thanatos144

I turned 40 the 21st of April and I was thinking of the changed that I have seen and if they were for the betterment of the country.

When I was a child my first memory of a political event was Reagan beating Carter. Now my grand father who I was living with at the time did not think talk about it but was mad that grandma voted for someone else....So one went for Carter and another for Reagan.....If I had to guess grandpa would have voted for Carter cause he was a union man.

My grandfather who I loved and respected more than any man fought in WWII at the age of 16 (lied on his application) yet never but one talked about it yet he worked hard to provide for his family. This is a stark contrast to my father who was a drunk who for the first 7 years of my life had very little to do with me...Last time saw my father was on my 8th birthday. He bought me my first bike. He died when I was 17 at 42. So my grandfather was the main male figure in my life. He was a Democrat.....I am not. If it wasn't for the union I don't think he would have been one ether. He didn't see how different those who he was voting for were from him. That was the main change in my life. I can see the democrats becoming more and more blatantly liberal and socialist.

You have to remember that being a kid in the 80's was different than it is now. Hell I could leave my house and stay out all day till dark. Now I worry about my stepdaughter outside my own door. Now some will say the dangers were always there and that would be partly true but only a very small part. Our parents were raised differently then we raise our kids. We and our youth have forgotten what respect truly means and what real neighborhoods are. Now we have junkies at school yards and guns in the schools. I never would have brought a gun to school. Never. What changed? It was how we raised our kids. It wasn't TV or video games it was us. Our parents taught us we had a responsibility to be good.....We didn't do that.

Schools are different as well. Every time I talk to my stepson about things like history he seems dreadfully ignorant of things. I thought at first he was just not paying attention.....But the more I talked to his friends and other kids his age I found out it wasn't them. Now I remember my mother and grandparents talking about how easy we had it as kids and I didn't think anything of it....Yet now I see it. We are not teaching our children things in school that matter anymore. We are not properly getting them ready for the real world. Of all the things that have changed this is the worst. Our teachers ether cant teach or are told they are not allowed to teach true history and true life matters. The students are not as smart or ready for life as we were.........The student hasn't changed so it is the teaching. Or more aptly the way we are teaching. The new way teaching doesn't work. It not only doesn't work but it is harmful to the very students it was created to help.

I guess what I am getting at is that in the short span of 40 years the one thing that has struck me the most is that our kids have changed........That means we changed. We are failing our youth. This isn't a liberal thing or a conservative thing. We stopped teaching our kids they should respect others. We have become a selfish people. We expect the government to do what we should be doing. It isn't up to Obama or Romney to raise our children. It is our honor.