Last night, as my wife, my
14-year-old daughter Miriam, and I knelt at our bedside for our nightly
prayers, Miri (who had adamantly refused to watch last evening's Presidential
Debate, repeatedly stating, "I hate politics.") inquired of us as to
who had "won" the debate. I
replied to her: "I have watched one or more of the presidential debates in
every election since 1984, and I have never seen a more decisive "beat
down" than the one Mitt Romney administered to Barack Obama tonight." I had no sooner offered my assessment of the debate
than Miri immediately replied: "Well, I know I can't trust you (in the plural, looking at both my
wife and me), because you are in favor of Romney." Somewhat stunned by her statement, I replied,
"If you can't trust us, who can you trust?" She did not answer, but merely reverted to
her previous comment that, "I hate politics."
However, it became clear
to me that she is trusting someone when it comes to these things,
and she has been persuaded that, regardless of what her parents or anyone else
says, Obama is good and Romney is bad.
Miriam just started high school this year, and I have already come to
realize that she is coming under the influence of voices, at her school and via
the media to which she pays attention, that have inculcated in her these
notions. As a concerned parent, I find
these developments both discouraging and frustrating.
But returning to the topic
of last night's presidential debate, a few things became clear to me, and I can
only hope they became clear to American voters in this, the most important
presidential election of my life.
"What finally matters about a debate is not the verdict of the pundits but the majority’s application of Dr. Johnson’s five-minute rule. Johnson said that you could not stand beside Edmund Burke for five minutes while taking shelter from the rain without concluding that you were in the presence of an extraordinary man. In the same way, you can’t watch two men talk in the glare of klieg lights for 90 minutes without sensing that one of them is, in some important way, better than the other."
And so it is. Last night, for ninety minutes, Governor
Romney and President Obama stood in the glare of the lights, with sixty million
Americans watching, and debated the important issues of our day. In my mind, and hopefully in the minds of a
majority of the American electorate, Romney was—beyond any reasonable doubt—demonstrably
superior to his opponent standing at
the opposite lectern.
Now it only remains to be seen if I
can persuade my 14-year-old daughter that my
judgment in the matter is superior to that of the other voices whispering in
her ears …
Or you could let your daughter have an independent thought? WHOA! Does the concept of Free Agency mean nothing to you?
ReplyDeleteI think it is rather evident that my wife and I have permitted not only our daughter Miriam, but also her siblings (who, much to my chagrin, are supporters of Obama and liberal ideology in general), to "have an independent thought," and to feel rather free to express themselves accordingly. The real question is whether or not liberal ideologues (who dominate both the news and entertainment media, as well as the public education system in this country) are willing to see our children form and express "independent thought." Indeed, it has become disturbingly obvious in recent years that, even as they proclaim "tolerance" to be one of the greatest virtues, liberals in the United States and throughout the western world at large, are militantly intolerant of those who disagree with them. For both ex-Mormons and so-called "progressives" in this country, "independent thought," translated literally, means "those who think like we do."
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