What is happening to our youth?

Capt Seid Waddell - My post was unnecessarily hostile. Sorry about that. My point still stands though - It's a story about a single event. If you bring up ANY ideological stance, you're blaming. This kind of crap has always happened and will always happen until humans are extinct. Whether we are soft or hard on crime has little demonstrable effect here. Children simply don't think of the consequences that way.

Further, broad societal issues today have more to do with the breakdown of community and idolized individualism than anything Conservatives or Liberals might advocate. BOTH sides forward policies that are unhelpful and both sides have a firm grasp on part of the picture. The more I study both political theories, the more I think the primary difference is the location of the blinders.

SGT Jeremiah B., the differences in the conservative and liberal ideologies are quite significant. Conservatives think that the individual is responsible for their own outcomes in life and liberals think that it is government’s responsibility to take care of them when things don’t work out. There are consequences that follow each ideology.

It is the difference between being an adult and being a child in one’s thinking, IMHO. Childish wishful thinking always results in unfortunate outcomes while those that take the initiative and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps tend to have better results.

Policies driven by liberal ideology always end with disastrous results. Detroit and pre-Katrina New Orleans are two perfect examples of liberal dysfunction. Also, our educational system has been run by liberals for five decades at least, and is failing us in every metric.

Our “catch and release” legal system is another example of the failure of the liberal ideology that refuses to hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes – so the perps see no reason to change their behavior. One good example of this is the illegal alien felon released by San Francisco police even though ICE had requested that they notify them if he was released so that he could be deported (for a sixth time). The liberal administration of SF has declared that it is a “sanctuary city” and refuses to cooperate with the Federal government. This felon was released and killed a young woman with a gun stolen from a law enforcement officer’s car.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/us/san-francisco-killing-suspect-immigrant-deported/

This is typical liberal “thinking” to be more concerned with consideration for the lawbreaker than with the safety of the public.

If one does not hold people responsible for their own behavior there is no reason for them to correct destructive behavior, and it is easier for them to just expect the government to make it right for them no matter what they choose to do.

Capt Seid Waddell - Don't misunderstand me. I know there are significant differences between the two. The point, and your metaphor illustrated it quite nicely, is that both sides grab some concepts very well but seem to completely miss or dismiss others.

It isn't "Adults vs Children." It's two varied ideas on the most effective way of bringing about human flourishing. One side, in its extreme form, thinks the government can solve all of our problems and our problems will just go away if we create broad reaching social programs that take care of our needs. The other thinks that everything boils down to personal responsibility to the point that if you're poor, it's because you deserve it and that businesses are totally rational actors that don't have a well-established history of exploiting everything for the profit of a few. Both have fair points, but I don't think it's an either/or proposition.

Some things the government CAN do best and one thing I've learned volunteering in India and talking to friends that work with the poor here - The problems are more structural and the way out less "boot strappy" than a lot of Conservatives want to admit.

On the other hand, things like welfare and over-regulation can create dependence and stifle innovation. Bureaucrats can be mindless routine followers or drunk on power. Bad regulations can sink economies faster than good ones can help grow them. Governments can create as many problems as they solve.

This is why, though I readily admit to being Left-leaning, I'm beginning to hate the "Stupid Liberals/Conservatives!" approach. It distills extremely complex problems and solutions down to single points of blame, which rarely have ANY basis in reality. In many cases, it's a bunch of stuff that doesn't fit in a Left/Right dichotomy unless you shoehorn it in. I think binary thinking blinds us to reality.

SGT Jeremiah B., there is no hope of fixing problems if we do not address the nature of the problem and call it what it is. Liberal ideology fails to account for the reality of the situations it addresses or to take into account human nature - and as a result the liberal policies always result in disasters to those they seek to help due to their unanticipated consequences. Good intentions are not sufficient when they hurt those they try to help.

The school of hard knocks is harsh because we get the test first and the lesson later. But as harsh as it is, it is necessary for obtaining good (or at least better) results.

If people blow off their schooling, dabble in intoxicants of any nature, engage in dysfunctional anti-social behavior, and do not have good work habits and integrity they are going to have poor outcomes regardless of what the government does to help them.

I believe that the prevalence of liberal ideology is responsible for much of the decline we have seen over the past half-century since the counter-culture of the '60s threw off the restraints of self-discipline and brought us the hedonism of the "Me" generation.

I grew up as a child of the ‘40s and ‘50s, and have seen the destructive changes take place. You grew up when the counterculture was the norm, and clearly have a different POV from mine. You did not see what the society was like before the left did its magic on this country. I have seen the destructiveness of the left up close and personal.

The ‘60s split my family down the middle according to birth order; the three older are traditionalists and the three younger are hippies. We might as well have grown up on different planets to see how we live and to hear us talk.

Liberalism is a cultural pathology, IMHO.