Another glimmer of change coming to American culture

More and more Americans are voting with their pocket books.

Call this a monetary version of “vote early and vote often”. In a recent published report, a citizen has given up his college football season tickets held for over 40 years just because the student section chants had become too profane for him. Given a 40 year period, this citizen has probably seen a minority display poor restraint and poor manners, but somehow what was suppressed poor minority behavior and language in the past has morphed into majority behavior today. Incredibly, even this behavior has wrapped itself into first amendment free speech rights. Fine. And this citizen still has the right to vote with his pocket book, and quit paying to be embarrassed in front of his family and friends. That’s fine, too. The hope is, and the expectation is there, that when students, parents, and alumni get to pay more for this rude mob behavior, then some civility in conduct will return. Maybe even faculty and staff will lose jobs due to budget cuts?

Similar glimmers of change are popping up in movie reviews, also. With more and more movies getting, or needing an NC-17 rating, even for supposed comedies, and more and more of these movies losing money in first runs or later DVD sales, citizens voting with their pocket books are showing themselves. Fortunately, there are lots more real G, PG, and even PG-13 alternatives than before.

The last glimmer of change is the demise of Antioch College in Ohio. Enough students, parents, and alumni voted with their pocket books to bring down this old institution. It took decades, and the glimmer is that similar institutions that practice, encourage, or tolerate indoctrination, vice the main mission of education, will be brought down by students, parents, and alumni, too. Certainly the college and university faculties and staffs that tolerate or reward such practices as thought control or just plain bad manners will fritter away what has been handed them on a platter. So be it if that is how things play out.

Not quite on the glimmer list but along the same theme as Antioch College is the decline in male enrollments in four year colleges. Sometimes downward trends send a good message. The trend is there, and nobody knows why. The trend does suggest that students and parents have figured it out, or think they have figured it out, enough to vote with their pocket books. The perceived value of a college education, hiring desirability, and path to the future is not what it used to be. Those with hard skills, like engineering or military education, have an advantage in hiring these days, and they are a minority. Now that is another trend. Young American males getting married and raising families have other honorable and lucrative alternatives to a four year college degree that will get them jobs, and support raising a family. If that is how “pocket book” history plays out in changing American culture, that’s fine, too.

A key point is that our pocket book votes count, and we have alternatives in how we vote. That is the glimmer of hope for change that is beginning to show itself.