Focus on the Family Citizen April 2009 : Page 12
Book Review Leftward leaning Pastor Reb Bradley says we’re all born liberal—sort of. And we need help to outgrow it. by Matt Kaufman wrote a best-seller called Child Training Tips. But even if you haven’t, you might be intrigued by his theory about parenting and politics. Let him sum it up: M I propose that liberalism is, in fact, the natural con- dition of the human heart. For us to grow into conser- vatives, we must be trained against our nature. That’s the premise of Born Lib- eral, Raised Right: How to Rescue America from Moral Decline—One Family at a Time (WND Books, 2008, 172 pages), a short book that’s long on straight talk and common sense. Bradley doesn’t 12 AP / WIDE WORLD PHOTOS aybe you’ve heard of Reb Bradley, the retired pas- tor who a few years back begin by talking about politics. He begins at the beginning—the very beginning. “From birth, we are all driven by passion,” he writes. “We want what we want, when we want it, and we refuse to do things we do not want.” That’s exactly why good parents work so hard to instill discipline. These days, though, many parents cater to their children’s desires, cave in to their pouting or tan- trums, clean up their messes, and spare them the consequences of their actions. In short, they spoil them rotten. Thus, the child grows up with “an over-exalted sense of his own importance,” Bradley says—“a grand sense of entitlement, little gratefulness, and minimal abil- ity to delay gratification.” Worse, his friends and classmates get the same treatment—so they all grow FIRST FAMILY President Barack Obama’s daughter Sasha looked back as the family departed from the South Lawn of the White House in February on their way to Chicago. up sharing “a consensus that pur- suit of personal pleasure without consequences is their supreme right.” Naturally, these attitudes have distorted our politics along with every other aspect of our soci- ety. Bradley says he first noticed the connection in 1998, when he heard a talk-show host describing common liberal traits—the same ones he had seen in indulged chil- dren and indulgent parents. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that liberals may be shaped by liberal influences in schools, the media, and en- tertainment, but they are not created by them. Liberalism Citizen
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