AMERICA AN INFANTILE NATION: HOW BREEDING OVERGROWN CHILDREN BEGETS THE NANNY STATE

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

A United States naval midshipman, David Farragut, commanded a
captured British vessel during the War of 1812 — at age 12. Now major
universities provide “healing spaces” with Legos, coloring books,
Play-Doh, and puppies for students who “can’t handle” Donald Trump’s
election victory.
In 1798, Giocante Casabianca, who was 10 to 13, would not abandon his
post without his commander’s word, and perished on his ship’s fiery
deck during the Battle of the Nile. Today, undergraduates demand
protection from “microaggressions,” which can include statements such as
“America is the land of opportunity” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see
race.”
Calvin Graham became the United States’ youngest decorated war hero,
receiving the Bronze Star and Purple Heart at 13, serving heroically
aboard the USS South Dakota during WWII. (He’d lied about his
age to military recruiters.) Now college students demand “trigger
warnings” when a professor might ­present something traumatizing, such
as The Great Gatsby, whose “trespass” is that it portrays suicide, domestic abuse, and graphic violence.
Why, we might say today’s little snowflakes need to “man up,” but
watch out! That term is verboten on some campuses because, supposedly,
it’s “offensive” and distressing. But what’s really distressing is that
many “adults” today aren’t half the boys our ancestors were.

In reality, it was common years ago for young children to assume
adult responsibilities. Apprenticeships at age eight weren’t unusual;
Spartan boys would be conscripted into military camps at age seven; and
in the Middle Ages, six- or seven-year-old boys of noble lineage might
begin training to be knights. Teen marriages also weren’t uncommon;
today, perhaps even more teens have children — but sans marriages. And
now millions of grown Americans while away hours playing video games,
with the average age of “gamers,” as they’re known, being 31 to 35.
It doesn’t take great maturity to realize that, somehow, modern
society is stunting people’s moral, spiritual, intellectual, and
emotional development. This is frightfully alarming for a simple reason:
Overgrown children cannot maintain their liberty any more than the
young lads in Lord of the Flies could avoid their quick descent from democracy to dictatorship.
Of course, an analysis of what’s breeding modern immaturity first
requires defining what true maturity is. Obviously, this doesn’t merely
concern cognitive development; for all we know, with puberty beginning
considerably earlier now than 200 years ago, kids may experience this
sooner today as well (seems doubtful, though). As serial killers and
tyrants prove, intellectual capability without corresponding moral
understanding just makes for a more formidable evildoer. No, at issue is
the development of something else: virtue — that set of good moral habits.
Ah, virtue. While many moderns can’t define the term, the Founding
Fathers often stressed its importance. Ben Franklin noted, for example,
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become
corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” And Samuel Adams
wrote that men “will be free no longer than while they remain virtuous.”
There’s no question someone would be considered mature if he’d mastered
his moral self and exhibited faith, hope, honesty, charity, fortitude,
justice, temperance, prudence, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness,
forgiveness, humility, and love (the preceding is mostly a combination
of the theological, cardinal, and heavenly virtues). There’s also no
doubt that everything we now complain about regarding über-sensitive
young people infused with a spirit of entitlement — those now dubbed
“social justice warriors” — is a function of lacking virtue.
Consider the all-too-common playing of the victim card, the blaming
of outside forces (other people, the “patriarchy,” “racism,” etc.) for
one’s own failings, real or imagined; it would be beyond a person who
was honest, charitable, just, prudent, kind, forgiving, and loving.  For
another example, in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” a 2015 piece
appropriately accompanied by a picture of a four-year-old in a college
lecture-hall chair, the Atlantic lamented a current movement on
campuses that “is largely about emotional well-being” and “presumes an
extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche.” Yet any actual
fragility reflects a lack of the virtue of fortitude, whereas feigning
fragility is dishonest. And excessive focus on one’s own emotions is
narcissistic, indicating pride, vanity, self-absorption; it isn’t a
fault plaguing a humble, loving individual. Of course, the obvious is
being stated here: All man-caused problems are the result of sin, of
vice. The solution always is virtue.
What’s Going On?
As a house or car left to sit will evidence, things move toward
disorder and dilapidation without the application of energy; a
civilization is no exception. Failing to forge the next generation
properly ensures degeneration; this is why Thomas Paine noted, “Whenever
we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary,” and President Ronald Reagan warned, “Freedom is never more
than one generation away from extinction.” Our enemies understand this,
too. As ex-KGB agent and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov (a.k.a. Tomas
Schuman) once explained, it only takes one generation to complete the
first step in the Soviet process of “ideological subversion”; this step
is called “demoralization,” mind you, and involves undermining the morals
of a target nation. Of course, except in the cases of revolution, such
as in 1917 Russia, freedom’s loss is an incremental process. Yet there
is no doubt that, theoretically, we could transition from
constitutionalism to communism in one generation — were parenting bad
enough. This is yet another reason why raising children is a holy
calling.
It’s no surprise moderns fail to instill virtue in their children;
not only is the word poorly understood, it’s rarely used. Instead we
hear statements such as, “Children have to be raised with values,” which
is as meaningful as the diet advice, “Food has to contain calories.” As
social commentator George Will wrote in his 2000 column “Forget Values,
Let’s Talk Virtues”:

The point is, virtues reflect Truth and are good by definition;
“values” may just reflect individual preference and can be good, bad, or
neutral. No parent, anywhere, fails to raise his children with
“values.” Virtues? Ah, they’re a different matter.
Why are virtues are out of vogue? First, they spoil the fun of, and
render implicit judgment on, those in vice’s grip. It’s man’s nature to
seek justification for his sins, and you can’t eliminate the concept of
vice (thus achieving complete absolution: You can’t sin if sin doesn’t
exist) without eliminating its correlative reality, virtue. Second,
however, virtue, again, refers to moral habits, and morality’s
existence presupposes a source beyond man: God’s Truth. Thus, a
prerequisite for belief in virtue is belief that Truth and, therefore,
morality exist. Yet today the vast majority of people are moral
relativists — as 2002 Barna Group research showed — embracing the notion
that what we call “morals” are inventions of man and are thus just preferences.
Of course, this is just another way of saying morality and hence moral
habits, virtue, don’t exist. And then you’re left with those generic
things, “values,” whose existence requires only that someone somewhere
for some reason values something.
Thus do we today place great emphasis on children being excellent,
but not nearly as much on their being good. Parents will spend thousands
of dollars on tennis or music lessons or on academic tutors,
understanding well that their child likely won’t develop the skills or
attain the knowledge in question by happenstance. For they well know
there are rules (fundamentals) governing these matters and that what
constitutes proficiency in tennis, music, or math isn’t mere “opinion.”
Yet awash in the relativistic belief that moral rules essentially don’t
exist (and, of course, some believe this more consciously and completely
than others), parents today generally don’t know the “fundamentals” of
virtue. And you can’t teach what you don’t know — or model what you
don’t embody. No matter, though, the children certainly will adopt
“values,” whether they derive them from television, the Internet,
school, friends, a combination thereof, or the Devil himself.
Yet as with tennis and math, children won’t become virtuous by
accident. People once understood this and also recognized that
instilling virtue in a child was a prerequisite for everything else;
it’s the fertile soil in which good things can develop and flourish.
Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, for instance, wrote at length about
cultivating an “erotic attachment” (meaning, emotional) to virtue in
young children. Reflecting my earlier point about the relationship
between faith and morals, Declaration of Independence signatory Benjamin
Rush stated, “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic
is to be aid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and
without virtue there can be no liberty.” And virtue-oriented teaching
was a staple of American education — until it went by the wayside in the
first decade of Great American Vice, the 1960s.
Worse still, today’s teaching often casts vice as virtues. A
generation or so ago, the “self-esteem” movement began, fueled by the
notion that girls performed worse than boys on standardized tests
because our white, male, linear-logic, patriarchal society damaged their
self-esteem. So self-esteem “tests” were devised and, sure enough,
girls scored lower. Theory proven?
Not exactly. Not only did educators overlook that girls were already
getting better grades than boys, they also ignored that scoring highest
on the self-esteem exams was the group performing the worst
academically: black males. Moreover, that one self-esteem exercise was
to have children stand before their class explaining why they were great
should have told the tale: “Self-esteem” had become a euphemism for the
sin of pride.
And so it goes. Lust is called “sexual liberation” and incredulity
(lack of faith) sophistication. Envy masquerades as compassionate
redistributive policies; and vindictiveness, wrath, and injustice as
“social justice.” Dishonesty is spun as “spin” or a “narrative” while
imprudence can be a “lifestyle choice.” Cowardice in action may be
called compromise, and indifference is branded tolerance.
Then there’s the point that growing up just isn’t in fashion
nowadays, with many lamenting our “youth culture.” Yet part of the
reason there is a youth culture is youth congregation. For most of
history in most places, children were mainly socialized within the
family unit, with secondary exposure to the tribe, village, or clan.
This ensured ample mature role models and a balance of interaction, with
the young exposed to other children, such as siblings and cousins, but
also parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, at whose sides they’d
often work. Yet modern society has a child spend a good part of each
day, five days a week, in institutions composed almost entirely of
children. Not only may these youngsters reinforce each other’s childish
behavior, but there is that tendency for the bad apple to spoil the
whole bunch. Moreover, today’s undisciplined school environment reduces
most government schools to babysitting centers at best, quasi-prisons
where the inmates run the asylum at worst. This can create a situation
vaguely approximating that in Lord of the Flies, the
aforementioned 1954 William Golding book about a group of schoolboys
who, upon being stranded alone on an island, descend into barbarism.
Consider another aspect of this radical childhood-period departure
from the historical norm. Work was always an integral part of most
children’s lives. It might have been a boy hunting or tending the fields
with his father or a daughter helping her mother keep house. This is
significant because as the proverbs tell us, “Work ennobles man” and
“Busy hands are happy hands.” Work builds character — it encourages
virtue.
This model began to change by the 19th century, explains the online
Marriage and Family Encyclopedia, and, gradually, “children as a whole
were excluded from the adult world of work and the period of dependent
childhood lengthened.” This raises an interesting point: We know what
dependency breeds among welfare-class adults. Is it much different with
children when that dependency becomes excessive?
To be clear, a certain amount of dependency is proper. And we
certainly don’t want children slaving away 12 hours a day in hellish
factories, as could be the case during the Industrial Revolution. Yet
“an idle mind is the Devil’s playground,” and today we occupy the other
extreme. With ample free time, including summer vacations, we’ve become a
decadent recreation culture in which youth sometimes spend hours
playing video games or viewing porn (according to psychotherapist and
“screen addiction” expert Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, “8- to 10-year-olds
spend 8 hours a day with various digital media while teenagers spend 11
hours in front of screens”). College now reflects this, too, with young
people having the expectation the play will continue; in fact, going
away to university and having the “party experience” is considered a
rite of passage. Even intimate human relations have been made frivolous.
“Recreational sex” and “sex toys,” anyone?
Moreover, consider the modern parents who, let’s say, during summer
vacation, struggle to keep their children entertained, only to find the
kids ever dissatisfied and craving something more. Such children are
typically called spoiled, yet there’s another factor: Adults living
frivolous, aimless lives can descend into a sense of meaninglessness,
which is no doubt one reason Hollywood types too often take the
drug-addled walk of shame. And while children are in a different phase
of life, they nonetheless have the same human needs. Will they not be
happier having a sense of meaning? We’ve all heard the catchy proverb,
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” but, not surprisingly, the
second part of it is seldom today uttered. To wit: “All play and no
work makes Jack a mere toy.”
So our problems clearly are systemic. Yet it must be reiterated that
things tend to start at home, and today we’re in the grip of parenting
so permissive it permits vice (misbehavior). Family psychologist and
writer John Rosemond has called this a dysfunctional parenting paradigm,
explaining the permissiveness thus: “Where we once viewed misbehavior
as a moral problem, we now see it as a psychological problem.” Before
proceeding, note that this again simply reflects our atheistic,
relativistic spirit of the age. After all and harking back to my earlier
explanation, we won’t perceive moral problems if we believe morality is
an illusion. As for psychology, Rosemond slams psychologists as
“professional enablers” peddling a “mechanistic” lie in which
misbehavior is blamed on biology (genes, chemical imbalances, etc.) or
environment, with free will removed from the equation. Yet this makes
sense from an atheistic perspective. Without a soul, man is a mere
organic robot, some pounds of chemicals and water. And then you evaluate
him as a robot: Misbehavior is malfunction, caused either by faulty
hardware (biology) or software (programming), with all the causative
forces lying beyond the automaton’s control.
The traditional (correct) view is different, Rosemond explains in his 2000 book Raising a Nonviolent Child.
It was always recognized that we’re born fallen and uncivilized, acting
on impulse, and prone to selfishness, aggressiveness, and all manner
and form of vice — and the sooner these impulses are tamed, the better.
Of course, since virtues are caught more than they’re taught,
modeling proper behavior is imperative. Yet childhood obedience was also
recognized as a prerequisite, for how can someone learn from you unless
he first will listen to you? Listening comes before learning. So the
traditional parent established obedience, and deterred misbehavior with
sufficient punishment.
Today, though, such tactics are deemed harsh and damaging to
self-esteem. There is little accountability, and this results in what
Rosemond calls the “no fear” (and no respect) generation, raised by
parents who are quite fearful of many things: their children’s
misbehavior, not pleasing their children, and not being loved by them.
Of course, this itself is selfish. True love means giving a person what
he needs, even if it may displease him and make him displeased with you.
What these parents are exhibiting is not love, but emotional
dependence.
The consequences of not taming the beast, of not instilling virtue,
are all around us. So-called ADHD is just an example of
professional-enabler psychologists redefining what was formerly
recognized as a sin (misbehavior) as a condition of the brain; as
Rosemond points out, “ADHD” behavior is simply typical toddler behavior
extended into later childhood by modern parenting. And, not
surprisingly, childishness is extended beyond childhood. Do we not see
this in the young people rioting because the election didn’t go their
way and who demand “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and other types of
coddling?
Moreover, the schools, which Rosemond calls “punishment free zones,”
just exacerbate this problem, with colleges offering a panderly,
partying, propaganda-filled atmosphere that can serve to extend
childhood beyond graduation.
True civilization is when most people have become morally advanced
enough to attain authentic adulthood. And what are the consequences of
this not occurring? As I explained in “Written in the Eternal
Constitution” (The New American, April 14, 2008), beginning with the
micro, a small child is

Such an outcome is a disaster for the given family, yet the wider
problem arises when barbarism becomes prevalent enough so that it
characterizes the people. For a people whose collective mind-set would,
like a toddler, make it nanny-worthy, will end up being governed by the
nanny state.
The solution? It has already been stated. As John Adams put it, “The
only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.” We’re fond of
talking about liberty, but like a child who wants freedom but not
responsibility, this puts the cart before the horse. Speak of virtue, of
morality, of seeking Truth — and walk that talk — and liberty takes
care of itself. It’s also now in fashion to speak of making America
great again, but this, too, confuses the order of things. The apocryphal
saying warns, “America is great because she is good, and if America
ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” Take care of the
goodness, and the greatness takes care of itself. Fail to do these
things, and, ironically, we’ll be forging our fetters with cries of
freedom.