When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
FRED ROGERS
Many people my age grew up with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. As a child, I watched Mr. Rogers sandwiched between episodes of Sesame Street and Bugs Bunny and the Three Stooges. I watched other things like Leave It to Beaver and Andy Griffith. But as I got older, the cynicism started to take over, and the popular culture started to reflect this cynicism. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood gave way to Mister Robinson's Neighborhood. Fred Rogers was made to appear like some foolish simpleton.
The secret behind Mister Rogers is this. Fred Rogers believed that everyone was made in the image of God, and he slyly taught this doctrine to children by teaching them that they were special. When you consider the millions slaughtered in abortion, Fred Rogers was a subversive and a revolutionary with this teaching of the inherent dignity of people.
Mister Rogers was a sneaky fellow. He knew what he was doing. You see this as an adult watching those programs you watched as a kid with adult eyes now. Rogers unflinchingly dealt with tough subjects like being handicapped, living through divorce, and racism. He wasn't heavy handed in what he was saying, and he didn't see the world through rose colored glasses. But he put out his message of opposition disguised as gentleness.
Fred Rogers was a registered Republican and a Presbyterian minister. These things would be scandalous today and would doom any chance he would have to be on PBS. Even today, his survivors feel compelled to apologize for Rogers's cultural conservatism. The simple fact is that Mister Rogers was not "woke." A guy like that could never be woke.
Mister Rogers understood one thing well which was the power of television to shape young hearts and minds. Instead of cursing the medium, he embraced it and made a preliminary strike. When you see what passes for children's television today, you see the wisdom in what Rogers was doing. Today, that programming does not reflect the values Rogers espoused as you have the LGBT agenda being pushed heavily on children's programs. This present generation is being corrupted by the filth of the godless left wing. They understand the power of the medium.
Broadcasting along with the rest of culture is soulcraft. They have more impact than the statecraft in Washington, DC. What happens in the halls of Congress is more a reflection of who we are than a crafting of who we wish to be. This is why today we see a civil war on Capitol Hill between the forces of good and evil. We see the battles over abortion and gun rights and sodomy. It gets worse by the year. But I take heart that there is a battle. The forces of good have not capitulated yet. But we are losing.
That may be a gloomy and pessimistic admission, but it is the truth. If you look at culture today, you can see that Fred Rogers lost. Today, even a left wing children's author like J.K. Rowling is not sufficiently woke enough for the evildoers. The culture has been lost. If our generation raised on Mister Rogers has turned out so poorly, the next generation raised on left wing propaganda will be utterly feral when they come of age.
Fred Rogers was one of the good guys. Anybody who disagrees with this is certainly one of the bad guys. Rogers lit a candle in the gloom, and people like me still remember him. Rogers didn't save the world or cure cancer. But he taught us how to be decent human beings. And that matters in a world that has lost its decency.
