Embarassing Ourselves in the Eyes of the World

As a world power we think we can dictate our cultural ideals no matter how alien our culture is to others. Our overly pampered teenagers are frequently given vacations to foreign countries. Instead of acting reserved and being concerned about how others view their behavior they act as if they are putting on a show. Our teenagers are often loud, silly, sexually provocative and become intoxicated while their parents or chaperones look on unconcerned.

The reality is everyone watches an American. Foreigners are fascinated by our actions, dress and lack of manners. When we allow our youngsters to drink because the country they are visiting or cruise ship they are on has no age restrictions, the young teens’ obnoxious drunken actions are a reflection on all Americans.

The ugly American has changed from wealthy, older people to teenage “MTV celebrity wannabees.” We Americans are not demanding courteous and dignified behavior from our children when visiting foreign nations. We act as if “what happens there stays there.” When something tragic happens we do not question our supervision nor the obnoxious behavior of our youth but arrogantly blame the authorities of the foreign nation.

We have punished Aruba for the “Natalie Holloway” debacle. We now know a token four chaperones were given the responsibility of supervising over 100 American high school seniors. Natalie Holloway was allegedly drunk and drugged the night she was last seen with three young Aruba men. There is ample evidence that the partying was voluntary.

There are people in all nations and social classes who will take advantage of a vulnerable person. Predators are waiting in the wings for these young girls. They are merely doing what they do best: prey on others. It is the parent’s responsibility to keep their children’s behavior under control and to let them know that evil is waiting for any person who loses his faculties or is in an altered state.

Natalie’s parents and stepparents, with the help of the media, put the government of the small Caribbean island on trial for several years. America’s power has devastatingly harmed Aruba’s tourism by painting their judicial system as corrupt and incompetent. It may well be although the root of the problem is our cultural naiveté of human behavior. Drunken boys do obnoxious things that often end in brawls. Young “loose” appearing girls are going to be sexually harassed by high testosterone boys and men in any culture.

Too many modern “I want to be your friend” parents have moved so far away from human nature that they believe their personal power can protect their children and control everyone who comes in contact with them. This is delusional.

All of our expended energies after a preventable tragic incident do not bring the person back to life. The ultimate anguish and often guilt is experienced by the parents. Only by acknowledging the real dangers of existence can children live more safely and peacefully with others.

Most foreigners and traditional Americans believe parents and chaperones have the responsibility to demand appropriate and moral behavior from their children. No aware and rational parents can believe they have the power to control the reactions of others to protect their child. Our culture is foolish if we believe we can dictate to others what we want rather than live reasonably within the boundaries of human nature. Ignoring evil does not magically make it disappear.

Bad things happen when youngsters are left to their own devices. We are all at fault if children are not taught this by their parents and culture. No parents should believe they possess world power to change human nature. Attractive teenage “hotties” acting uninhibited places them in a vulnerable and dangerous position. Many males will follow their base instincts and seize the opportunity these girls provide.

Americans are not inherently better or worse than other people from other nations. The majority of Americans who choose morally responsible lifestyles create safe and respectful environments. We must recognize that others live an undisciplined or even criminal life-style. We need to make our children aware that their stupid actions attract dangerous people who can harm them.

Any and all obnoxious or immoral behavior of Americans overseas affects our reputation as a nation more than any presidential actions. We the American people are either good or bad will ambassadors. Our actions out of the country do impact all Americans.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Our Parents Were Right

Parents have an inherent responsibility to protect their children from the dangers of the world. Generation after generation has warned children about dangerous situations they have learned about through their own experience. When we were young many of the things we thought were ridiculous, old fashioned and no- sensible have turned out to be realistic and prophetic. They were right and we were naively wrong.

“Saving for a rainy day” has been replaced by “buy now- pay later.” According to a recent poll cited on National Public Radio, today’s adults do not feel financially better off than their parents. Even though they earn more money, they spend more than they earn and buy what they want rather than what they need. Each newer generation has readily rejected the notion of saving to the point where the average American has none.

America is reaping what it sowed 45 years ago when the “Me Generation” threw out all the rules. “It is all about me” became the self-serving mantra of college students. These same young adults who detested their parent’s work ethic lifestyle, ironically demanded money from them to live an instant gratification lifestyle.

Although the parents of these self-centered young adults were from the “world of hard knocks” they chose to believe their “children knew best.” Parents were convinced to discard their nagging ways and accept the easier liberating lifestyle of their non-responsible children. No longer did parents feel obliged to share their experience and knowledge with their children. The duty to ones family, community and country was replaced by optimal self-indulgence. Each younger generation has walked down this path with less mature advice from their self-delusional parents.

APBF era, the “After Parents Became Friends” Era was the impetus for the radical downturn in our culture. We rejected the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors for the unrealistic dreams of inexperienced “know-it-alls.

When they were parents and not friend’s adults knew to resist the ignorance of youth and not join it. They knew dining together was good for the entire family. It allowed parents time to mould their children. Parents taught American exceptionalism based on God and laws of nature, to their children. These were some of the things they taught us.

• Having children without marriage, lying, stealing, cheating or disrespecting others is wrong.
• Evil exists and needs to be recognized and controlled.
• Watch a person’s deeds not his words. Talk is cheap.
• If things appear too good to be true, watch out.
• Do not take candy from a stranger.
• There is no free lunch, especially from government.
• Do everything to the best of your ability.
• A person’s reputation matters. Show me your friends, shows me your future.
• We are judged by the company we keep.
• A good family and your health are more valuable than gold.
• Knowledge is power.
• Silence is golden.
• “Wait until your father gets home. “I punished you for your own good.”
• “Punishing you is harder on me than on you.”
• Father knows best.
• The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Moving away from these accurate evaluations of human nature and towards progressive falsehoods has led us to today’s world. Our society is much more dangerous, uncaring and purposeless. The less than perfect families of the past have been superseded by fragmented families and dysfunctional government agencies.

After almost 50 years we have the data to compare. Americans are materially richer and spiritually and socially poorer. Violence, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, unwed mothers and dropouts have sky rocketed. We have moved away from God, laws of nature and meaningful relationships. The evidence is overwhelming.

The blueprint to obtain a more civilized existence is clear. America offered more stability, personal responsibility and peace of mind when we chose to be guided by God, the wisdom of our ancestors and moral values enforced by our parents.

America has prospered on our forefather’s formula of combining limited government with the comprehensive understanding of human nature. It was not a vision of a utopian state that drove them but the desire to design a nation based on the history and knowledge that worked in the past.

To revitalize our spiritually ill society we must be again guided by American exceptionalism rather than continue to demean ourselves in a culture of hedonistic tribalism.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

Schools' Unworkable Zero Tolerance Policy

A 13 year-old Ohio girl was suspended for bringing Midol to school. She was handled as if she was a drug pusher. A country boy who forgot to leave the matches he used to burn garbage at home before he left for school is reprimanded. A 10 year-old girl who brought a serrated knife in her lunchbox to cut her steak and a 9 year-old Louisiana boy who drew a picture of a soldier with a knife are treated as violent criminals. Zero tolerance policies do not have any safeguards for students. There is no room for innocent students to present their side of the story. They are just wrong. Common sense is not allowed in zero tolerance policies.

Although these policies are unworkable, they make good news headlines throughout the nation. These policies are easy to justify for everyone wants violence and drugs to be eliminated in our schools. The flaw in this approach is that it is without justice for the individual.

For years schools were being pressured by the public to develop a way to control potentially dangerous situations on school premises. Superintendents have responded by issuing directives to emphasize resolve to eliminate the problem. A uniform policy was required to establish consistency amongst a large and diverse staff. This policy handcuffed the local teachers and administrators from settling each case on a case-by-case basis. This left many students unintentionally breaking the rules. Too often, without knowing, the decent students trespass on a minefield that indiscriminately punishes them. The unintentional and intentional offenders receive the same equally harsh consequences.

“One size fits all” zero tolerance policies actually encourage the culprit and discourage the victim from standing up for himself.

This illogical policy not only empowers juvenile delinquents but creates a greater not less chance for violence by promoting more outrageously aggressive behavior. Offenders learn the worst punishment they are going to receive if caught in the act of intimidating someone will be the same as their victim. Instead of students receiving accolades for having good character and standing up to obnoxious and often dangerous behavior, they are equally punished. It encourages the transgressor to be more aggressive while the innocent is discouraged from protecting himself.

Creating a peaceful school environment takes intensive work by students, teachers and school administrators not a superintendent’s directive. Knowing the students well through frequent interaction, even counseling will decrease opportunities for juvenile delinquents to operate with impunity. It is certainly easier to establish and maintain discipline in a smaller rather than larger school. Even in larger facilities it is possible when all the administrators are directly involved with their pupils.

All administrators need to view safety as their number one priority. Developing a peaceful school environment takes proactive not reactive measures. Students need to know the expectations of their local school. Administrators and teachers of the school need to develop and believe that their procedures are fair and honorable ones. Policies need to be impartially enforced without being influenced by any outside pressure.

Students doing the right things need to be recognized. All school rules need to be specific and well communicated to the students. Witnessing classmates need to be interviewed without involving the students being investigated. A thorough investigation needs to get the facts of the incident before making any decision. The evidence, not politics, should direct the decision making process.

The light of justice is a disinfectant for injustice. This is a time consuming process though well worth it for the safety and security of the students. When students know the school administration’s decisions are just, students will behave more orderly. The potential delinquent comes to understand that mean and abusive behavior will be punished while the appropriate students know the school will protect them.

Schools are places for children to learn how to behave as respectful, kind and responsible people. This behavior cannot be decreed, it has to be shaped by an involved staff constantly teaching right from wrong when misbehavior occurs. The instigator has to be punished and the so-called “victim” should be encouraged by the teacher to directly tell the problem student how he feels. The teacher with the support of the administration should lead the confrontation. This meeting often should take place in front of the class to drive home the difference between appropriate and inappropriate actions. Troublemakers need to be “put down” and the honorable lifted up.

“Zero intelligence” policies sound good but do not teach specific moral lessons. Only teachers, administrators and students getting down to basic facts of situations can arrive at a just decision for everyone involved. The accumulation of doing the right things over time produces a culture of safety in our schools.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Parents Against Sexualized Culture

The pharmaceutical company, Merck, the Center for Disease Control and the mental health industry all have a vested interest in hyping a sexual epidemic amongst teens. Merck is producing Guardisil, a vaccine for the Human Papiilloma Virus, the CDC will lobby for more federal grants and the sexual experts will increase their relevance when our perception is that our teenager’s sexual activity is out-of-control. Each of their agendas is served.

It is difficult to accept the reputable Gullmacher Institute’s statistic of only 46% of high school students having had sexual intercourse. This is down from 54% in 1991.

Too many of us have been propagandized that this statistic is in the range of 80-95%. When the media says often enough that all teens are sexually active we begin to believe it. Perception is reality.

“One in four teenagers has an STD” is spread all over the media. When the truth is 1 out of 4 sexually active teenagers has an STD. This means 1 out of 8 children have an STD when you factor in that less than one half of all teens are sexually active.

Story after story in the mainstream media is a distortion of the truth. A man is pregnant. The “man” turns out not to be a man after all but a woman who has not completed her series of shots and operations to appear like a man. We live in a world that attempts to distort reality in engineering an ultra sexualized world. Too many parents believe the negative picture the experts and the media are painting of our youth.

Our youngsters have an even more powerful and extreme exposure to a sexualized destructive culture. Ignorant “wanna be gangsta” peers communicate it. It happens in actions and gossip, in video games, in school, daily IM and browsing the Internet on phony MY Space pages. Children watch MTV that displays the glorification of an immoral lifestyle. MP3s are plugged directly into their brains feeding them vulgar trash.

This generation’s culture civil war is being fought to some degree in every American home. Parents are losing because they foolishly believe by going along with their child’s sexual precociousness their youngsters will not rebel against their authority. The parent’s appeasement never allows them to establish their power, which is the basis of all authority.

Parents should fight to win keeping their children on the right path or will suffer the anguish of witnessing the unfulfillment of the potential of their child. Parents can teach their children to be decent, moral adults but not by being weekend parents. They need to dedicate themselves from the child’s birth to their 18th birthday. It takes nothing less from the parents than dedicating themselves to their children to maximize shaping good human beings especially in this culture of unrestrained temptation.

The strategy for winning the culture civil war is for parents to train their children to listen to them not to MTV. When children do not learn to listen to their parents they do not learn to listen to what comes out of their own contaminated mouths. Their inability to monitor their own speech prolongs the dishonesty and disrespect for their parent’s position as head of the home. If children do not listen to their parents when they are toddlers they do not listen to them as teenagers.

The highest chance of success in raising a well-adjusted child is to start training the child as early as possible. The battles won with infant/toddlers mean the parents have established structure and rituals that minimize opportunities for conflict. When the child has learned to be obedient it will be more difficult for him to openly lie to his parents and everyone else on MY Space about his fantasy lifestyle.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the parents to guide their children through a minefield of perversion that can encourage their children to make negative life altering decisions. Parents must stay a step ahead of their children to resist giving them permission to think and do things that will have harmful consequences or suffer the pain of being involved with a dependent parasitic adult child.

Parents need to be tougher in this open sexualized society than their parents were. They must limit video gaming, Internet access and sleepovers with families they do not personally know to protect their children from making poor decisions. Children need to be kept innocent until they are mature enough to make intelligent decisions.

Uniting with their spouse and other like-minded parents can strengthen parents resolve to keep children from following the celebrity path of being sex objects. Only by parents having a stronger will than their children will the children be saved from their arrogance of ignorance in a world where evil abounds.

Aware parents and adults can shield their children from being part of a decadent existence and put America on a more solid moral footing.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

From Bad to Worse

In order to control the media, no reporters were allowed to enter the California earthquake zone that killed 110,000 people with 70,000 still missing. The government did not want any reporters or foreign relief workers to question or speak with our citizens even though their aid would help the suffering citizens. The problem would be the world outside who would learn too much about what was happening inside the American borders.

Fear of the secret police is in the forefront of everyone’s mind. Certain words and thoughts cannot be spoken without fear of reprisal. America’s freedom of speech has been choked off with insidious political correctness. When people want to talk honestly about the government they non-verbally signal each other to go into a separate room. Each speaks in hushed voices not to be heard by any listening device.

The average family can hardly afford a tiny prefab apartment while the elite live a privileged life of luxury. Assets of individuals are constantly confiscated for the “greater good.” Taxes continue to rise on the employed to pay for the unemployed. Water, oxygen intake and artificial temperature change are taxed according to sophisticated state meters penetrating the sanctity of our homes.

In the universal medical service system patients must pay money under the table to get an appointment before the usual six-month waiting period. Hospital beds are only available for the politically connected.

This may seem far-fetched to many Americans who take our freedom for granted. In our short history as a nation, many have made great personal sacrifice to put us on the right track when we veer too far to the left or right. Now there are few real patriots in power positions.

Historically the average person pays and a small elite group prospers whenever a people follow a leader who promises something for nothing, An idealistic plan based on hope rather than the reality of personal responsibility and sacrifice leads ultimately to a loss of economic freedom ending in a totalitarian existence.

Europeans are experimenting with this through accepting the European Union. Each of these joining nation’s elites have been willing to sacrifice their working middle class to join this scheme. The silence of the citizens of these countries has been bought by the hope of collective power giving each person more for doing less.

Right now in the EU gas is $9 a gallon and diesel fuel is over $10 per gallon, unemployment is in the mid to high teens. The federal income tax is about 48% with a 19-23% sales tax on everything sold. The price of food has doubled in the change of currency to the euro while incomes have increased only slightly. These results should wake up every American.

Things in Europe have gone from bad to worse. Are we are going to choose a similar socialistic model that is not working? Is the global economy going to maintain or improve our standing as the number one nation in the world or is it going to rob us of our freedoms? We have become soft and greedy. We complain, hold our noses and elect lying, corrupt candidates who spout schemes that will never work.

It is true no matter the level of functioning of the nation there are always things that can be improved. In economic downturns there are always legitimate gripes. We only know how good things were when we look back over time. We blame our country for our almost $4 a gallon of gas, a 6% mortgage rate, for beef at $5 a pound and sharp increases in airplane tickets. We are righteously indignant about the state of affairs and want immediate change without the necessary suffering, which is part of the hustle to stay on the top.

American’s greatness has been built on the backs of free, average people. When these people feel their efforts no longer matter we are a decaying society. We must keep our individual freedom not replace it with “the collective good.” There is no “free lunch.”

Change does not insure better conditions. It can go either in a positive or negative direction. Things can rapidly crash going from bad to worse. We can go from “the frying pan into the fire.”

Positive change takes work. Only by united citizens pressuring our leaders to do what is best for America, rather than continuing in their disgusting corrupt ways, can we regain America’s exceptionalism.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Che Guevara: The Sadistic Anti Hero

The swashbuckling icon of the 1960s counter revolutionaries lives on 50 years later. In Chile, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, Italy, England, Germany the USA and other countries of the world there are photos on walls, posters and T shirts of a bearded man wearing a beret and staring charismatically above us. The ultimate symbol of the liberator of the downtrodden masses of the world is Che’s omnipresent photo.

This is curious given Ernesto Che Guevara’s past. He was a handsome medical doctor who was a cold-blooded murderer. Che was from an upper class background like most leftist revolutionaries in history. As did others from Lenin to Castro to Chavez he said all the right things that the powerless poor wanted to hear while his actions were aimed at seizing power by any despicable means.

Che’s fondness for barbarity has been concealed from the public arena. His motto was, “If in doubt, kill” and his nickname was “the butcher of Cubana.” He wrote to his mother when in Guatemala demonstrating his juvenile and egotistical motivation for his revolutionary antics: “It was all a lot of fun, what with bombs, speeches and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.” Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, Doubleday 2007, pg. 194.

Che himself admitted to ordering several thousand executions in the first few years of the Castro regime. Daniel James, Che Guevara, A Biography, Cooper Square Press, 2001. Torturing and killing others was an enjoyable diversion for Che’s boring existence. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are archaic, bourgeois details. This is revolution. Revolution must become a cold machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (wall).” Humberto Fontova, NewsMax, “Che Guevara Assassin and Bumbler”, Feb. 23, 2004.

Che’s brutal, dark soul has been hidden by idealistic elites who get suckered into believing what a charismatic person says he stands for rather than what he does. His behavior and associations with low lives are off limits to public scrutiny. The radical left finds it imperative to protect a man like Che who inspires a Communistic vision of the world.

The same emotional rationale for the “greater good” of the powerless masses elevated the image of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, China’s Mao and the loony Venezuelan despot, Chavez. The documented oppression and slaughter of their own people is conveniently overlooked by these imposters of change “for the greater good.”

Today’s unworthy rich and famous, guilt ridden Hollywood types cannot get close enough to the Fidel’s and Chavez’s. It liberates them from the shallowness of their own phony existence. The super hero glorification, almost deification of a man who uses evil to maintain and strengthen his power is the easiest means for celebrities like Sean Penn or Dan Rather to become vicariously part of a revolutionary movement. The actions of Che must be disregarded in order for him to remain a revolutionary symbol that legitimizes modern leftist dictators.

These creative intellectual types have been and are dishonest in their appraisal of communist dictators. Their utopian worldview depends on a “slight of mind,” a disregard of anything that conflicts with their radical leftist narrative.

Ironically these same “humanistic people” who express their hatred for torture romanticize a fanatical practitioner of it. Their willingness to overlook or ignore the horrors of an uprising by an untested intellectual professional is advocacy not a search for truth. Demonizing any and all established military action regardless of its legitimacy is proof of their lack of integrity.

Through honoring this sadistic man we are spreading his fame as well as his tactics of terror. Role models do affect people’s behavior. When naïve followers learn their hero was a vicious killer it makes it easier for them to mimic that behavior.

It is up to believers in individual freedom to inform others about the brutality of Che’s life to debunk the cult myth of this evil man.

Celebrating a terrorist is not what most people believe they are doing by wearing his image on their chests. Che worshipers think they are advancing freedom. Instead they are inadvertently furthering the power of oppressing the human spirit. Ernesto Che Guevara was a selfish, sadistic anti-hero who needs to be viewed as the murdering sociopath he was.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.