Growing up I was lucky, though I didn’t know it at the time. I surely was luckier than kids today.

I felt no need to belong to a gang, a cult, or a sexual-identity group. I was already a member of a special group that made me proud and gave me meaning – Americans.

The straight boys dated girls, if they dared. The gay boys did the same with boys. No one thought they needed to advertise this, or to go around with a “flag” announcing it, as some kids describe how they feel. Our sexuality was our own business, not our public identity.

In high school I took ROTC. I was taught to shoot a .22 rifle – not an air rifle – by Master Sergeant Lee, a man with combat decorations. Do you suppose, just possibly, that gave me a different idea of the purpose of a gun than if I had received my first one from the local drug dealer or gang leader?

No one told me my job was to “find myself.” If someone said that, I would have thought he was peculiar at best, and crazy at worst. “Find myself”? No, my job was to get an education, find a job, get married and start a family. That was a big enough responsibility.

Yes, I was luckier than kids today. My mind wasn’t poisoned with anti-American, anti-free-enterprise, racist garbage from Critical Race Theory. I respected the flag as the emblem of those who gave their lives to end slavery and defeat Nazism. I stood for the National Anthem, the song that was played when World War II ended and when President Kennedy was shot. I respected those in uniform as guardians of the freedoms I enjoyed.

In short, I grew up grateful for all I had been given at such cost. Today’s kids grow up as ingrates stewing about what they don’t have and obsessing about what’s wrong. If there is a better recipe for personal unhappiness and civil unrest, I have yet to hear it.

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