{"id":1315557,"date":"2019-10-11T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T05:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/reagan-column-raising-our-kids-to-hate\/"},"modified":"2019-10-11T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T05:48:00","slug":"reagan-column-raising-our-kids-to-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/reagan-column-raising-our-kids-to-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Reagan column: Raising our kids to hate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Jeb Bush tweet this week got me thinking about some of the ways our nasty partisan politics has been hurting our kids.<\/p>\n

Paraphrasing Jeb, he asked, \u201cHow can parents teach their children that using bad language is wrong when we have a president and members of Congress who constantly use profanity to talk about each other?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeb\u2019s tweet also reminded me of something a wise Sunday school teacher of mine said once: \u201cThere are more things \u2018caught\u2019 than \u2018taught.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

I often quote that line when I\u2019m invited to speak to parents, and I thought about it again on Wednesday when I took some kids on a tour of my dad\u2019s library in Simi Valley.<\/p>\n

It was nice to go to the Reagan Library and be reminded of the positive attitude my father had about politics, his political opponents and people in general.<\/p>\n

On my father\u2019s tomb, for example, is the message, \u201cI know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how many of the kids I was with the other day were equipped to catch that optimistic message.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really sad that they\u2019re growing up in such a hateful political and cultural environment that has so little room for tolerance or civil debate.<\/p>\n

Even a beloved liberal comedian like Ellen DeGeneres can get blasted by the Hollywood left just for sitting with her friend George W. Bush at a football game.<\/p>\n

What happened to DeGeneres is a sign of how stupid and low our nasty partisan politics are.<\/p>\n

Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, you can\u2019t be seen in public with someone from the other political tribe without catching hell or hate from your own tribe.<\/p>\n

Those kids I was with at the library were too young to know it, but there was a time before Twitter, Facebook and 1,000 cable TV channels when the most powerful people in politics could disagree vehemently yet still be civil to each other.<\/p>\n

One of the most famous examples of that political civility and mutual respect was the relationship my father had with the Democrat Speaker of the House, Tip O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n

Not as well-known was the time my father was asked in 1985 to give a fundraising speech for the John F. Kennedy Library.<\/p>\n

In 1960 my father had campaigned hard against JFK. But when he was President and he was asked by John and Caroline Kennedy to help them kick off an endowment drive for the JFK Library, he did it graciously and enthusiastically.<\/p>\n

Praising JFK for being, among many other things, \u201ca patriot\u201d who had \u201ca good hard, un-illusioned understanding of man and his political choices,\u201d my father admitted he had not supported Kennedy for president.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you know,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s true: when the battle\u2019s over and the ground is cooled, well, it\u2019s then that you see the opposing general\u2019s valor.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of civility being shown to a political opponent could never happen today in Washington, where Democrats and Republicans hate each other, call each other bad names and refuse to cooperate or compromise.<\/p>\n

As for our kids today, they\u2019re being taught by the bad example of adults to hate the political tribe they don\u2019t belong to. It\u2019s reinforced24\/7 on TV, in social media and college campuses.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re not careful we\u2019re going to end up like Israel, where the Palestinian kids and the Israeli kids don\u2019t play with each other and are raised from infancy to hate each other.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s still time for our children to turn to their parents and tell them it\u2019s time for them to grow up and stop hating.<\/p>\n

Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Jeb Bush tweet this week got me thinking about some of the ways our nasty partisan politics has been hurting our kids. Paraphrasing Jeb, he asked, \u201cHow can parents teach their children that using bad language is wrong when we have a president and members of Congress who constantly use profanity to talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 19:15:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}