Personal Responsibility & Behavior

       Coverage of the race riots in Baltimore, Maryland last week showed a woman removing her teenage son from the scene.  She was scolding him and physically hitting him.  The video shows her pushing and shoving him and pulling a ski mask from his face.  It shows her slapping him in the face several times while giving him a verbal tongue-lashing.

        The boy was not hurt except for his dignity and pride.  The embarrassment in front of his friends will take some time to get over. 

        The woman is a single parent with several children.  Some people say she should be nominated for Mother of the Year.  Maybe she should, but isn’t it the responsibility of a parent to teach their children proper behavior?  Where were the other parents?

        I am a little surprised I haven’t heard any liberals saying the mother should be prosecuted for assault.  Slapping him is corporal punishment and he could have experienced some pain.  He certainly experienced some embarrassment and emotional trauma.  She even used language that was not politically correct.  Maybe she should be reprimanded for that.  Maybe she should have met her son at the bus or school and walked him home.  He is a teenager, but I have heard of people being jailed for letting a ten-year-old walk home alone.  Why haven’t we heard from the liberals?  I guess they are just too busy promoting the protests. 

        Things have changed since I was raised, and I don’t think for the better.  That was a long time ago, but I was taught to respect the police and my teachers.  If I did something wrong, I was even more afraid of my parents.  I never heard of a timeout.  That would have been a treat. 

        I was taught responsibility and a strong work ethic.  Parents assumed this responsibility.  There were no excuses or attempts to transfer parent’s responsibility to the schools or government.  

        In the rural area of Iowa where I was raised, kids grew up fast.  They were given responsibility at an early age.  All farm kids had chores from a very young age.  Parents would have laughed at someone being prosecuted for letting a ten-year-old walk home alone.   At ten, farm kids were operating tractors and cultivating corn without supervision.  At age ten or eleven, my ex-wife cooked, cleaned, and cared for a neighboring farmer and his five children while the mother was in the hospital with number six. 

        There seems to be a direct correlation between the decline of the strong, traditional family unitand the lack of personal responsibility, responsible behavior, and a good work ethic in our young people.  Government should consider this, and stop throwing money at programs that not only don’t work, and in some cases make the situation worse. 

It is time for real change.