Hi Moose,
Maybe my perspective is warped by old age, can't really separate it all
out. As to my own family, the best comparison I can draw is with my
grandkids. They have all finished college before embarking on family
responsibilities. The two boys were in the final years of their medical
education before their first child was born. Although their wives have
professions to fall back on, they are serving as full-time moms. I see
little difference between their lives and those of my wife and myself,
except they are better fathers than I was.
What I see on the nightly news these days is the exact opposite of that.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 9/9/2015 12:38 PM, Moose wrote:
On 9/9/2015 9:18 AM, Jim Nichols wrote:
Ken, I had the same thoughts. There seems to be a real lack of
personal responsibility these days, and I'm afraid it is being passed
on to another generation.
OK, I gotta break out of our Brooklyn idyll to ask a question.
Do most of you lovely folks really believe that the overall
intelligence and common sense of USian young people is declining? Of
the West in general?
Jim, is this true of your kids, grandkids and greatgrandkids? Or only
of others that you don't know but hear about?
Might many of us be looking with the perspective of age, conveniently
forgetting certain aspects of our own youths?
Might the dramatic change in media/information resources more
dramatically and often show the results of regular old stupidity and
the age old foolish risk taking of young men that we would not have
known of in past decades?
Hanging around in the Windsor Terrace area of Brooklyn, walking a lot,
sitting outside at a restaurant, etc. I've been impressed at the
number of young people on the streets with kids, how busy the local
playground is, etc. Lots of pregnant women, many pushing strollers. I
don't know how old they are, but everybody looks happy, healthy, well
fed and clothed, etc. Traveling up through Harlem and back, the kids
changed average color and language, but nonetheless appeared well and
well looked after.
Whether our country should be reproducing at the rate we are, I don't
know, nor what to do about it if the answer were 'no'.
On 9/9/2015 11:13 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
This story is so wrong on many levels. We talk about gun laws, but
what about laws that should prevent such a young person from already
being a father to two children.
So, you might like to go back to the idea of Eugenics?
I guess that I'm off the rails on this one, but nobody should be
allowed to marry or have children until they are 25.
I married at just barely 22. Should someone else have decided whether
I could or couldn't? Had my first child at 27. Whew, dodged the bullet
there.
And even then,
you should have to pass a means and intelligence test.
Well, that should certainly put the cap on the Decline of the West, as
no-one else will do it. Did you know, and perhaps decline to recall
the European countries that have put major incentives in place to keep
the birth rate at or above replacement?
As with Eugenics, who gets to set the standards?
Might we then want to set standards to be enforced as to other aspects
of behavior?
You are off the rails and started down a slippery slope.
I can see where having girls the age of yours, and one suddenly off
out of sight and control might scare the hell out of you, but
generalization of an imagined solution to your fears isn't valid.
Moose D'Opinion
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