Posted by Maggie on December 5, 2021 in From the editors

The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children. – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

While Shakespeare often casually gets credit for the origin of the damning phrase, old Bill was paraphrasing various verses from The Bible…

However, Deuteronomy 24:16 basically lays out how each person is indeed personally responsible for their own decision to sin against God’s (and, by that, man’s) laws. And that is the way it is supposed to be. Yet, today we see activists who demand revising history into a “collective” racial trial on a whole race for sins/crimes that were committed generations before by some people of that race. Today’s people of that race, in this instance ‘Caucasians’, must be made to pay personally/socially/monetarily for things done to people of color several generations ago. These activists read history as some proverbial rap sheet of crimes and offenses that the accused today are simply not guilty of … except that they have the same skin color as those who came before them. As a matter of fact, interpretation in those Scriptures clearly states that only God decides any such generational retribution. AND, as a matter of fact, these culturally opportunistic #WOKISTS today pointing the crooked fingers of blame and guilt are not victims. Picking off a nation’s long past healed scar tissues does not make a new generation sufferers and victims of past offenses they did not witness or experience. It makes them self-righteous and self-serving opportunists on the graves of those who were actual victims. I’m sorry, but nobody is ‘entitled’ to that claim today.

History is not meant as something to be repeatedly prosecuted and punished with public persecution for those who were not yet born and did not commit it. AND it is definitely NOT meant to foster equity ‘reverse’-racism for the future generations as retribution. Nobody should be intimidated by any means into denouncing and apologizing for their race, most especially for the false witness of ‘being guilty’ for the sins of others, as it is being so demanded today. Do we really punish today’s Germans and Japanese for their WWII war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by their 3-4 generations prior to the generations living now? Nor are we really permitted to stress their past sinful histories or compare them to today. So, why then is America held to a different standard when considering our past history and those who would now see us pretty much drawn and quartered for it as a nation/society … well, at least, one race within our melting pot society, that is. History is meant as an important lesson in the most horrible times in the past, and how changes happened to correct wrong thinking by a culture in order to never again repeat such wrongfulness. It lays out in detail how that painful process was most often times very long and filled with self-sacrifice, national sacrifices, strife and, yes, even the bloodshed of war. However, to distort and ‘re-imagine’ re-writes (for example, CRT) to that history is to forget the actual facts, bad as well as good, and to horribly and wrongly intentionally repeat it in some deranged vengeful reverse fashion is a mortal sin in and of itself. And that is where the #WOKE activism wants to take our society right now.

For well-over a century our society made the corrections, and the guilty have (and continue to be) corrected and punished. America is not a racist nation. Yes, there are individuals who are ‘racist’, but do not dare collectivize that ti include people who are not, simply because they are of the same skin color. Everyone who is born (well, who is allowed to be born) is endowed from God to grow and become the best they can become in life, no matter financial, racial, gender classifications. No matter how bad the school system, students and parents can still find resources to learn and grow a healthy and productive mind in order to be self-sustaining and a productive member of society. How else can you explain those who still thrived to become responsible and successful despite school segregation? Their parents and grandparents that did not have even the lowest of opportunities made certain to help their children to have a much better education and life than they did, even if it meant looking outside school curriculum for educational resources. Parents can always be examples to their children in such practice as well as instilling the strong belief in personal responsibility for their own decisions and actions, and to never become a ‘victim’ of anyone or anything. God gave us His laws. Man has designed our laws according to God’s. God gave us free will in order to know right from wrong and to act accordingly in our lives. Life is what you truly and strongly make of it.

To be very clear, strict and myopic focus of “the sins of the father” mean absolutely nothing if one chooses to negate and “cancel” a person and the good deeds, the successes and accomplishments, and the growth of other “fathers” and their generations after. And that too involves children who learn and grow and make a successful life in spite of, perhaps, their “father’s” failings and sins in life.

This young woman, Rikki Schlott, is the very young daughter of a WWII veteran, Dick Schlott, and she understands that. Her father is four times her age, having fathered her as he was entering into his mid-sixties 21 years ago. Rikki is an NYU college coed and, with maturity and focus on facts, has not only come to realize the wealth and depth of 20th century history timeline from her wonderful father’s birth to between hers and her father’s 63 year age gap and to the present, but of its great and vast historical contextual importance … and to how people are absolutely and wrongly not appreciative of history today. Rikki is staunch and strident in her right to free thought/speech and will not be artificially shamed into ceding it to anyone.

Here is an excerpt of Rikki Schlott’s very thoughtful and important op-ed in The New York Post. Please go to the link and read in-full…

Rikki Schlott: How my 84-year-old dad helped me see the folly of Gen Z

The realization sparked meaningful conversations between us, where I began to tap into my father’s wealth of knowledge and wisdom. What was it like living through a world war? The assassination of JFK? The social strife of the ’60s? The Reagan revolution? The technology boom? These daily chats — in the car, at the dinner table, on the phone — inspired my love of history and instilled in me a need to know why things are the way they are now.

They also turned me into an independent thinker.

My dad’s breadth of life experience and wisdom woke me to the transience of today’s fads and fallacies. It’s hard to humor my peers who demand safe spaces and trigger warnings when my best friend remembers the plights of World War II. It’s impossible to flirt with socialist politics when my father recalls the rise and fall of the USSR. It’s hard to spend my days scrolling through TikTok when my dad is a living testament to the wisdom a lifetime of reading can foster.

Having an older father also means it’s difficult to swallow the victim mentality of many of my contemporaries. While Generation Z indulges in identity politics and intersectionality, it’s an attitude my father would never accept from me. He’s a self-made man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Now that he’s provided me with an education and life beyond what he could imagine growing up on a goose farm, I won’t rest until I make the most of all the opportunities I’ve been given and do him proud.

It’s also impossible for me to dismiss the wisdom of older generations, as many of my peers so often do. Though I’ve witnessed an enormous amount of history being made in my short lifetime, I’ve had my father’s insight and measuredness to keep me anchored.

It’s also why, in the past year, I’ve become an advocate for free speech alongside my studies at NYU. While this has led to a fellowship at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), television appearances, and speaking engagements around the country, it has also cost me friendships and landed me on the “canceled” list because I refuse to conform ideologically and welcome all ideas. Still, I feel safe swimming against the generational tide and fighting against illiberalism thanks to my dad who endowed me with a firm grasp on the past…

MORE:

Woe to those today who insist on faking the sins of the past and bearing false witness to blame and punish others…

There are ongoing lists of faked/hoax racist “hate crimes” that get immediate MSM attention and wrongful condemnation of the wrong people intentionally targeted for the blame, and then just disappear from media ‘follow-up’ when the hoax is busted wide open. Thankfully satire “news” sites make very good slap-backs at such idiocy. Such as this…

The Babylon Bee: Mirror Brought Into Courtroom So Jussie Smollett Can Face His Attackers

I’m sure the perpetraiters in this latest ‘hate crime’ will be found out to not be who the MSM would have us believe…

Stephen Sorace: Idaho Anne Frank memorial defaced with anti-Semitic imagery: ‘Abhorrent’: Anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted near Anne Frank memorial in Boise during Hanukkah

TCF: ‘Pro-freedom’ Pence speech denied funding by Stanford student government

Greg Gutfeld: The media intentionally misreads things because they get away with it: How can you revisit a story that already made you look like an ass?

Vivek Ramaswamy: How big business can personalize corporate activism: The Biotech entrepreneur weighs in on how consumers react to messaging from woke corporations.

Rikki Schlott: Parents have had a wake-up call about kids and tech. Here’s advice from a Gen Z-er: Parents have heard from the Facebook whistleblower. Now they need to focus on these three things with their kids

VIDEO: Not The Bee: Wait, liberals are the ones who are grateful for America??

~~~

~~Many thanks to Maggie and The Universal Spectator for reprint permission.