Losing Our Manners

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Boston's Bulldozer never sleeps. The Kooner Report weekend edition on
the Voice of Boston WRKO.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Okay, she's back from vacation. She's been away for a
couple of weeks. You've all noticed it. But she's back,
Doctor Grace, putting liberals in their place, Grace of Voto.
She's well rested, recharged and ready to go. Grace, how

(00:28):
are you?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I am still floating on a cloud. I am back
from Portugal and I was there with Ava and Jeff.
You know, I also went to the holy site of Fatima,
which was one of the most important journeys of my life.
And as I approached the apparition site, I was moved
to tears. And we talk about how people behave. Let

(00:54):
me tell you about the Portuguese people. The kindest, sweetest
people in u Or There's no question about it, no
question about it. They happen to be among the poorest,
but they're the kindest and sweetest. And I had a
fantastic encounter one night, and I'll bring it back to
the topic of today with a couple of waiters. We

(01:15):
were all there with friends and I was with Ava
and her friend and my friend and I said, you know,
the people in this country are unusually kind and sweet
and thoughtful. And I asked, is there intense spirituality here?
And the waiter said, well, my parents are very devout,
and most of the generation that you precedes this one

(01:37):
is very very devout. And I said, okay, what about
you two young men, are you as devout? They said no, no,
but we have all the ethics of the Christian faith,
but not necessarily go to church. And I said to them,
right there, as we're having this wonderful dinner, I was
getting into like a theological debate. But don't you see
that if you do not practice the faith like your

(01:58):
parents do, after there were a couple of generations, you're
going to lose the ethics too. Don't you see that
faith is the discipline of ethics. Without the faith, after
a few generations, what special in this country will disappear.
You will all just become another secular nation. And you know, Jeff,
as you're speaking, I thought, it's so important that we

(02:21):
as the devout Christians. I think there's no question about it.
The problem is we are now longer being missionaries. You know,
I know you and I are devout Christians, but going
back to Fatima. I feel called once again to not
just be a practitioner of the faith, but we have
to be missionaries of the faith, as those three shepherd

(02:41):
children or those little kids who saw the Virgin ended
up spreading the word to the whole world. And I
think we just can't sit in the sidelines. The children
nowadays are not socialized. They're just not And the root
of it is that there is not enough intensity of
the faith, because all good things come from that practice.

(03:02):
And I can go on and on with examples. Some
of them are quite funny. You know. The children that come,
the friends of our kids. They don't call me Grace
or missus. They call me mom of Ava, mam of Ava.
Come here, Mama Ava. You know that is.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Funny, That is very funny. Well, you know they call
me Jeff Bezos.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, they tease you.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, they teach me. They don't just call me Jeff
because I'm balding. They make fun of me and they go,
you're like Jeff Bezos. Soon you're gonna have no hair,
and they find it funny.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, they call you Jeff Bezos. I know. And how
many times have you and I after a long day
where we have catered hand and foot to one friend.
Let's say we even then drop them off back home.
We turn and look at each other. The kid didn't
even say thank you. How many times have we had
that feeling together? We're looking at each other like a ghast.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
No.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
And then that's after they spend the whole day with
Ava in the pool. It says steak dinner. I scream,
I mean they get apps. I mean it's the five
star treatment. And we still drive them back home to
make it even easier for their parents, and as they
leave the car, there's not even a thank you. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
It's incredible, And I've gotten to the point where I
start reprimanding the kids of other parents. I'm like, excuse me,
what do you say? You know, I'm just home fine,
what do you say, I just cater to you all day?
What do you say? Oh? Yeah, yeah, thank you. But
I feel that it's thank you not because it's a
sincere thank you. It's thank you because hey, I want

(04:37):
these people to serve me again next time the same way.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Grace. Let me ask you, really, which is the theme
of the show, really, the question of the show. You
have these laws now that are being put on the
books in town after town increasingly now stayed after state,
predominantly blue states, but I think you're going to start
to see them in some red states. New Jersey now
is in the middle of this, because the New York

(05:02):
Post did a big article on it. Where you have
Gloucester Township, it's right near Philadelphia on the border between
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. That town now has passed a
new law that if your teenage son or daughter is arrested,
say multiple times for whatever it may be, dealing drugs, vandalism,

(05:24):
something called immorality, which they don't really quite define, public drunkenness,
whatever stupid things the teenagers do, that not the first time,
but by the second or third time, you the parent
will be held not just civilly liable, but criminally liable.
That you're looking at up to ninety days in prison

(05:47):
and up to two thousand dollars fine. So, for example,
if Ashton decided to vandalize the school, or if Ashton,
you know, was with his friends and they got drunk
and what ever, you know, vandalized or busted up a car,
you would go to jail. I would go to jail.

(06:07):
To me, that is a very dangerous precedent. It goes
against personal responsibility. It strips away parental rights and parental authority.
But that's me. Do you think it's fair that parents
should be jailed or fined if their kids break the law?

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Jeff, it is ridiculous. It is idiotic. You know, this
is a stupid idea, because the point is you need
to teach individuals to be accountable for their own actions.
And it is as though saying you're not really one
hundred percent responsible for what you did, your parents are.

(06:47):
So again, it's sending the message to these kids that
they are not their own agent. They have to be
taught from a very young age. You do this, there
is a consequence. You do that, there is a consequence.
And this is another form of the lack of socialization
because at the root of it, we're seeing too many

(07:09):
children who are not socialized from the small actions to
the large actions. And at the core of this, we
have to teach them that your actions have an impact
on everybody around you, and you will be held accountable
for those actions, the good ones and the bad ones.
And this is going in the opposite direction. Moreover, the parent,

(07:31):
if they have more than one child, and you take
that parent away for ninety days. Think of the chaos
that you're going to cause in the family. So you're
going to cause even more social disruption.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Grace spanking. A lot of people have made the point today.
Parents have had their hands tied by social workers, by
the left biliberals for decades. Now, you can't discipline your children.
By the way I think about it, they're telling you
how to discipline your child in your own home. You
want to talk about big brother and government overreach, okay,

(08:04):
but let that go. So you can't spank your child.
You can't discipline your child. You can't even send your
child to your room or you know whatever, go to
a bed without dinner, because that's now form of child abuse.
So okay, I can't discipline or spank my child. But
now that my child is fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, now they're

(08:25):
running wild. So now you want to send me to
jail if they commit crimes or break the law or misbehave.
But you tied my hands and prevented me from spanking
and disciplining them when they were much younger. In other words,
they want to have it both ways. My question to

(08:45):
you is part of this just a lack of discipline
in the home.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Well, there is part of that. So you know the
famous saying spare the rod, spoil the child, It looks
like we should act spare the rod, spoil the child,
ruin your society, because that's where we're headed right now,
because we have all these kids that are not properly socialized.
And then think about what the children are being exposed to.
They're being sexualized at a very early age, far too

(09:13):
young for them to properly understand what they're being told.
So they're being messed up from an early age, and
we're not allowed to intervene in that right. May in
many cases there are laws which say that a child
can choose their gender and the parent's not supposed to
know about it. So the schools are actively denigrating the
parental authority. And then at the same time, by the

(09:34):
time they're grown up, now suddenly the parent is responsible
for everything the child does when the whole childhood, all
you've done is tell the child that the parent's authority
means nothing. Do you know how many conversations I've had
with the kids saying, hey, I'm smarter than you. You
got I know more than you. You got it, I'm
wiser than you got it. This is my brain and
I draw big circle, and this is your brain, and

(09:55):
I draw a little circle. I'm sorry because I don't
feel often in discussion with them that they understand that
I have a superior position. It's like a battle just
to just to get that point across to them.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Or you know, they think they can call a social
worker on you, or protective services or DCF. Not really,
I mean, don't you you know you dare punish me.
I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna have you arrested.
You you spank me, I'm gonna have you arrested. So they're
they're inundated with these ideas mostly from their teachers and
their schools and the culture that they they have rights

(10:33):
that supersede those are the parents. And what you have
done now is we've created these little self you know, entitled, narcissistic,
self absorbed little monsters. And little monsters grow up to
be big monsters. All right, doctor Grace? On that on
that cheery note, Uh, where Ashen and I are happy

(10:53):
you're back from Portugal, Jeff doesn't get a day off.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
This request came from his wife. The KUN weekend edition
on the Voice of Boston w RKO