Character Matters, Whether You Care About it or Not

Take a little journey with me back in time to the late 1990s. Grunge and goth were in, bell bottoms and flares were back, schools and churches were using STDs to scare everyone away from sex — and then there was the president.

The president of the United States back then was Bill Clinton. At the time he had a reputation for lying more than any previous U.S. president. He had also told the world that he smoked pot but didn’t inhale, which led to a legitimate increase in marijuana usage among teens. He was also having an intern give him a pep talks under his desk.

The fundies were salavating. Not because of the lewd act that they claimed disgusted them, but by the opportunity it presented. Since they viewed the president as lacking in character, this was their chance to draw a line from the eliminaton of prayer in school to the current occupant of the White House’s questionable behavior. It was a slippery slope argument that would make any preacher tying Deuteronamy 4:12 to why you should give to the church building fund proud.

In Georgia, the backlash over the president’s indescretions got school children two things. The first was a moment of silence and the second was character education. The first was an attempt to get prayer back in the public schools and the second was an attempt to get Bible teaching into the schools.

What they actually got, nobody liked. Liberals called it a violation of church and state, and conservatives were outraged that the schools — those bastions of liberal ideology — were going to dare teach kids about character.

I was a junior or senior in high school when we got character education classes. This amounted to 15 minutes in homeroom of a teacher reading from a book about why you should be nice to people, not steal, and maybe just put the nerd’s head in the toilet but not flush. Almost universally these sessions began with the same prelude from the teacher: “Georgia law requires me to read this to you. I don’t necessarily agree with it and you don’t have to either. Feel free to take a nap while we do this, I sure wish I could.”

Character education was a joke to everyone. Students, teachers, parents, politicians — everyone hated it. That’s probably why was gone by the early 2000s.

However, after a look at this week’s headlines, I’m going to have to regretfully say, maybe teaching character education wasn’t such a bad idea. A look at this week’s headlines shows a state and nation that have no character.

Let’s dig in.

First there’s the drunk driving, which I truly don’t understand. Most of y’all were raised on television commercials that said “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” I can only assume many of y’all have no friends. Over Labor Day, the Georgia State Patrol arrested 425 people for driving drunk. There’s absolutely no one who is ignorant of this law or its consequences, so the only reason you’d be out on the roads in 2025 when we have five zillion rideshare apps is that you have the character of a snake turd. Drunk driving is on the rise in Georgia for reasons that can only relate to the fact that Georgians simply don’t care about other people.

Just this morning a drunk driver slammed into a car in an apartment complex parking lot, killing an 8-year-old girl. If that doesn’t bother you enough to make you call an Uber next time you are out drinking, you are what we would commonly call a waste of the air that decent people breathe and you should stop wasting our air immediately using whatever means you feel necessary.

Let’s move from alcohol to guns. In Texas, an 11-year-old boy decided to doorbell ditch. The homeowner shot the child — in the back. Self defense? Standing his ground? This was an 11-year-old boy participating in what the gun-loving crowd refers to as “boys will be boys.” And now he’s dead. If you have five guns in your house and a framed copy of the second amendment in your living room, this story should outrage you.

Seriously, if you call yourself a responsible gun owner and you have character, there should be no defense in your mind for this man’s actions. Decent people don’t kill kids, whether it’s Bubba Ray out in Texas or a school shooter. The two should be the same in everyone’s eyes. If you’re defending ‘ol Bubba Ray for “proctectin’ his property,” I hate to say it, but you have no character. Cowards kill kids. There’s never been a person of noble character who harmed a child.

In a lighter story this week, a recent study revealed that Georgia parents are loaning their kids money with interest. They’re actually charging their own offspring 6.4% interest on loans. And yes, about 14% of those parents report that their decision to charge interest to their own children wrecked the relationship. But hey, why bother with character when we can get a good return on investment? There is no circumstance under which I would require my kids to pay me back with interest if they needed money. There aren’t many circumstances where I’d require them to pay me back at all. Afterall, they’re going to be growing up in a world where character has gone the way of the dinosaur. Someone has to show them what it is.

Most people do whatever they can get away with. Most people — even rule followers — want to know how close to the line they can get without stepping over it, or they’ll step over the line when nobody’s looking.

What’s your story? Who do you want to be? Who do you want your kids to see? Are you the person that drives drunk because it’s “just a few blocks?” Do you defend the actions of every hayseed with a gun just because of your political views? Even if kids die?

The Character Education trend of the 90s was politicized and misguided — but actual character isn’t. Character matters. Character lasts beyond today, beyond the next four years, beyond the next political or social movement. Character follows you to the grave. The consequences of not having character doesn’t just hurt you. It hurts your children — and there is an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy who’s families can attest to just how badly our collective lack of character hurts kids.