CIRCLE THE WAGONS

As my dad reached the end of his almost 104 years of living, I watched his world get smaller and smaller. He went from a very active police chief to a man sitting in a recliner chair watching nothing but Fox News (I always admired that man), then when his eyesight failed, he would eat, sleep and listen to the Sinatra station on SiriusXM radio. The over-100 crowd fit in no demographic: no movies, TV shows or advertisements, and Sinatra was pushing the limits. The outside world was closing in.

While dad had 30 years on me, and I'm not at the end of my world, I can see it from here. Things are happening in the world today that are so foreign to the way and times I grew up in that I'm starting to price recliner chairs and subscriptions to SiriusXM.

I'm not saying that the changes today are all bad, nothing is all bad, but for a believer in the saying,"Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up," I see a lot of fence destruction going on. I risk sounding like an old man telling his grandson about walking 10 miles to school uphill both ways in a snowstorm, but I'm going to take that risk.

Back in the old days if a white woman said she is really black, if a man said, despite the obvious, he is really a woman, they would discreetly have an in-depth discussion with a professional in a white coat. While that may not have been the best way to handle the situation, I'm not sure being on the cover of national magazines and the main attraction of network and cable TV shows touting their strength and courage is the answer either, but that's the direction we choose to go in today.

On a Facebook posting from an organization named Newslinq, they had a story headlined, "He Found His 17 Year Old Daughter Sleeping Naked Next To A Boy On The Couch And This Is How He Handled It." I was pretty certain I knew how I would have to handle it but I was wrong. I guess I'm not "hip." The dad invited him to breakfast, found out he was a nice, homeless kid, invited him to stay with them and found him a job. The naked guy and the naked daughter are now married with a couple of fine kids. Boy, am I square!

The city of Santa Fe New Mexico has just passed a law making all public restrooms "Uni-Sex." Fine, I really don't have a problem with that because all the bathrooms in my house are uni-sex, but they "sold it" by saying that this was good for families, parents with different sex young children and (here is where they lost me) transgender folks. Are there so many transgender people that we would consider passing a law to insure they are not confused on which bathroom to use?

I went to an all-boys high school, 1500 boys, and I didn't know anybody who was gay. I'm sure there were some , it was just not a topic of conversation. A study today found that a cross section of people when asked how many gays they thought were in the US said somewhere between 20-25 percent. One in four, the public thought were card carrying members of the LGBT community. In truth there are, and I'm being generous, less that four percent. The media, especially movies and TV, have made up the rest. Have you seen any new TV show that does not include a main Black character, an inter-racial relationship and a couple of Gay characters? Consistent with the world most of us live in? I don't think so.

There were some things we thought were, "set in stone" and we lived our lives by them. Marriage was the word used to describe the union of a man and a woman. We had three distinct branches of government, each with its own specific responsibility. The Supreme Court ruled by law, not what they felt was the "intent" of the law. All gone.

We never got rewarded for trying, you received a trophy if you succeeded, and nothing if you didn't. The rules we lived by mirrored the world we were going into. Nobody seemed to care if my feelings were hurt because I was the first to sit down during an in-class spelling bee, or the last kid standing after a game of musical chairs, or that my body and pride were hurt because I wasn't quick enough during dodge ball.

I didn't know personally any blacks when I grew up but I know I was never afraid of them. They had families just like I did. They went to work just like my friends' families did. That was then, this is now. We all have read the unemployment, single parent, homicide statistics for Blacks, all increasing, for a large part due to the now 80 plus government programs for the poor designed to insure not succeeding gets them a trophy. I know people now who can't go to work; they would lose money if they did. Not sure that's progress.

When I first started flying on airplanes, I parked my car, went to the ticket counter, got my ticket without, I believe, showing a single piece of ID and walked on the plane. (Today if you tried that you'd be shot.) The plane, unfortunately, smelled like a very large ash tray. So, the government decided to step in and help out the helpless. They required the airlines to provide "no smoking" sections. This is the place anyone who does not believe in the "slippery slope" concept of social engineering should pay close attention. We have gone from smoking sections on planes to some places you can't even smoke in your house.

About 70 abortions were reported in the year I was born. In the year I turned 50 there were 1.6 million abortions reported. I fully understand the difference in laws and reporting procedures, but still........

We are all made up of our experience. Those of us that have lived a life of many decades have formed what for us works and the world in which we would like to see our children and grandchildren grow up. We, as humans, would believe everything if we could, but we can't, so we circle the wagons. We pick out those things that for us make sense and are intricate parts of the world as we believe it should be, we pull them inside the circle and by necessity keep the others, the Indians (oops can't say that), outside the circle.

As I have said before the problem I have as a Conservative is the Liberals are attempting to take the country Conservatives love and replace it with the country Liberals love. Why would we not fight for what we believe in? The Liberals, of course, have the reverse problem with Conservatives, but don't seem to care why the fence was put up just as long as it comes down.

Car seats, bicycle/horse riding/skate board helmets, knee pads, bottled water, medicine bottles you need a blow torch to open, lemonade stands you also can't open, and "finger" guns get kids suspended. Telling a woman how nice she look can get you fired. A teacher giving a student an "F" or, God forbid, hugging a student (or using the term "God forbid"), can put her on the bread line which she can live off of for as much as 99 weeks (worth a hug?). Holding a student back a grade. Police patrolling high crime neighborhoods rather than the ritzy part of town are accused of profiling. Thirteen year old girls regularly using the "F"word everybody but whites using the "N" word. We used to have to search for soft porn. Respect for parents, other adults, policemen, firemen, teachers, clergy is marginal at best. Just skimming the top of the changes I have seen.

Many of the changes that have occured over my life time have been for the good, others I’m not sure what they were for.

And to wrap up my attempt to make sense out of the direction of the country, I just came across a Liberal posting on Facebook from the Washington Post concerning what I truly felt was the class way those involved in the Charleston massacre handled the tragedy. The article was entitled, Black America Should Stop Forgiving White Racist.

Let's see I should be able to get a good recliner for about $600........