That was a great essay!! It made my Saturday morning coffee (one of my little soft-american pleasures) especially enjoyable!

Thx,
gabriel

One example of the latter is that noted by veryretired: the school systems, including universities. Their goal is to produce unthinking drones who go through life feeling like they’re entitled to have whatever they need handed to them without ever working or having their feelings hurt by anything. The schools are the flabby, soft, blubbery, soggy, bloated underbelly of our society.

One Question. You wrote: “Our grandmother pieced together quilts so that now we have four chests full of them – ones seldom needed in this climate.”

In Nebraska? My you folks are made of tough stuff.

Now, the enormously extended childhood of students, lasting well into the 20′s, is lived in a fairy tale resembling the land described in the song “Hard Rock Candy Mountain”.

The idea that no one should ever feel they have failed has so totally corrupted the process that little meaningful education can take place amongst the various social engineering and self esteem maintenance sessions required during the average school day.

As an old fashioned parent, I have often enforced academic standards on my kids when the school system failed to do so, and my wife and I have sought out schools with rigorous academic programs for our children to attend.

I have explained several times that they will never have to fear a teacher, coach, or boss after dealing with me, because no one will ever be as demanding and critical of them as I am.

It’s part of my job. I’m a father, not a buddy.

I’m raising independent, educated, hard working adults who can live a meaningful, fulfilling life, not children who never grow up. The world is overrun with the latter already.

I heard or read a commentator saying that Naquin was willing to take on a hard & thankless job for little remuneration. I suspect that the huge government money moving into New Orleans will soften that tough job.

His election indicates New Orleans is soft America. C-span has been doing a lot of panels from New Orleans & the combination of self-righteousness & lack of introspection was often dismaying. When a city planner from outside noted that the neighborhoods were not diverse & it was a pretty good example of a failed city, the other panelists politely & jovially attacked her, pointing out that the city was quite tolerant and appreciated quirky people. Well, maybe. My idea of a failed city is one that has the crime & education problems of New Orlenas.

On another panel Brinkley (who wrote a book praising John Kerry for Pete’s sake) said that Katrina showed there were leaders in New Orleans – just not the mayor or governor. The other panel members said, but, ah, it was Bush’s lack of leadership. I can understand how defensive people get of their own – Tom Wolfe mentioned how his defenses went up at the criticism of, I think, Jerry Falwell, when he realized he was from his region & those attacking him were not. He was, however, a bit ironic about this passion we all feel. Like its not that I don’t think the Fondas can be morons.

New Orleans shows how hard Soft America has it when they don’t acknowledge reality – like that the are below sea level.

Hard America is the parts pf our society where competition is unapologetically embraced. Soft America is the parts of our society where competition is held to be too cruel, bad for our psyches, or otherwise inappropriate.

Of course private business has lots of niches where competition is the name of the game. Sadly, there are parts of our “private” sector where regulation is used to keep surprise contenders out of the game. There are also parts of the “public” sector where it is well-known that coddling incompetents is a good way to get people killed, and one of the good things about our culture is that we still consider getting people killed through other people’s incompetence a bad thing.