| Posted by: Hupatch Flomolet2475 2007-04-27 13:39 |
| #10 Here, Peggy, let me fix that for you: " |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-04-27 12:54 |
| #9 DepotGuy, I wish I'd said that. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-04-27 12:19 |
| #8 The more sinister problem is not an over-abundance of “fear” used as a motivator. It is the constant indoctrination of “victim-hood” for the masses. All the examples that Noonan cites are packaged with someone or something to blame and the insinuation that there will be someone or something to provide a solution. A narcissistic loser sees vindication for his pathetic life by slaughtering scores of unarmed people. He believes that his wretched existence was unfairly thrust upon him. However irrational that may seem to others, he knows so-called “experts” willing to blame “classicism” or “racism” as the cause will openly dissect his narrative. Hundreds of “Young Adults” cower in fear as only one lunatic armed with only two handguns executes dozens of their classmates without any lifting a finger in an attempt of stopping him. They truly are victims of senseless violence and deserve sincere condolences. However offensive as this may be, many of them were programmed to be lemmings by a culture that has spoon-fed them from cradle to premature grave that someone will always be there to protect them. In the end they are added to the growing list of “Victims of Victimization”. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2007-04-27 11:39 |
| #7 Pappy, I remember the duck and cover drills of the 50s. I also remember growing up convinced that I was going to die (young) in a nuclear blast. |
| Posted by: Rambler 2007-04-27 10:35 |
| #6 The fearmongers target the children (and their adult equivalents) precisely because they are susceptible. Remember the '(US) nukes are bad for children and other living things' campaign of the 80s? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2007-04-27 10:24 |
| #5 Well Ms Peggy, you can thank the liberal left and it's media with an attitude of "anything goes" for much of what the kids see and hear today. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-04-27 09:58 |
| #4 Well, liberals can't replace their own since they abort themselves out of existence, so they have to come up with a new source of fresh blood. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-04-27 09:34 |
| #3 She has a point. Although perhaps not the one she intends. The fearmongers target the children (and their adult equivalents) precisely because they are susceptible. Global Warming is a classic example of we can't convince them with rational evidence based argument therefore we will get them them with irrational fears target at their general ignorance of the world. Children == Liberals == Children That's pretty much all you need to know to make sense of the modern world. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2007-04-27 07:16 |
| #2 Remember the puppies in "Animal Farm?" Yeah. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2007-04-27 07:16 |
| #1 It's a hard world Ms Noonan. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-04-27 06:14 |