Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children

Top o' the Stack.

Related: Our Little Barbarians. Excerpts:

Recently, an establishment called Nettie's House of Spaghetti in New Jersey announced they will no longer allow children under 10 to dine at their restaurant.

The move caused controversy, with some respondents applauding the policy and others accusing Nettie’s staff of being “child haters.” But the top commenter at MSN.com summed the issue up succinctly:

“We don't hate your kids,” she wrote. “We hate your parenting.”

[. . .]

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin observed. “As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Failing to recognize this truth is deadly. President Ronald Reagan once warned that “[f]reedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”; focusing on freedom, however, as so many today do exclusively, is to put the cart before the horse. For Reagan’s statement is only true insofar as virtue is never more than one generation away from extinction.

[. . .]

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato spoke about this when saying that a child should ideally be raised in an atmosphere of nobility and grace (i.e., our modern culture’s antithesis) so that he can develop an “erotic” — as in emotional, not sexual — attachment to virtue. Once accomplished, he’ll be more likely to accept the dictates of reason upon reaching the age of reason.

Would it kill the writer to insert a parenthetical reference to the passage in Plato where the philosopher makes the claim attributed to him?  More importantly, 'erotic' in a Platonic context, while it does not mean sexual, is not well glossed as 'emotional.' 'Aspirational' would be much better. Eros is the love of the lower for the higher, the love by one who lacks for that which he lacks. Socrates' love of wisdom is erotic or rather 'erothetic': God's love of Socrates is agape, the love of the higher for the lower, a love predicated on fullness.  The love of friends who are equals is philia.  Each of these three different forms of love is different from sexual love, if you want to call sex love.

[. . .]

So take heed, because the brats running around in restaurants today will be running, and ruining, the country tomorrow — and those who’ve not mastered themselves will be mastered by tyrants.

The truth of the first independent clause is exemplified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That this narcissistic tweeting twit, this know-nothing, this overgrown teenage girl can be elected (twice) to  the Congress of the greatest nation that has ever existed presages the soon-to-occur fall of said nation.  I predict that it will occur before the Earth is rendered uninhabitable by 'climate change' including the "boiling oceans" Al Gore warned us about recently at Davos, Switzerland, a country with enforced borders.

"But she was elected by the people!" True, assuming no electoral 'irregularities' (to put it euphemistically); but a democracy in which the people lack the virtue to vote wisely is no better than a monarchy  and in many cases far worse. 

Here you will find the latest moronic outburst by the tweeting twit.

Comments

[Joe Odegaard]

A monarchy might be better now. My cousin Pepito Castruccio, he of the Italian medal of honor, and who saved Jews from under the noses of the nazis in WW2, and who told me that "the gates of hell shall not prevail," was one of his favorite bible verses, and who lived well into his 90s, was a Monarchist, and voted that way in Italy. He was certainly a wise man. Our Constitution forbids it, though, and here the unwise, led by demagogs, cast their votes for, as it looks now to me, candidates who are actually possessed. One might suppose that a monarch would be of average intelligence and morality. Yes, it would be better.

[BV]

A mentally awake and morally straight monarch would serve us better now than the current puppet. But the wise Founders -- philosophers who were also men of action -- put paid to monarchy long ago. We need to get back to their root conception. We need to get back to America as she was founded to be. This is not likely to happen. We are most likely on the way out. But we fight to the end.

As Theresa of Avila said to her sisters, "We have only one night to spend in this bad inn."