Even Astronauts Fear the Left

Dennis Prager Nov 20, 2018

There are many reasons I pity today's younger generation of Americans.  Among them are:

• The unconscionable debt we are leaving them.
• The obliteration of male and female as separate and distinct categories -- and the sexual confusion that is left in its wake.
• The emasculation of men and the de-feminization of women.
• The undermining of the value of marriage.
• The lack of God and religion in their lives -- and the consequent search for meaning in the wrong places.
• The receiving of indoctrination, rather than education, in most schools from elementary through graduate.
• The inability to celebrate being American.

Tragically and ironically, each one of these was brought on by the very group many young people identify with: the left.

You can add the left's tearing down of heroes to the list.........To Read More....

My Take - A few years ago a friend gave me a book about Churchill. As I discussed my knowledge of Churchill with him he was astounded saying, "I thought you were a big fan of his!" I explained that I was and I wasn't. Churchill knew what leadership was all about and when his time came, it was Churchill the Brits turned to. He wasn't well liked, and when the war was over the Brits couldn't wait to dump him, but it was Churchill's iron will, vision and ability to make the hard decisions that was so important in their victory. 

 Having said that, he did a lot of things in his career that I found despicable, including machine gunning union strikers. But make no mistake about this, he was one of the great 19th century mentality leaders of the 20th century, and this astronaut's back trailing is the problem with so many prominent people. Having lived in a space station doesn't give someone a pass on the rest of life.

There are two groups of people in the world everyone considers leaders. Military officers and PhD's. Both are well educated, committed, generally competent and if you give them a mission, they're most likely going to carry it out successfully. But most of them are incapable of being a rock in the current, or as it were, standing against the tide. It's my observation they're not good at determining what the mission should actually be, especially if it means losing popularity by standing against conventional wisdom.  

These are people who generally were the golden kids in school. School was easy for them and make no mistake about this. If they start out doing well, they become teacher's favorites, and everything is made easier for them.

As they grow older and become junior officers or try advancing their education, they live lives of going along to get along.  Smug, arrogant self-assured lives in an echo chamber filled with head nodders rife with self-congratulations.

Show me a junior officer who disagrees with his superiors and I will show you a career junior officer.

Show me a PhD. candidate who tells everyone during his oral dissertation they're all wrong, and worse yet, proves it, and I will show you an academic with a permanent Master's degree. 

So they spend their lives going along to get along, comfortable, successful and totally unwilling to be unliked, which is an important component to real leadership. The habits of a lifetime are as strong as life itself. They love the limelight, but they hate and fear the spotlight of confrontation against the conventional wisdom.  As a result they've never had to learn how to develop logical and intellectual arguments to support any position that's opposed to conventional wisdom. 

In short, they become over educated and undersmart.