Boy, I hardly ever post these days, eh? Well, my two readers probably hardly ever check. So I won't even think twice about going on a little rant. Here's the thing. I just read this book, and it so perfectly sums up a thought that I've been having and need to vent.

I've posted before about the feeling of entitlement my kids tend to have and how it drives me crazy, and it's partly that. But not just the feeling they have; it's the total lack of effort they are willing in to put into achieving anything deserving. And here I should clarify that I don't mean my kids this time. I mean the good old US of A and it's inhabitants, particularly the more youthful among them. There's a bit of scorn for effort in general, like anything you have to work for is an infringement of your rights, is a drain on your freedom, man. I'm just saying that respect in general ought to be based on worth, and it seems like we've become afraid both to demand achievement and call out garbage when we see it. There's a real push, it seems to me, to be so very careful not to offend, not to place our own values on other people's work. But that just means we lie a lot, and promote sub standard achievement.

Which brings me to the second point--tolerance and political correctness. I find it irritating to be pushed into sounding so conservative, but are we so ashamed of having values that we have to pretend that all values are equally valid? I mean, don't values by definition mean that we hold certain ideas or behaviors above others? How have we become so bullied that we just pack our ideals away and say, hey, sure--anything goes! I'm sorry, but I believe that there are some ways of living that are better than others. I'm not going to stone you for choosing different values, but I'm not ready to be shamed into denying my own. And it's that shaming that I see going on all around me and that is so wrong.

OK, I can't say any of this well. So here's a passage from Wallace Stegner's All the Little Live Things, wherein the character speaking has just been asked what he thinks about the [human] race in the context of a disturbing young man named Peck.

"I think the race will multiply, for it is unfortunately very fertile. Since marriage is one of the conventions the Pecks are busy breaking down, more and more children will be illegitimate or deprived of the dubious advantages of what we used to call a home. Because of that and other strains, more and more adults will be hoodlums, criminals, and the effectively dispossessed, and from these both our demagogues and our novelists will increasingly take their morals and their attitudes and their lingo. First we help create these underworlds, and then out of guilt and sympathy we imitate them...."

Proposition 8, anyone? And this was written in the 60's.

"We imitate it out of pity, and we create it out of pity. Any civilization that achieves anything has losers--one of the reasons it achieves is that it has clear ways of telling its losers from its heroes. We have given up heroes--they go in for achievement. So we have more and more surviving losers, whom we imitate because we can't be ruthless enough to put them down...."

I guess I believe in heroes and losers. I believe in effort. In achievement. In making choices and living with the consequences. In respect, for the love of all. Whew. I feel better.