The truth is, I could have easily been Lee Siegel if it had not been for my father being a hard-ass about not letting me take on student debt. Back in the 1980s, when I was preparing for college, everything in the system told me to take on whatever debt was necessary to acquire the education to which I believed I was entitled. Hell no, said my father; you go to LSU and get an education you can afford. And this, you see, made him the meanest man in the world. He just didn’tunderstand that it was my destiny to go to Georgetown! Years later, when I had graduated and was gainfully employed doing what I loved (writing), and owed not one cent of student loan debt, I was unbelievably grateful to that child of the Depression for standing firm. He was not only holding the line against his son’s sense of entitlement. He was also holding the line against an entire social ethos.
Read the rest of Rod Dreher's essay.
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