Stop the wussification of America

Full disclosure: This originally ran in the Dec. 2, 2010 Pitt News. It can be seen here. This version has some additional content. Enjoy.

After last week’s food-induced coma and the action movie marathon that began with the cult classic “Shogun Assassin,” my oldest brother went on a rant concerning perhaps the most controversial topic facing the United States: the BCS college football poll.

No offense to our government or the TSA, but far more controversy lies in ranking our nation’s college football teams. While the Pitt football team has once again found a way to make a $25 season ticket worthless, there’s still plenty of reason to mention the BCS.

My brother graduated from a university whose president recently made some remarks concerning non-conference teams gaining a berth into the national championship game. In his interview, Ohio State’s president, Gordon Gee, said that schools like TCU and Boise State shouldn’t play in title games because of their weaker schedules.

The same could be said for any football team in the Big East, but that’s not the point of this column. Nor is my point to talk too much about sports. Leave that to the guys a few pages down from here.

Gee’s comments have sparked a litany of response from people who have said his remarks were inappropriate. But perhaps those offended should reflect on the situation with a bit wider perspective.

Gee did nothing wrong. He defended the rigors of the Big Ten conference and took onus in the fact that he believes in his university’s strength as one of the best — as any university head should in a similar situation.

While I’m a believer in Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick” philosophy, Gee illustrated the proper occasion to ignore it. Call it smack talk, boasting or just good ol’ fashioned fightin’ words, it’s a necessary part of our culture. And there needs to be more of it.

We’ve become a society of wusses, pansies and pacifists. There’s nothing wrong with turning the other cheek when the situation calls for it, but we do it routinely anymore. Then again, we’re trained to.

When I was in first grade, my teacher had a policy of letting her students figure out how to spell words phonetically. However words sounded, spelling them like that would be perfectly acceptable. She called it “creative spelling.”

During my parents’ conference with her, she explained that she wanted to teach impressionable kids with how to explore for themselves and all of that wishy-washy garbage. My mom and dad said that the only way they wanted me to learn how to spell was the right way.

Their conference didn’t last much longer than that, as my parents were shown the door. Four years later, I successfully defended the school of hard knocks by winning Clearmount Elementary’s spelling bee in front of her and everyone else there.

But the wussification of America has spread a great deal since first grade in 1994. I blame much of it on the same premise — the notion of socializing outcomes, of telling everyone that they are special. It’s why college and universities around the country have become degree factories, diluting the value of upper-tier institutions.

It’s why welfare programs are no longer frowned upon in the same light as they were decades ago. And it’s why we have institutions that give people titles like “senior executive vice president” instead of something you or I would understand.

We’re afraid of making people feel un-special.

The converse of this notion, of course, is one of cultivating diversity for diversity’s sake, where everyone is handed the same opportunity and is expected to have similar results at the end. The unfortunate fact is, though, people are not equal and they shouldn’t be treated like they are, either.

Kate Windsor, headmistress of Miss Porter’s School, an upper-crust boarding school, said as much in a July 2009 Vanity Fair article.

“The idea of a structure of hierarchy or power has been really dismissed in our culture as being not part of the American way or the American Dream: ‘We can all do, we can all be and we’re all successful,’” she said. “If you have kids and they play soccer, everybody gets the banner. It doesn’t matter if you lose — sometimes you think, ‘Did we even win?’”

Therein lies a great paradox: Had the U.S. been founded on the today’s “everyone’s a winner” values, it wouldn’t have been founded. Our forefathers would have given up and asked Britain if we could to just get along, perhaps group hug with King George and the royal court.

Now, it seems as though our spirit of competition has become diluted. President Barack Obama has even suggested that the U.S. is burdened with an arduous task of being the world’s premier superpower “whether we like it or not.”

It’s that propagation of extreme pacifism that has ultimately led to such a sentiment, and it’ll eventually lead to downfall through apathy if it’s allowed to continue. This country has always been guided under the principles of rugged individualism, innovation, leadership and, yes, swagger.

Getting along with everyone is noble. But in reality, the best thing we can do for this country is walk into our respective classrooms and workplaces with the belief that we’re each better than the people around us. Then, we should each go out and prove it.