So in the ultimate upset (and the ultimate shock to me), I won the election last night for my kids' school (Woodrow Wilson Academy, a charter school of choice in the Westminster area) Board of Directors. There were two open slots on the board, and three of us running, so while it sounds as though my chances were pretty good, I didn't see it that way. My two opponents are/were experienced board members who had done very good work during their time on the board. One, Shawn Williamson, is very experienced in finance and has done an amazing job of cleaning up the finances of the school, keeping everything lined up, and most importantly, keeping us within budget. His extensive finance background has made him uniquely suited for developing and instituting best practices and policies that will keep the school in good standing. The other, Randy Allen, was extremely proficient at finding and acquiring grants, something that is very important for a charter school/choice school like ours. We get a fair amount of funding from the Jefferson County school district, but we still need a great deal more every year so that we can get new equipment, continue to update books and materials, provide after-school programs...you know, the stuff from school that we all take for granted. In fact, as a testament to his grant-finding ability, Randy announced that he had just received word that our school had been approved to receive a $116,000 grant from the Walton Foundation. That extra money will come in very handy for us, and will allow us to make a few needed computer upgrades, get some new education materials, and offer some new capabilities in some of our areas, such as art and music.
Unfortunately for Randy, it seems that the announcement, and all the hard work he'd put in on the grants over the last few months, were too little, too late. A mere 10 minutes after his announcement, the election results were announced, in which I beat him for the second slot by a mere two votes. (Shawn, imminently qualified as I said, took the first slot in a landslide; 90% of voters voted for him.) Randy took it pretty hard, and I can't say I blame him. In all honesty, I didn't expect to win, and after the results were announced, I told him so, and told him how much I appreciated the work he had done on the grants and that I hoped he would continue to help us with them. Honest, hard-working men like Randy can be difficult to find, and I hope his disappointment at the loss will not drive him away. You see, Randy's wife works in the school's front office, and apparently there were many parents who saw his position on the board as a conflict of interest. I didn't see it that way, nor did most of those on the board, and it's disappointing that so many would somehow feel that he would not act responsibly merely by that fact. It also puts a great deal of pressure on me to do well, because I feel that my victory was merely one of political expedience and not based on my qualifications. I hope I am up for this new challenge. Pray for me, please, as I work to perform well, with honor and integrity, as a new representative of the board.
I hate to say it, but I'm eagerly awaiting the death of most of the Vietnam generation. You know the ones. They look back wistfully on the incredible social upheaval of the 1960s with a tear in their eye, wishing it would return. They celebrate the "triumph" of Watergate and salivate like ravenous wolves for the next opportunity to do the same to some president they don't like. They believe that no one is ever really wrong as long as they're doing what they feel like. They have such incredible naivete about basic human nature that they believe they can merely protest away or have the courts legislate away opinion (see also, "hate speech"), crime (see also, "gun control"), and war (see also, "peace protests"). They demand tolerance and civility, yet they are among the first to abandon such concepts as soon as it suits their purposes to do so. They demand the expulsion of Christianity because it isn't "scientific", yet continue to push an agenda of gay rights (because it's "natural"), abortion (because it's "a woman's choice"), and global warming (because "we're causing it and it's inevitable"), despite the complete lack of definitive hard science to back up any of these talking points.
I speak, of course, of the Baby Boomers. This group of pampered, spoiled losers now mostly runs our country, and while my parents are members of that generation, they are some of the few who behave responsibly and actually seek to not destroy the American nation and way of life.
Let me provide yet another example of the ridiculousness that defines this generation. Apparently, a survivor of the Kent State shootings has released a tape that he claims proves a National Guard officer ordered his troops to fire. Those who have listened to the tape debate this; even the Associated Press story linked above states, "To the casual listener, the word 'point' can be heard followed by the sound of shots being fired. There is no indication on the tape of who said the word." Whether this is true or not, whether this brings any new facts to light (which I doubt, considering a copy of this tape was turned over to the FBI shortly after the shootings occurred, while a second copy was kept by the tape's creator in a safety-deposit box), it shows how unwilling the Boomers are to let go of the past, how unwilling they are to move past what happened. This quote, from the survivor who brought the tape to light again, is most telling: "We're hoping for new investigations and new truths...We need truth; we need healing." Healing? After 37 years? Has he intentionally been keeping the wound open? He even had another survivor join him at the press conference who says, "I believe I hear a military command to fire." In most cases, it's best to leave the past behind us. We don't forget it, but we also don't dredge it up. In another 37 years, should we exhume the bodies? Maybe the FBI had stationed secret snipers who actually killed the students in some vast conspiracy.
I'm sure that many Boomers today are cheering this on. I know all liberals are. And these are the same people who mock my beliefs and ideas as "relics of the past"...
Along the same line, many will claim that America was made stronger because of the events of the 1960s. I disagree strongly. The attitudes that emerged, namely nonsense like "you can do anything, if you set your mind to it", "it's my RIGHT to [blah]", "we have no right to enforce our cultural beliefs on others," and the like, have only served to weaken the fundamental values of our country. A shared set of beliefs is what holds a culture together, by the very definition of culture. It's rare in history that one is able to point to a specific event or point in time that was a substantial turning point in the history of an entire nation, but I will point to the 1960s as the period in which American culture and society went went on life support. Unfortunately, nothing short of another revolution, such as we saw in the late 1700s and again in the 1960s, will stop the decline and eventual fall of the United States. We will most likely do what the Roman Empire did; we will splinter into smaller nation-states along cultural/social lines. Will it happen right away? Of course not, probably not even in my lifetime. But the continuing decline of American moral fiber and the attendant vitriol of the arguments over shared values will weaken our internal bonds and either splinter us, or permit another nation/society/culture that has no such issues of weakness to overrun and conquer us. At this point, I'm betting on Japan or China. Islam is far too splintered and chaotic itself to achieve the unity of purpose that would enable them to defeat us. The sooner we face up to this reality, the sooner we'll be prepared to accept and deal with it.
I believe it's also very telling that in the last 30 years, in only 12 of those years has the United States been governed by a Democratic (i.e., typically more liberal) president; the American populace is striving to return the U.S. to a grounded state, the only way they know how. Again, the Boomers in power refuse to let it be so. They are determined to drag us to our destruction kicking and screaming.
Please don't get me wrong. I believe in the American nation, in American values, and in American culture and society. If we live the way we did before the 1960s, there is nothing on Earth that can stop us. If we follow the beliefs and concepts set forth by the Founding Fathers, we are unstoppable. I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this, that we can indeed emerge for this incredible division that threatens to tear us apart. However, far too many have betrayed those shared beliefs and concepts, many for their own ends, and now we are doomed.
Sorry to make this post such a downer, but I needed to say it. Thanks for reading along.
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