Who screwed who?

Over the last four years, Dan Bongino has evolved from an obscure Secret Service agent to political candidate to pundit. Along the way, he’s taken the core beliefs he was instilled with and managed to broadcast them to wider and wider audiences through his unique combination of eloquence, entrepreneurship, and hard work.

But I have some reason to question his latest piece on Conservative Review regarding the Millennial Generation. While Dan, who just turned 40 late last year, is less removed from the Millennials, I have the advantage of having a daughter who came in right around the dawn of what is considered that generation as she was born in 1983. So I’ve had a front-row seat to a good deal of her upbringing and education.

Dan devotes a significant portion of his piece to the new book by Mark Levin, Plunder and Deceit.

It is a must-read for young Americans who are looking to escape the Democratic Party’s deceptive, focus group tested talking points and looking to find the truth.  Additionally, the book is a must-read for Americans of all ages who want to understand, and be able to explain to open-minded young Americans, the danger we are in if we fail to correct our course.

In this age of political correctness that seems to enslave those of the Millennial Generation, my question is whether these youths have an open mind to listen and look for the truth, rather than exist in a cocoon of dependence. It’s a failure of my generation that just assumed that our kids would be taught the same values and morals that we were when we sent them off to our public schools. (I was taught in both a public school and university, but we send Kim’s daughter to a Christian school. She figured things out in time, but the powers that be do not like that style of independence.) Looking back, though, we really weren’t taught proper values and morals from our folks, either. (Needless to say, the schools didn’t do it, either.) But my generation really screwed the pooch, didn’t we?

If you learn an entitlement mentality and get a prize just for participating in any event at a young age, the necessary lessons that you can’t always get what you want and won’t always finish first aren’t taught. When I played Little League, we kept score and oftentimes I was on the losing side. But that made the game where we ended our long losing streak that much sweeter.

My older daughter started out in T-ball and we didn’t keep score so we didn’t bruise the self-esteem of these 1st and 2nd graders. But I know the kids did – they knew who won and lost.

Yet over time, in a society where we were supposedly trying to allow kids to have fun, we were regimenting more and more of their activity whether competitive or not. It saddens me to drive by an empty baseball diamond knowing that when I was eight or nine years old I spent my days over at Heatherdowns Park playing pitcher’s hand, right field automatic out, four-on-four pickup games – unsupervised, with no sunscreen or batting helmets and a regular baseball as opposed to the slightly softer ball they use for T-ball now. More often than not, we had the do-over when there was an argument.

Kids now are treated either like miniature adults or hovered over by anxious parents who have garnered a name for themselves: helicopter parents. Many of these are the Millennials who can’t bear the thought of little Aiden playing cops and robbers with a finger gun or Mia wishing to have Barbie dolls like Grandma had; instead, we have to have politically approved, unisex playthings for “play dates.” My play dates were from June to September at the park or at various friends’ houses, and after school the rest of the year. But we knew to ask the mom at the house we were at when it was 5:00 because that was time to go home for supper, or we were shooed out the door so they could eat their family dinner.

I’ve gone a long way afield to make a simple point: in the modern day, the Democratic party is like the kid who ran for class president on a platform of no homework, a longer recess, and ice cream sandwiches with our lunch. What kid wouldn’t vote for that?

Those of us who are of a certain age soon realized that such a fantasy platform came to a screeching halt when the adults who were in charge told us “no.” Now the adults will try to accommodate the requests, since little Aiden and Mia can’t be wrong and the teachers need to see things their way.

In an age where childhood can legally be extended to the age of 26 – based on the age when a parent’s health care plan has to cover a youth – the perpetual adolescent will always seek the handout. I pray more people will seek the truth that life isn’t always fair, there is right and wrong, and things are worth working for, but the fact that we even needed a column like this from Bongino is evidence that I need to redouble my efforts.