Tag: selfishness

Flag Day 2015: Dealing With an Intolerant, Disrespectful, and Egocentric Generation

On By kingsjesterIn Uncategorized2 Comments

911firefightersMiley Cyrus was in the news this week, once again, seeking attention through outrageous behavior, like reminiscent of an immature person trolling Political Facebook Pages.

Cyrus rose to fame on The Disney Channel as a fresh-faced, innocent pre-teen named Hanna Montana.

The show, which co-starred her dad, singer/songwriter Billy Ray Cyrus of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame, was a mega-hit among our nation’s youth. The plot concerned a ordinary girl named Miley (what a stretch, huh?) who donned a wig to become pop music sensation, Hanna Montana. The series followed all the goofy adventures which she, her brother, and her best friend, constantly found themselves getting into.

Fox News reported last week that

In Miley Cyrus’ super revealing Paper magazine cover story, the actress, who appears nude inside the mag, says she is the least judgmental person ever, yet she has some harsh words for Christian fundamentalists and her parents.

The magazine’s story on Cyrus notes that though she was raised Christian, the singer “maintains a particular contempt for fundamentalist lawmakers who rally against this sort of progressive, potentially life-saving changes [for the LGBT] community.”

The pop star told the mag, “Those people [shouldn’t] get to make our laws.”

The article touches on what Cyrus thinks of people who believe Noah’s Ark was a real vessel, “That’s f–king insane,” she told the magazine. “We’ve outgrown that fairy tale, like we’ve outgrown f–king Santa and the tooth fairy.”

She praises her parents throughout the interview, yet Cyrus slams their politics calling them “conservative-ass mother–kers.”

Last Year, she became the topic of Water Cooler Conversation across the nation for appearing on a national music awards program in a skin-tight “nude” outfit. performing a simulated sex act with 36 year old, Robin Thicke, who was married with a 3 year old child, We later found out that it was supposed to be a “dance” called “twerking”.

Think about this: a young fresh-faced, pre-teen girl, who was once marketed as the role model for young teens, with her likeness on clothes, lunch boxes, notebooks, and backpacks, in the center aisle in Walmarts around the world, has become a 20 year old, with her rear up in the air, on all fours, like she was a canine in heat, on a live television program, seen around the world,

The shock value, and outrageousness of her “performance” made her the talk of the nation and got her the attention that she craved.

Back in 2007, Radio Talk Show Host Glenn Beck, in his television show on Headline News, interviewed Billy Ray Cyrus about his daughter’s enormous popularity…and about their relationship.

“Are you at all concerned?” Beck asked the young star’s father, Billy Ray Cyrus, at the time. “I mean, the odds of Miley turning into Ron Howard — meaning sane — pretty low. Living in Los Angeles, being a child star — hello? Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, name a million others…”

Cyrus was confident that his daughter had a “great head on her shoulders” and a “great heart.” He also explained that he tries to be her “best friend,” while letting his wife act as the disciplinarian.

“I taught them how to build a good snowman, how to ride a motorcycle, how to ride a horse, how to roast a wiener properly over a fire, and a good marshmallow,” Cyrus explained. “…But discipline I always left up to the mama. She was really, really good at that. That never was — I never was really good at that.”

“This is driving me crazy…What is that from you then?” Beck interrupted. “…I don’t mean to be crass here — are you a cowardly guy?”

Looking back to that interview, after witnessing what Miley has turned into, I do believe the majority opinion is “yes”.

Billy Ray often has referred to the style of parenting which he used with Miley as laissez faire parenting.

I would just call it lazy.

Billy Ray’s, and his estranged wife’s lack of parental guidance has produced a train wreck of a young woman, along the lines of a Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.

So, Miley…once again, you’ve gotten your wish. You are the talk of America. However, folks are not talking about you in the same manner as they used to, when you were that angelic-looking child with the beautiful voice, winning smile, and perky personality.

Now, what Americans are trying to figure out, Miley, is how you’ve degenerated into what you have become: a young woman with loose morals, rubbing her rear against an older man, while appearing in a nude-colored two piece underwear-looking outfit, in front of God and everybody.

And, now, appearing naked with a pig.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed for the pig.

But, I digress…

So, anyway, here you are…telling all of us normal Americans, living out here in the Heartland, how stupid and intolerant we are, for actually holding to Traditional American Values.

I have heard this garbage before.

This being Flag Day, please allow me to relate the following story…

Back in 2011, I got into a discussion on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website with some cheeto-munching, Mom’s basement-dwelling Lib with no home training, who proceeded to tell me that he would be proud to defecate on the American Flag.

If I could have reached through my computer monitor and throttled that useless, ungrateful spoiled brat, I would have.

That “dude” was yet another example of the useful idiots of this present generation, such as Miley, that seem to be garnering a lot of national attention for their outrageous, disrespectful…and, yes, intolerant, behavior.

Just as we have been bearing witness for the last year, through the glorification of thugs and the vilifying of our local police departments by the Obama Administration and the local “communities” which they lay their lives on the line for, every day they put on their uniforms, the effects of LBJ’s “Great Society” on American Culture and the Black Family Unit, so are we witnessing, through the egocentric behavior of this present generation, what happens when children are left to “their own devices”, instead of being raised “in the way in which they should go”.

On this special day, in which we honor the symbol of our country, a symbol which has been defended and fought for, by the self-sacrifice of generations before us, it is time for Americans to take stock of what is happening around us.

What we seem to be heading for is not simply an immoral society, but, an amoral one, whose concept of right and wrong is “Whatever Gets You Through the Night (It’s Alright. It’s Alright.)”, and whose ultimate authority is not the God of Abraham, but a Godless Central Government, whose credo is

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. (Karl Marx)

Just as Marxism has failed wherever it has been tried before, so will it fail here.

Just as amorality and licentiousness led to the destruction of the Roman Empire, so, if unchecked, will it lead to America’s.

The galling thing is the fact that, even though American Christians remain 74% of the population, we are propagandized and suppressed in both the Old and New Media, to make it seem as if WE are the Minority, when, in fact, WE are the overwhelming Majority.

It is this New Generation of Amoral Socialists, who are in fact, just a tiny, albeit vocal, Minority of America’s population.

And, it is their intolerance, in the name of self-centered “diversity”, which reveals their true heart…every time.

So, what can an average Christian American, like you and me, do about this “Tyranny of the Minority”?

As the Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians, we can STAND.

However, you cannot stand without “the full armor of God”.

I have found, as have my family and friends, that the better that you are doing, in terms of your Christian Walk, the harder that you will be attacked.

10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.…- Ephesians 6:10-12

By now. you’re probably asking, “So what’s the point of all this, KJ?”

We are given free will by our Creator…will to make choices and decisions on the direction of our lives. Being human, we often don’t make the right decisions and being human, those decisions have the potential to lead us down a dark path.

Whether is in reality or strictly in the close quarters of our own consciousness, the path we choose to follow is up to us.

We still live in the greatest country on the face of the earth and we still have a responsibility to one another.

The Light or the Darkness. The choice is up to each and every one of us.

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:14 (ESV)

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Living in This Age of Selfishness

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

selfishnessYesterday morning, I fixed my bride and myself some leftover spiral-sliced honey ham sandwiches for lunch. As I was spreading mayonnaise on the last four pieces of bread in the loaf, I took the ends for my sandwich. 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:

Americans are becoming more selfish.

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.

For example, let’s look at the family living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

In the first three months of the year, members of the first family have been on three vacations, averaging a vacation a month. And now it’s being reported that the first daughters are on a spring break vacation in the Bahamas.

The Obamas began the new year in Hawaii. “President Obama departed Hawaii this morning for Washington, after spending NINE days vacationing with family and friends in his native state. Here’s a quick look at how he spent his vacation,” ABC reported on January 6, 2013.

“Obama played FIVE rounds of golf with SEVEN different partners, spending roughly THIRTY hours on TWO different courses on Oahu. The president made FIVE early morning trips to the gym at the nearby Marine Base at Kaneohe Bay. The First Family spent TWO afternoons enjoying the beach on the base and went for ONE hike to a local waterfall. The president spent ONE father-daughter afternoon with Malia and Sasha, bowling and going out for shave ice, an annual tradition.”

Then the first lady and their daughters vacationed in Aspen over President’s Day weekend. “First Lady Michelle Obama arrived in Aspen on Friday afternoon and is here with her daughters for a ski vacation,” Aspendailynews.com reported in February. “Few details about her trip were available. Sources said she is staying at the home of Jim and Paula Crown, owners of the Aspen Skiing Co. She is reportedly skiing at Buttermilk today, where the Crowns, of Chicago, own a home on the Tiehack side.”

We have all seen Obama be a smart aleck  with everyone who dares question his brilliance, to the point of petulance. Obama’s behavior reminds me of the way Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman behaves when he’s upset,

I know you are. But, what am I?

And, of course, his lovely wife Mooch, err, I mean, Michelle, fancies herself a Professional Nutritionist…even though it takes her two trips to haul…err…butt.

But, this new selfishness doesn’t just stop with the First Family. 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 allegiance 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 the school my bride works at, the young boys and girls (third and fourth graders) disrespect the 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,î 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.î

I believe that a lot of this selfishness 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.

God Save the Union.

Until He Comes,

KJ