Rioters: who raised these kids?

Photo: Contributed - (Flickr user, markdonovanvancouver)

One hundred anarchists didn’t have much trouble recruiting 1000 well dressed, well equipped, suburban young adults. The media and public are now coming to the realization the group of degenerates downtown were not predominantly anarchists, but the fine sons and daughters of our middle class. Modern parental values, which are held in such high standard, took a historic and disturbing beating last Wednesday. The media is beginning to take a serious look at the parents and role they played raising these malcontents.

I submit the model of parenting so enthusiastically embraced for two decades is in a dangerously sad state of values deficiency, and could cause problems for society in the future. The children of decades past, who were exposed to old fashioned discipline, respect, and ethics, have few examples of such shocking contempt for people, property and community.

The modern parents who have out sourced values and ethics to teachers, coaches and peers are wondering why their little darling is demonstrating sociopathic behaviors. Their trophy kid they see one hour a night, with the trendy tattoo they condoned, the body piercing they accepted, has been screaming subconscious deviance for years. Then, they let them loose on the rest of us. Their kids are downtown, armed with self-importance, delusions of grandeur, identity, anger, and parental neglect issues, equipped to cause trouble in a moment of peer insanity. These parents forgot the importance of the benefits parents can give; time, guidance, and ethical direction that are far more important than possessions, activities, and being your teenager’s best friend..

Respecting the privacy of minors has gotten to the point of ridiculous. Parents have financed and indulged a generation, that is now almost beyond reproach. They forgot, they are still minors and have no legal right or presumption to complete privacy while in the custodial care of their parents. Parental rights have been skewered and rendered useless by a new breed of parent that feels their children are their equals. It's only in more recent times that parents bestowed these huge unsupervised boundaries and ridiculous latitudes of personal privacy. When parents abscond from the difficult aspects of the job, allow trendy or politically correct privacy models to dictate what they can see, or not see, we have a big problem developing.

When mom or dad speed through town talking on their cell phones, they are breaking the law. When they endanger their fellow citizens they are disrespecting their community. When they then argue with the police officer and call him names, they are disrespecting authority. Didn’t these three examples, law-breaking, disrespecting community, and insulting the police just repeat itself in a sickeningly way? If parents are yelling at coaches, breaking traffic laws, and making a mockery of the very rules that define us, it’s no wonder in the heat of a riot, our children defer to the ingrained values they were taught, consciously or sub-consciously. It is so very simple, you either set a good example or you set a bad example, but ultimately you are accountable for your children’s future while they are within your realm of exposure. And the evidence of your efforts, good or bad will ultimately expose itself when we least expect it.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.