Reclaiming family life. (The Last Word).

When was the last time your family turned off the TV and video games for the evening, popped up a batch of popcorn, and -- with all family members present -- played a game together that did not have to be plugged in?

A high percentage of readers of THE NEW AMERICAN could probably answer "last week." But venture outside of your safe, insular world and prepare yourself to be shocked at what passes for a "lifestyle" in contemporary America. And, as my wife and I learned on a recent trip to spend the Christmas holidays with relatives in the Dallas-Fort Worth "Metroplex," an affinity for traditional family living is not necessarily hereditary. Those of us raised in a household where family members ate together at regularly scheduled times; where parents and children (and visiting grandparents) engaged in conversation together; where family members worshiped together; where children were expected to contribute to the family burden by performing chores; and where the entire family shared one television and one stereo system, will likely experience major culture shock upon spending a week in the affluent suburban home of a grown child today.

When Grandma and Grandpa visit the kids and grandkids, what they are likely to find is a home (extravagant though it may he) resembling college dorm life more than the modest household of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Starting at around the second grade, each suburban "soccer child" feels entitled to all of the creature comforts once enjoyed only by fairly prosperous bachelors in their own apartments. Share a room with a sibling? It's unheard of! And no grade-schooler's "pad" is complete without its own TV, CD player, video game system, and PC. Mealtime? Apparently, it isn't cool to sit down and eat with (or talk to) Mom and Dad. You go down to the kitchen whenever you are hungry, grab a "take-out" meal from the fridge, and bring it back to your room, where you can eat it without ever interacting with another human being! And people wonder why the McGeneration does not know how to eat with knives and forks or how to politely interact with other diners? It is the kind of social degeneration that leaves parents as king themselves: "Where did we fail?"

We can easily cast "society" as the scapegoat -- particularly when the enemies of our traditional culture have deliberately altered our society for the worse, by infiltrating our government school systems, the broadcasting and entertainment industries, and other avenues of influence. Perhaps, more than in any other area, "we failed" by believing the conventional "wisdom" espoused by the real estate and chamber of commerce types that our own local ...