While basking in the euphoria of President Trump’s historic victory, I happened upon one of those articles that make you think, “Surely this must be parody on a Babylon Bee level!” We were told that students at Georgetown University “who are worried they may hear points of view they disagree with on Election Day are being offered “self-care suites’’ where they can sip hot cocoa until the scary stuff blows over.” Yes, you read that right. But, as the hawkers on TV bellow “Wait! There’s more!” Bear in mind as you try to process this disquieting information about certain segments of the population of our young people that all this is happening at an institution of “higher” learning carrying a price tag of over $61,000.00 per year to attend, and yet this is what these future  “Masters of the Universe” are being treated to. You can’t make it up. The same article tells us that students at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, “pupils are also being given options for seeking refuge -- not only on Election Day but all week long.”

Not to be outdone in the comfort zone competition, Missouri State University has set up “a post-election “self-care no phone zone space” with calm jars, coloring pages, and sensory fidgets. Loath though I am to seem totally out of touch with the current scene may I be excused for asking what in the world a “calming jar” actually is and why it is an instrument of emotional therapy?

Reading about these poor babies whose greatest fear is not defending their foxhole but the very real possibility of -- quelle horreur! -- running out of hot cocoa reminded me of a book published a few years ago about this very subject. Titled The Coddling of the American Mind, it analyzes the danger of overly spoiling our children. The reviews of this book were uniformly favorable as it obviously hit a nerve with much of the American public. The authors argue:

“ …that overprotection is harming university students and that the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces does more harm than good.

The book goes on to discuss microaggressions, identity politics, "safetyism," call-out culture, and intersectionality. The authors define safetyism as a culture or belief system in which safety (which includes "emotional safety") has become a sacred value, which means that people become unwilling to make tradeoffs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. They argue that embracing the culture of safetyism has interfered with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development.”

It is worth remembering that this book was published in 2018 and it is safe to say that the “comfort zone” culture has become more deeply embedded in the years since its release.

A somewhat similar theme was explored in a long essay published the day before the election in Tablet Magazine under the title “America’s Crisis of Leadership” written by Walter Russell Mead, eminent professor of Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute.

I hasten to note that this is a very long essay, and this post does not purport to be more than a very brief sketch of its major points. A full reading would be well worth your time, as it is deeply researched and explores some of the most significant issues of our time, especially after the outcome of the Presidential election.

The author begins by identifying the major crisis facing America is “the decay” which has caused confidence in our major institutions to plummet to historic lows

with fewer than 30% of respondents telling Gallup pollsters that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in major American institutions.

He notes that “signs of elite failure are all around us.” 

After discussing what he terms the “moral collapse of the public health authorities in the face of the COVID pandemic [which] deeply damaged public trust” he observes:

When a president of Harvard University can be credibly charged with plagiarism, the signs of decadence and decay are unmistakable.

While the intent of this post is not to dwell on the recent election, I did find this observation most incisive in view of the near-totalitarian conduct of the current administration:

Americans are not wrong to believe that this level of comprehensive strategic and political failure across so many dimensions of our national life is unacceptable. They are right to withdraw their confidence from institutions and a leadership class that seems both unusually incompetent and indecently self-interested.

Both concluding descriptions fit the Biden-Harris administration like a glove.

The author continues:

America’s elites have been losing touch with their fellow citizens for more than 50 years. Each generation is further away from a real knowledge of the rest of the country, more caught up in an inward-facing bubble of elite culture and jargon, and less capable of either discerning what the country needs or of persuading their fellow citizens to take the steps their favored policies require.

Before discussing his main thesis that what our society needs is another Teddy Roosevelt, he makes a statement about another time in our history which eerily resembles our present age, one which the outcome of the recent election offers real hope may be coming to an end:

The last time the United States faced a crisis of leadership on this scale was the era following Reconstruction. It was a time when our politics was thoroughly corrupt, our society profoundly divided, and our role in the international system was beginning to change in dramatic ways.

That Gilded Age, one marked by a “politically incompetent and culturally tone-deaf plutocratic elite,” produced Theodore Roosevelt. Understanding what he and his associates accomplished, especially in the field of education, could offer critical insight into the present issues of moral and political decay and decadence.

While TR is mainly remembered for his political achievements, his adventurous drive to seek out demanding engagements and physical fitness also explains much of what he accomplished. From these experiences came an approach to leadership which led him to significantly influence the education of youth along the lines of what became known as “Muscular Christianity.”

It is helpful, albeit dismaying, to contrast our current coddled university students playing with their “calm jars “with the following description of earlier educational practices and experiences:

Education used to hurt, and elite education hurt as much or more than the other kind.

Exposure to popular entertainment and the outside world was strictly limited. Boys were forbidden to own radios or record players, and the single television allotted to each dormitory was limited to half an hour per week.

This was all by design. For Roosevelt and his allies, educating children in excessive comfort and ease was a form of child abuse.

Professor Mead concludes with a passage which perfectly describes those comfy, cozy “safe spaces” provided “free of charge” (assuming you are paid up on your $61,000.00 annual tuition!) for those “gilded, entitled, and narcissistic parasites” we started this discussion with:

Flattered by their elders, carefully bubble-wrapped and protected from all injury or insult, they lack the experiences and inner resources that the old methods of education attempted to provide. The result is an educated elite that increasingly lacks the strength, vision, and character to lead.

C.S. Lewis summed up our current crisis in leadership 80 years ago in his work The Abolition of Man. His words of long ago fit our current dilemma almost perfectly:

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

Men without chests will not lead us to victory like the Greatest Generation did in World War II. “Men” who need their blankie and cocoa will whither in the face of China’s steadily developing military power. “Men” who need to play with legos because they have been “hurt” will not even think of taking on Putin or the mullahs. “Men” without chests could get us all killed. We need to shut down the safe spaces and return to the Teddy Roosevelt brand of education.

We need another Teddy Roosevelt.

Did we just get blessed with the next TR?

As President Trump is fond of saying: “We’ll see.”

Image: AT via Magic Studio