Bad Haircuts and the Death of America

First appeared on February 28, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

The Federal Court system is a complex entity managed by a group of highly decorated and intelligent men and women. The kind who rarely answer their own phones or experience the joy of cleaning up after their dog. People entrusted with the sobering responsibility of maintaining public order by holding dangerous criminals accountable or deciding if a basketball coach has the right to tell a player to cut his hair.

Nobody should take a 14 year old to task for anything his parents have allowed to happen. This is more about the parents. In fact, this is more about the parents currently suing their school corporation in Greensburg to challenge a coach’s right to demand his players meet certain expectations (hair that is above the ears, eyes and collar) in order to be part of a team.

‘Part of a team’. We don’t even understand what that means anymore. Today part of a team means everyone plays the same amount of minutes and receives the same sized trophy. This socialist approach has fostered a land of individuals choking on a sense of entitlement.

During WW II we were a team. Rosie the Riveter declared “We can do it”, not “I”. The result was a historic mobilization of labor and sacrifice that propelled us to Superpower status. This was unfortunately short-lived. We kept the Superpower status because it was cool and got us into all the best parties, we just gave up the working hard part.

In a world of instant gratification, ‘earning’ something through sacrifice has become altogether foreign. We round bellied Americans have been far too busy living off the momentum of the Forties and Fifties for any of that nonsense.

By definition a true team does not exist amidst the absence of hard work and sacrifice. Yet today hard work and sacrifice are looked upon as mere annoyances our great grandfathers had to deal with because there were only three channels on television and Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet. Our younger generations have developed a troubling clinical phobia of sacrifice and nobody is to blame but we as parents.

So little Johnny crawls out to meet the world and is blanketed with the popping flash of camera bulbs before being crowned ‘Greatest Child Ever’. The way he slobbers and chews on his teething ring is unlike any before. He may not be able to fight through a setback, but he can count to twelve in French.

And when they leave diapers, the skies only darken. Far too often we as parents tell our children their teachers and coaches CAN’T do something, as if the Founding Fathers, when not busy framing the Constitution, were getting tossed from AAU tournaments and going nose to nose with little Sally Jefferson’s cheer coach. When I was 14 I brought a paper home to my mom, complaining the cold hearted snake who moonlighted by day as my English Teacher had “given me a D”. After reviewing my work, my mom’s immediate response was “You should be happy, I’d have given you an F.” And to his credit, my father never once questioned my high school coach for refusing to play the greatest shooter in the history of basketball more.

It’s not their fault. In trying to do the right thing for our kids we unwittingly take their side in everything, thus dismissing persistence and determination. We are poisoning their perception of reality and accelerating the deterioration of the American Dream simultaneously. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians or the Lakers, every great civilization throughout history has eventually crumbled. NEWS FLASH- America isn't far behind. The good news is China and India are loving every minute of it, the bad news is fixing it will require a lot of hard work.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams