WBAL.com reports that

Melania Trump on Tuesday defended the rights of teenagers who booed her when she addressed them in Baltimore, a city her husband, President Donald Trump, has disparaged as “rat and rodent infested.”She traveled there to urge hundreds of middle and high school students to avoid misusing drugs, saying that would make it harder for them to achieve their life’s goals. But her remarks drew a mix of boos and cheers, and the audience remained noisy throughout her five-minute address.

It is highly unusual for a first lady to be booed at a public appearance. Mrs. Trump released a statement hours after she had returned to the White House, defending the principle of freedom of expression while reaffirming her commitment to the issue that drew her to Baltimore.

“We live in a democracy and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the fact is we have a serious crisis in our country and I remain committed to educating children on the dangers and deadly consequences of drug abuse,” Mrs. Trump said.

The first lady has been using her prominence to spotlight programs she thinks can help young people, whether it’s to teach them to be positive online or to avoid drug misuse and addiction.

She went to Maryland to address the Baltimore Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness, appearing on behalf of her “Be Best” youth campaign, which includes a focus on the U.S. epidemic of opioid misuse.

Students simultaneously booed and cheered her introduction.

When the audience remained rowdy after she began to speak, she interrupted her remarks to say, “Hello, everyone,” before continuing.

The first lady said she wants to raise awareness about the opioid epidemic and help educate young people about living drug free.

“I am in this fight with you, and I am fighting for you,” she said, and urged anyone struggling with addiction to ask someone for help.

“I know each one of you has hopes and dreams for the future, whether it is college, joining the military, or playing a sport. Your future will be determined by the choices you make,” Mrs. Trump said. “Using drugs will only slow you down and prevent you from achieving those goals.”

Last night, as I was running down to the local Chinese Restaurant for some Chicken Fried Rice and Sween and Sour Chicken to bring back home to my bride, I heard on the car radio about what happened to our beautiful, classy First Lady.

It was then that I realized that something has been sticking in my craw lately. Maybe I’m just getting old.

HEY YOU KIDS…GET OFF OF MY LAWN!

Anyway, one of the things that is currently troubling me, is this unpleasant fact:

This current generation are a bunch of self-centered brats.

It’s not just the J.R. Ewing kind of selfishness, otherwise known as a thirst for money and power. It’s different than that. It’s more along the lines of adults, who have never grown up.

It is pervasive throughout American Society. It is taught in our homes, by parents who, wanting the best for their children, teach them, from the time that they are old enough to understand, to look out for number one. Then, these little darlings go to school, where they’re taught that morals, values, and ethics are situational things, and that they owe neither allegiance nor respect to no one, neither God nor Country.

This didn’t happen when I was school age. In Elementary school, we prayed every morning, sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, and said the Pledge of Allegiance, with our hands solemnly over our hearts.

In fact, by the time we were school age, our parents had already taught us to say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”. If we didn’t, we were disciplined. To this day, the back of my legs faintly read “4…5…6” from my Mother’s yardstick.

Nowadays, in schools across the country, young boys and girls disrespect their teachers, rolling their eyes at them, and back-talking them. When the staff tries to discipline them, the parents come up to the school and chew them out for treating their little darlings so badly.

The young adults in this country, who were raised in such an ego-swelling, egocentric, lax environment, seem to be having trouble comprehending why they should give a..err..hoot ‘n holler about how their behavior effects those around them.

I, being the old fa…fogey that I am, am always attempting to explain to them that no man is a island. There are consequences for your actions, and, those consequences affect more than just you.

On May 18, 1800, Reverend Joseph McKeen, Pastor of the First Church of Beverly, gave a timeless warning, in a sermon given to the House of Representatives and the Senate of the State of Massachusetts…

Good example acts with the greater effect, because it reproves without upbraiding, and teaches us to correct our faults without giving us the mortification of knowing that any but ourselves, have ever observed them. We feel the force of counsel or persuasion much more sensibly, when we see that one does what he advises or requires us to do. But the best counsel from one, who obeys not his own precepts, nor practices upon the principles of his own advice, will generally be little regarded. We do not believe a man to be in earnest, who advises one thing, and does the contrary.

To resist the progress of irreligion, injustice, luxury, selfishness, and an impatience of legal restraint, is a duty imposed by patriotism.

…The love of liberty we inherit from our fathers; it is so “interwoven with the ligaments of our hearts”, that there can be little doubt of our enjoying it, and little danger of its being wrested from us so long as we are capable and worthy of it. But a capacity for enjoying it depends on a sound and healthful state of the body politic.

The more freedom we have, the more necessary is the aid of religious and moral principles to the maintenance of order and tranquility. When these are lost, or very much relaxed, severe restraints, which cannot always admit of those legal forms, that are essential to the security of liberty, become necessary; yet the people may retain a love of liberty, or rather an impatience of restraint, as the sensualist retains a passion for pleasure, after his constitution is so much impaired by excess, that indulgence would be fatal to him. Liberty, like the pleasures of sense, must be enjoyed with temperance and moderation, lest degenerating into licentiousness it prove destructive. There are none, it may be presumed, who will openly avow that political liberty is, or ought to be, a license for every one to do what is right in his own eyes; yet where the love of liberty is strong, and its nature not distinctly understood, there is too often a disposition to look with an indulgent eye on licentiousness, as only the extreme of a good thing, and therefore pardonable. But the difference between them is greater than some imagine: They are indeed so different, as to be incompatible in society. When one has an excess of liberty, he invades the rights of his neighbor, who is thereby deprived of a portion of the liberty which a free constitution promises him. Liberty in that case becomes exclusively the possession of the strong, the unprincipled, the artful, who makes a prey of the innocent, weak and unsuspicious. A state of things like this is a real despotism, and of the worst kind. It is a poor consolation to the plundered, abused sufferer to be told, that he must not complain; for his oppressor is not an hereditary monarch, acting by a pretended divine right, but only a fellow citizen, acting in the name of “liberty and equality”.

I believe that a lot of this selfishness, rudeness, and out of control behavior we see around us in Today’s America comes from a generation not “being trained in the way that they should go”. Without strong role models, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise, children have no one to model themselves after. If the parents are selfish themselves, or, enablers, guess what their precious little darling is going to turn out to be?

The precious little darlings of the last few decades, who were raised to be selfish, are now selfish adults.

Unfortunately, selfish children tend to grow up to embrace a like-minded political ideology. And, then, they vote for those politicians who offer money for nothing and all the free stuff their hearts desire.

In other words, they vote for the Democrats.

God Save the Union.

Until He Comes,

KJ