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dale blanker wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote: Human beings are inherently lazy. Period. They only become industrious and productive if it beats the alternative.

I've seen it mentioned many times about mankind being naturally lazy but still don't believe it. I think the problem is that we are too smart and require some motivation to get going. Once motivated or inspired we're willing to work especially if it's interesting and/or satisfying.

Did you happen to see the recent Olympics?

I'm thinking of everyone I really know and cannot name anyone who I would call a lazy person. In my own case, I do procrastinate if something is boring but if it's interesting I work long and hard, sometimes only solving a problem with little or no reward. We have done a fair amount of volunteering.

Fun for us is seeing the grandkids, sailing, bicycling, or square dancing - all requiring considerable energy.

Inspiration or motivation is needed.

Well, my “unless it beats the alternative” is the caveat, isn’t it? The “alternative” can be anything from starvation to boredom. I remember once in an adult psych class being told by the teacher that people work for either of two fundamental reasons: because they (A) are passionate about the work and derive satisfaction from it; or (B) the income earned from the work affords them the opportunity to enjoy the things outside of work they are passionate about and derive satisfaction from doing them. Lucky is the person who both loves his work AND gets paid well enough to also do other things they are passionate about away from work. THAT person isn’t really working, is he? He’s getting WELL paid to have a ball all day long, 7 days a week.

But put that guy in a family with Warren Buffet-type money, where he can have a bottomless trust fund, never HAVE to work a day in his life, and be able to afford anything he wants to do ...... how many like that are going to actually get a regular day job and become productive citizens? I’m more cynical about it than you. I’d bet that 7 out of any 10 such people would pick “leisure” as their career. I’m not saying they wouldn’t do ambitious things - like climb Mt Everest or race Indy cars - but how many would decide to become doctors, or insurance salesmen, or bricklayers, or grave-diggers?

People work when the alternative is starvation. People work when the alternative is total boredom. People work when the alternative is to not be able to do the other things that they love doing. The OP’s son is happy to keep collecting dad’s money so that he can avoid starvation/boredom/etc. If he were naturally industrious, he’d want to have his own income so that he could (A) be independent from dad’s money, and (B) not have to listen to dad’s opinions as the price of getting that money.

s3779m wrote:For far too many young kids today, the only conservative voice they hear is from their parents. Teachers, news media, peers, friends, co-workers, movies, ect. all tend to be liberal and demanding. Our kids are out there on a conservative island in a sea of liberalism. Give him time, the world is changing and liberalism will be exposed to be the lie that it is, lies are always exposed. In a short time your son will see liberals for what they are. After all, A&M don't graduate dummies.

You don’t have to wait until “some day”. The liberal lie is continuously being exposed, because it fails every single minute. The problems are that:

(A) most liberals refuse to learn the lessons of history, even recent history (i.e. Venezuela, for instance);

(B) PT Barnum was correct when he allegedly said “there’s a sucker born every minute”, such that even if a liberal gets mugged - either literally, or figuratively mugged by life - and becomes a conservative or libertarian, there’s a new useful idiot born every minute who’ll come along and swallow the liberal lie, hook, line, and sinker; and

(C) there’s two new useful idiots born every minute for every one liberal who gets mugged into conservatism or libertarianism.

Human beings are inherently lazy. Period. They only become industrious and productive if it beats the alternative. When mom and dad’s fountain of industriousness and productiveness is cut off from their children, THEN the children will be about doing their own industriousness and productiveness. Not before. Call this TAM’s First Law of Econodynamics. It explains both the macro of generational dependence on the public dole, and the micro of the fiscal fecklessness of children.

thatguyoverthere wrote:......he and his Yankee wife always moving, so always renting a house, never owning anything other than a couple of cars. He's really just now starting to get into an independent life. They are just now starting to look to purchase their first home, and he's just now about to start his first "real" private job (as what else - a county social worker). So maybe he'll figure it out - or maybe he won't. Hey, I can dream, right?

I think you’ve hit on something here. My own son did not enlist and serve, and he insisted on leaving home at age 19 or 20 and making his own way. He and his wife rented for a while, but they bought their first home together in 2011 or 2012. She left home at a young age too. Both of them bought cars on their own nickel and figured out their own financing, insurance, etc. Admittedly, the down payment on their first home was aided by a small cash gift from my mother, but other than that, they’ve done it all on their own. Between them, they are now earning a little over $100K, and they both have good jobs with bennies. The home we purchased together with them last fall is their second home. We sold our Grapevine home (which we owned outright) and put 100% of the net into the new house, and my son and DIL took out a $180K mortgage on the balance.

Other than a couple of years renting apartments, they’ve owned everything they’ve paid for; and paid taxes on most of it; and I believe that makes a difference in how they view gov’t.

JRG wrote:

carlson1 wrote:I don’t have one that has left the 2A, but they have left church and the fundamentals they were taught. My youngest seldom even takes his family and attends church. I have learned to live with a broken heart so far. Praying you find middle ground.

Carl,

Your story is an exact copy of mine. We raised two girls in the Baptist Church. One has turned out wonderful, goes to church regularly and raises her two young girls in the church. She communicates with us regularly and invites us over whenever we are in town.

The other daughter rarely communicates with us and has not attended church in years. She is raising her two kids the same way. They have no moral compass. She rarely allows us to visit for fear we will contaminate them. She is fiercely anti gun too. I, too, have learned to live with a broken heart. I continue to pray nightly for their salvation and protection.

Joe

Man, my heart breaks for you guys. I was not raised in the church and did not come to faith until my early 40s. In fact, I was for most of that time, prior to coming to faith, a life-long liberal - having been raised by hardcore liberal parents. My son’s faith followed my own by about 2 years, when he was 6 years old. There have been times when he was less inclined to want to go to church than others - for many of the same reasons that it became undesirable to hug his dad at a certain age - but he has never strayed away from his actual faith. Today, he and his wife and kids all live under the same roof with my wife and me ..... the four of us deliberately bought a big house together for that reason last fall ..... and his wife is a solid believer too, and that is how their kids are being raised. Only time will tell if my grandkids will remain faithful, and it would break my heart if they do not. But we’ve given them every opportunity, and they are still at an age where their primary socialization outside of family is at church, so time will tell.

But, you should know (and probably do) that being a Christian is not any kind of a guarantee of also being conservative. There are several active members of my church who are pretty liberal politically - including being heavily in favor of gun control and anti-NRA. Their views are out of step with the majority of the members. And I am not even close to being the only libertarian-leaning member. I’ve often described myself (tongue firmly planted in cheek) as a “Liberative Conservatarian” - meaning that while I am personally conservative in the way I live my private life and in my personal morality, my highest political value is the liberty of the individual. It is that last part that I find clashes with a blind allegiance to the GOP, and it is why I stopped identifying as a republican in 2012. I do no think that the GOP is either conservative, or libertarian-leaning. They pay nothing more than lip service to individual liberty, but in practice, they are almost uniformly big-government types. What being a “Liberative Conservatarian” looks like is this - taking gay marriage for instance as an example..... Personally, I think it is (A) icky, and (B) unbiblical and spiritually unhealthy. That is my personal outlook and morality talking. BUT..... we have a Declaration of Independence which proclaims, among other things, “the pursuit of happiness” as one leg of its three-legged stool of liberty; and we have a Constitution which is supposed to protect - equally - the rights of the individual. As distasteful as gay marriage is to me, I can’t find a constitutional reason for banning it. So, the way I blend that with my faith is this: we live in a fallen world, full of fallen people, all born sinners and in need of God’s grace, and all in need of Jesus.....myself included. My sins are between me and God. The sins of others are between them and God. No amount of laws are going to stop people from sinning, and the Constitution guarantees that someone else does not have to live by my religious code .....unless they WANT to.

Believe me..... getting to that point was an evolution, some of which has taken place since I first became a member of this forum. I was a MUCH more conservative and much less libertarian person back then than I am now. I think I have found my stasis. My son, on the other hand, came to Texas at age 16; so his personal political journey was more or less just beginning when he got here. He was personally conservative, but not yet politically formed, and much of what he would have said back then was simply parroting what his father would have said. The libertarian-leaning brand of conservatism in Texas is a much bigger presence here than back in California, and so he has begun his political journey from that viewpoint, rather than evolving into it the way I did. But the important thing is that we both got to the same outlook at about the same time, so there isn’t that much that we disagree about. I like it that he’s man enough to stand up for his differences of opinion without escalating it into a fight, so sometimes we just agree to disagree. But that’s actually fairly rare.

I really sincerely hope for those of you whose children are so out of step with you, that they will come around and begin thinking with their brains instead of their hearts.

RoyGBiv wrote:

rotor wrote:This is a phase of youth and hopefully with age comes wisdom. Even I was a liberal when I was at that age. Don't give up.

I was about to post exactly this.

My oldest is in college currently. There was a couple years in HS when I felt the same way as the OP (love, not like), but things are better now than ever. As the changes in the relationship create distance, be sure to keep the lines of communication open. Don't push him away. Just let him have his distance. I didn't really recover from college liberalism until I got my first professional job and saw how much I was paying to run the government and pay for other people who didn't work. And pay for social security that I expect never to see.

Spend time with your spouse and others that bring you joy, but remain open to whatever communication he wants to have, as long as it's not just looking for cash..

My son went from being a conservative to being a libertarian. He’s never known what it is to be a liberal - other than by observation of others.