LaVar Ball on the magnitude of his son’s shoplifting crime in the People’s Republic of China:
I’ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses.
Son LiAngelo is a star basketball player, after all, and he only stole some shades. So, no big deal. Not for the privileged athlete, who chose not to check his privilege at the store’s entrance. But for the workaday merchant or manufacturer from whom the glasses were stolen—yeah, it was a big deal.
Aside from that, though, the plain fact is, any theft is wrong. Full stop.
Or at least it should be a plain fact, but we don’t teach morality in grade school anymore, do we? That would be an imposition of one person’s views on another, and we cannot have any of that. We must allow moral relativism because no culture is better than another—especially is a culture that allows, if not actively condones, “petty” theft the equal of a culture that holds any theft to be wrong.
The shoplifting crime, minimalized as it is by this imitation father, is just one symptom of the lack of morality in our education system, however.
So, too, after all, is a culture that subjects women to second-class status the equal of a culture that insists that all men are created equal (the pseudo-confusion of that term “men” is itself instructive). So, also, is a culture that says it’s OK for men in power to abuse those women who approach them for any reason (a photo with a famous person, perhaps), or those women who work for them, or those women who just happen to be nearby the equal of a culture that says such abuses are wrong and those men in power should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us—and by dint of their position of power, should be held to a higher standard.
But all of that is secondary. Of far greater importance than the failure of our education system is what the elder Ball is demonstrating: too many parents today do not make even the least effort, in the home, to teach their kids about responsibility and morality.
Because, moral relativism.
Teaching children morality is hard – it requires, above all, consistency. “Too hard to do means too lazy to try,” I believe you have said. The fault has crept in among us, and will take much work – and pain – to correct.
I’ve also said its (should be) obvious corollary: “hard” means “possible.”
Eric Hines