This past weekend, a friend of mine attended his 13-year-old son's baseball game. What he saw encapsulates a major reason many of us fear for the future of America and the West.
His son's team was winning 24-7 as the game entered the last inning. When he looked up at the scoreboard, he noticed that the score read 0-0. Naturally, he inquired as to what happened -- was the scoreboard perhaps broken? -- and was told that the winning team's coach asked the scoreboard keeper to change the score. He and some of the parents were concerned that the boys on the losing team felt humiliated.
In order to ensure that the boys losing by a lopsided score would not feel too bad, the score was changed.
As is happening throughout America, compassion trumped all other values.
Truth was the first value compassion trashed. In the name of compassion, the adults in charge decided to lie. The score was not 0-0; it was 24-7.
Wisdom was the second value compassion obliterated. It is unwise to the point of imbecilic to believe that the losing boys were in any way helped by changing the score. On the contrary, they learned lessons that will hamper their ability to mature.
They learned that someone will bail them out when they feel bad.
They learned that they do not have to deal with disappointment in life. Instead, someone in authority will take care of them. (This is how reliance on the state for personal problems -- the worldview of the Left -- is formed early in life.)
They learned that their feelings, not objective standards, are what society deems most important.
Continued... |