Respecting (some) Laws

I'm going to be a little hypocritical here, sorry deal with it.
What has happened to our town. Now I'll be the first to admit that there has always been violence in our mountain town, but damn! Am I the only one that has noticed that in the past few years, the number of violent crimes has boomed. It seems rare these days to turn on channel 9 or log on to chattanoogan.com and NOT here about another stabbing, shooting, robbing incident. Brawls in school, knife fights on the corner seem like the norm. Why?
I present this theory, lack of respect/fear. I'm not going to list ideas around the old farts that are out there mis-behaving. They are old enough to know better and are set in their ways. Education is rarely effective on adults, prison terms are all they understand. Leave them to it and lets concentrate on correcting the behavior of children & young adults. By targeting the behavior before it becomes pattern we stand a better chance of correcting it.
Now for the respect/fear portion, parents listen up. You goofed. When little Johnny or Jenny started acting up you bribed them to behave. So what did they learn, not shit. They end up acting like the world owes them something. Everyone remembers the JFK phrase, 'not what your country can do for you , but what you can do for your country...' What should have happened more ooften was mommy & daddy acting like PARENTS and telling the kid if he/she wanted something then they would have to save up and buy it themselves. This will teach a world of lessons that will benefit the child for the rest of their life. Not the least of which will be respect for hard work & appreciation for the work of others.
If people weren't always looking for shortcuts to their desires, a lot of pain & suffering could be avoided.
side note: what kind of message does vandalizing political signs send?

Breaking for now...