Matters Of Opinion

When will Americans be considered adults?

This piece originally written for the NWI Times and published August 30th, 2010

Here I sit, a 24-year-old husband and father of a 15-month-old son (with another on the way as well, thank you very much). I have a mortgage, a car loan, and probably too many credit cards. I work 40-plus hours a week, plus attend school full time, plus my plethora of hobbies and commitments with politics. I can be drafted, I can be called on for jury duty, and I’m expected to pay my taxes.

Yet I’m deemed so stupid and apparently childish that I can’t make my own decision as to whether or not I wear a seat belt. I can only buy so many cans of beer at a time, and certainly not on a Sunday. In some cities, I’m not even allowed to salt my food! And God forbid a want a few tasty trans fats on my burger.

What’s happened?

I remember thinking when I was in high school about all the freedom I’d have when I became an adult, how I wouldn’t feel like I was being treated like a child anymore. I don’t want to go as far as calling this a “big brother” society just yet; there are quite a few other liberties that would need to be eroded before I’ll be willing start espousing such quips. However, with the direction that we’ve been moving as a country, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a horror could become a reality.

“Adult kids” are becoming more of a norm than the exceptions to the rule. It’s one thing to live with mommy and daddy while attending school, or saving up some money, or because an individual is just dealt a few bad hands in life and needs some recoup time. It’s another when no too little effort is put forth to become a productive member of society.

While this is ultimately a job of the parents to give the “adult kid” a good swift kick in the behind for some motivation, and granted not enough parents are willing to do this and so the fault falls on them in a major way, the laws that we’ve been passing are not helping out at all.

Take this latest health care reform bill, for instance. All other parts aside, agreements and disagreements and politically charged debate aside, the worst thing we could do is to extend the age to 26 for “adult kids” to stay on the insurance of their parents.

Now, a college student? I could understand that. But there are no such stipulations. Should I, as a husband and father and adult, be able to piggy back on “daddy’s” insurance? Absolutely not! At age 26, one is supposed to have some kind of direction, some goals of one sort or the other. They aren’t supposed to be given even more incentive to leech off of their parents.

But these are only a few of the instances where we, as society, are treated like children, and they are only the symptoms of the greater problem — that so many in government truly believe we should all be taken care of, with no regard to the examples being set and incentives that make people in society shrug their shoulders and let their proverbial diapers be changed.

I can clean up after and take care of myself quite well, thank you very much, Mr. and or Mrs. Politician. I already have somebody to tell me what to do: she’s called my wife.

Are Ground Zero Mosque Opponents ALL Just Bigots?

To start with, I want to give my own thoughts on the mosque that is very near ground zero.

On a legal basis, there isn’t much to be said against it. Private groups can privately buy property and put up whatever the hell they want to. The permits were all approved, and really, that’s that.

I understand the opposition, however. While I can’t see anything that can be done about the mosque being built, it does give me an uneasy feeling. Not because it’s necessarily a “celebration mosque”, although I can’t say for sure it’s not, but because it just…doesn’t feel right.

Let’s say that I decided to build a museum dedicated to the most successful white people in Gary, Indiana. It wouldn’t be right, and the predominately African American community in that city would be rightly pissed off because it would seem like a slap in the face.

Or, let’s say that I decided to buy property and put up a KKK historical museum next to the building that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in. It would be a huge slap in the face, and there would be a LOT of negative reactions.

Granted, this is a LITTLE different, since it has to do primarily with freedom of religion in our country that allows anyone and everyone to worship however he/she feels, but it’s a little bit similar as well because it involves an uneasy clash between cultures that has resulted in violence and death.

Now, some may read this opinion and immediately jump on the “he’s a bigot” bandwagon. That’s a shame. I would have hoped that we were a civilized enough society where people could intelligently speak to each other and express concerns. Sure, there are some bigots that have a somewhat similar view as me. I’m also against abortion, and so automatically fall into the “male chauvinistic pig” category to some. That’s o.k. with me, really. I know what I am and I know how I feel about certain things, and as I showed earlier on in this article, I know how to separate my feelings from my intelligence, something that far too many liberals aren’t capable of doing.

As noted at the beginning, there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. What I would love to see is the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomburg, a pretty liberal Republican, take the initiative and arrange a meeting between the people that are trying to build the mosque and those in charge of the Anti-Defamation League, the nations largest Jewish civil rights group and most vocal opponents of the mosque, along with, perhaps, some of the family members of those that died during 9/11, and work out an agreement. Hell, have a beer summit!

In fact, I think President Obama would have been better off taking this approach as well rather than simply coming out in support of the mosque. I agree with his stance on religious freedom (although it would be nice if liberals had this same zeal for it during Christmas time) but he really pigeon holed himself and allowed for an “open Obama season” to spring up, and especially with the general election coming up so soon, I’m sure a lot of moderate Democrats are shaking their head right now and wishing he would have taken a more moderate approach.

Regardless of what SHOULD be done, what HAS been done, and what WILL be done, regarding this mosque, people shouldn’t immediately label those with opposing view points bigots. All that it shows is that that individual either doesn’t want to take the time to have an intelligent debate on the subject, or doesn’t really care about the matter anyways. By backing people into the corner of “racist”, or “bigot”, or “hate monger”, all that does is get the attention of those that don’t have a proverbial horse in this race and cause them to start being sympathetic to those that are being labeled wrongly. If you really want to make a point regarding such touchy issues as those mentioned in this article, take a breath, realize that everybody has a different viewpoint and a different slant on every issue, and calmly begin to assert your opinion. You’ll be surprised how much could be achieved.

Obama Says College the Key: Is it?

This past Monday, President Obama said this to University of Texas graduates (taken from the AP line):

“America has to have the highest share of graduates compared to other nations. But Texas, I want you to know, we’ve been slipping,” Obama said on a visit to the University of Texas.

“In a single generation, we’ve fallen from first place to 12th place in college graduation rates for young adults. That’s unacceptable, but it’s not irreversible. We can retake the lead,” Obama stressed.

“What I’ve tried to explain to people, education is an economic issue, education is the economic issue of our time,” Obama insisted, arguing: “The countries that outeducate us today will outcompete us tomorrow.”

The US president said first-rate education must be a top priority for the US economy to flourish.

“The single most important step we must take is make sure that every one of our young people (…) has the best education that the world has to offer. That’s the number one thing we can do,” Obama said.

Now, first thing first. Of course the President is going to say this at a college graduation. The politics of this and any other speech is prevalent in every administration of every President, R or D. He isn’t going to step onto a college campus and tell them:”You guys aren’t going to find a job. Sucks to be you.” It’s just not going to happen.

With that said, what caught my attention is that the President is saying that college graduates are our future. And I believe and agree with him. However, are the college graduates the future, or is our industry our future? Democrats (more specifically union supported D’s) constantly talk about our lack of work force with the steel/manufacturing industry, and honestly, to a degree, I agree. As a younger male who works at the steel mills, I can honestly tell you that on my shift, I’m probably the youngest person out there. This isn’t very telling since I’m only 24, however, the gap between my age and the next youngest is. The average age of the steel worker is mid-late thirties and above. Young people aren’t filling the positions that are left by those that retire. We just aren’t.

And really, that’s a good thing. More kids are going to college, more kids are getting a good high school education (which, in turn, negates the argument that we need more funding for schools, but regardless…) and more kids don’t have to go work at the mills to make a living. I do, because I was a jackass when I went to college. I didn’t apply myself, and I’m paying for it by working hard, long hours, while paying for my school myself now. But most kids aren’t stupid like I was, and are getting the education they need to not have to work at a steel mill.

But regardless, the point is this: in one sentence you hear politicians tell us that we have to be more self reliant as a country, and in the next they tell us that we have to send more kids to college. In order to achieve the first, the second can’t happen. We already have a shortage of people to work in the mills, and subsidizing even more kids’ education won’t achieve that.

My thoughts? Why, I’m glad you asked!

Political rhetoric aside, we need to stop subsidizing as many kids’ college. I know this sounds heartless, but if we don’t, we’ll have a nation that is all manager, and no worker. There are kids coming out of school by the dozen, every day, with no work experience in a 10% unemployment economy who can’t find work and went to school on our tax dollars. That’s fine and dandy to pay for these kids’ school, assuming they have no means of payment and decent grades, but that’s not always how it works. Too often grades are set aside because of race or poverty and that isn’t right, nor is it efficient when one thinks about the purpose of subsidizing college students.

The hard truth about life is that sometimes a person has to work a manual labor job for a while, or even at McDonald’s, or some other form of employment that is not altogether “coveted”, in order to work his/her way up and away from those that deserve to be in those spots. It’s the way it is. Life’s a…well…you get my drift. Get a helmet.

The point of all this rambling? As far as political fodder, Obama got it right. As far as reality? While we are losing manual labor job after job overseas, we are encouraging and paying for people to go to college. At some point, however, we have to face reality. And that reality is that some people are janitors and manual workers, and some people design the buildings that janitors and manual workers work in. Just because we pay for them to go to school and barely pass with all D’s doesn’t mean that it’s right or that it is what’s best for our country.If we want to be more self sufficient, we have to start letting the worker bees work, and not try to push them through college just for statistical purposes. I think it is important to help out poor children who have excelled and simply can not afford college. All for that. And the government helping out with some student loans? Sure. But a line a has to be drawn, and we have to realize that we need some of these kids to work hard labor if we EVER expect to be a self-sufficient country again.