Last night I got home just in time to watch “McLintock!”, one of my favorite John Wayne flicks that I haven’t seen in probably 20 years. I was glad to have watched it as there is about a 7 minute exchange of Americanism in the film – a rare find these days. 

In McLintock, a bunch of farmers from the north and east are moving into cattle country with a hand-out of land (160 acres) from the federal government. McLintock tries to tell these homesteaders that you can’t farm the high desert.  

One young man from Oklahoma, with a sister and mother to feed keeps trying to get a job as a cattle hand… has to practically beg because McLintock doesn’t want anything to do with these ignorant intrusive people who couldn’t possibly understand that staying and making a successful life on 160 acres of high desert means earning EVERY SINGLE bit of it. 

When the young man thanks McLintock for “giving” him a job, here is where classic Americana John Wayne shows through.  It’s a beautiful speech and exchange. 

In paraprashing:

Give.  Son, I didn’t “give” you anything.  Do you plan on working an honest hard day every day?

 Yes

You work a hard day for me and I’ll pay you a fair wage for that work.  That is how it works.  There is no “giving” here.

Now, I realize that most people under 30 have probably never even seen this or any other John Wayne flick.  Maybe that is where we have screwed up.

Fortunately, I had the classic “jarhead” for a grandfather. He was a Marine for 25 years who fought in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He liked Bonzanza and John Wayne flicks so if you wanted to spend time with him, you didn’t talk during either. You were spoon-fed God, Country, Family. You had moral values because it was taught at home with a belt to your backside when you stepped out of line, it was seen on the screen with films and TV shows that didn’t morally degrade society, and you knew that cowboys weren’t always right, that the Indians should have won more than they did, and that just because the Yankees wore blue uniforms didn’t make them the good guys.

I realize that most everything out of Hollywood today is pure drivel. They either remake a classic with a new twist to fit modern social issues or come out with some film where you have to be compassionate about a modern social issue.

The way I see it – we need more John Wayne and less wallowing in our own sin then deciding it’s a “right”.  We need more men to stand up and be men, than trying to make them into sissies by treating our young men as girls.

• It makes me sick to read about a teacher dressing up little boys as girls when she is teaching about fashion. What the heck is this 3^rd grade teacher teaching? In 3^rd grade, I think the focus should be on reading, writing, and arithmetic, not fashion and cross-dressing.
• It makes me sick when I see that four young teenage boys are told to change their clothing and threatened with expulsion for wearing t-shirts with the American Flag on it to school because it may incite a riot among the Hispanic students. Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday – not American holiday.  It would be like me going to France and expecting them to celebrate the 4^th of July because I am there, I am American, and hello, it’s my holiday. 
• It makes me sick to see college students, good students who work hard and strive to do well, get expelled or threatened with expulsion due to their moral convictions. You have medical students who won’t get letters of recommendation because they believe in God. You have graduate counseling students who won’t affirm morally offensive behavior and are expelled or threatened. They are told they need “re-education” to be more tolerant of what they know to be wrong.
• It makes me sick to have colleges and universities where you could burn your bra in the 60’s and riot about Vietnam in the early 70’s, but 40 years later you cannot speak against the liberal agenda. This happened in both Germany and Russia – if you wanted a college education, you had to support to governments policies.

 You will either stand up for the kind of America where equality means you have the equal opportunity earned to succeed or fail – and if you fail, it’s allowed or you will stand up for socialism – a failed political ideology and its stripping away of America.