Great column!

I like your comment about our best and brightest turning housing finance into high-stakes casino.
i once commented to you that lamentably, it is because of this that we need financial regulations.

I think that family is more the fabric of society than it is an institution. and it is at the family level that moral values must be derived. religion as an institution has always been a failure. education without the support of family and a viable, working budget cannot succeed.

Perhaps one of the most damaging aspects of today’s society is when state and city governments slash the
budgets for education in order to compensate for excesses and mismanagement in other programs.

Melanie, you are beginning to sound positively independent..a very good column.

Melanie: I just read your article on graduation advice and you are so right, especially that we should be concerned. I have been following this trend for several years and it’s driving me nuts. My sisters were at Cal in the 60’s during the "Free Speech" movement (interesting that Cal is now one of the most closed minded campuses) and I saw what those protests did to the campus environment. It’s been kind of downhill since then.

I’m fortunate that I have 2 adult children – one’s a physician and one’s in the mortgage industry. Being in “hard skill” majors, they didn’t take too many liberal arts classes and both are highly successful in their careers with good critical thinking skills and work ethic. Neither needed instructions on diversity, gender sensitivities or “trigger” words, They learned all that at home and in a good school district.

The dumbing down and emphasis on emotions and feelings in our colleges is distressing. It’s starting in our lower grades where politically correct rules from recess activities, bullying and even the food police have made our kids spend too much time thinking about offending someone or worse yet, being offended. Add overly sensitive, helicopter parents and our kids are doomed. By the time they hit the college level, they become part of the “I can’t believe you said that” crowd where mere words carry so much power. Literary masterpieces are parsed, vetted and even banned for fear they may trigger deep seated emotions. Women who consider themselves feminists are acting like porcelain dolls whose feelings can get hurt by some innocuous statement. Worse yet, they are absolutely close minded to hearing contrary opinions and actively work to make sure those opinions are not allowed on campus. I just wonder how they’ll all handle criticisms from their future employers.

Although not a teacher, I work with high school kids in an after school course to make them entrepreneurs. I also listen to their goals and dreams. They’re good kids from good families but I know that when they graduate and leave our safe little cocoon of a city, that they’ll be on those campuses with all sorts of people. I tell each one to be sure to keep the values and morals they learned from their good families and not get into that victim mentality like so many campus students.

Again, great article. I especially appreciate all the quotes. It seems that once again, those in the past had a better grip on our society than the current batch of intellectuals who are teaching our kids. God help us.

Advice to grads....

If you haven’t spent the last two years of college networking, doing internships or figuring out what industry you want to work in, or you have taken classes that end in the world “studies”, or you don’t know what STEM means, then you are not ready for the real world.

You learned nothing, you wasted your parents money and you now have loans you will never afford to pay back. Move into your parents' basement, work in retail and pray you can handle it. Do anything but join the military. They don’t need you.

Your Think Again column was your usual excellence.

The absence of comments this morning leads me to guess that few know what to say and what to propose as the solution to: moral deficient leadership, moral retreat, failing institutions charged with cultivating civic virtue, higher education failing impoverished souls, and the demotion of "great books".

You referred to Benjamin Franklin, not known as a theologian but one who stated his creed: "Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to Him is in doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion." (Smyth, Writings of Benjamin Franklin. 10:84)

Your fellow journalist at the Aspen Times, John Colson, this morning proposes that all religion is the fabrication of power hungry men and not to be trusted. We have traveled that "I'm not accountable to God" road for the past 100 years in America and are probably in the process of learning what the ancient Jewish peoples learned, learned again and then learned again.......I'm referring to the Old Testament book of Judges in which the Israeli people ignored God, suffered the consequence, cried out to God, He delivered them, then.......they ignored God, suffered the consequence, cried out to God, He delivered them.

I don't think God's dealing with the Jewish people is any different than how He deals with us. He waits for us to cry out to Him from our position of failed morals. In a micro way, I have a dentist friend who at 53 was enduring a 3rd failing marriage, estrangement from his five children and the foreclosure of a home that was well over his means. At a point in time, he knelt beside his bed, sobbed for 30 minutes in dispair and then cried out to God for direction and help. He is 5 years down the road from that dark day, his marriage is repaired and even good, he has been reconciled with 3 of his five children, he repeatedly declares peace in his life that he never experienced during his first 53 years.

So.....? People who have a relationship with the Creator have a responsibility to declare to others that He can be known.....He has given us a record...one of the "Great Books" that have been condescendingly demoted to the dusty top of the book shelf.

I work with young boys who don't have a dad to instill character, a long slow process, but necessary. On a larger scale our answer is to elect a statesman who is a man/woman of dignity, wisdom and who believes as Benjamin Franklin did that we are accountable to a sovereign God. Along with electing such a person, we need to be crying out to God for deliverance from our mess. No pills, formulas, 30 day chants or seminars will quickly fix us but God miraculously delivered Israel many times over a period of 4,000 years, He is merciful and patient.