[Follows a lightly redacted version of a post from 2007. It applies as well today as then.]
This is filed under the Mending Walls category, because while I’ll focus on stating issues, I hope some discussion will eventually turn toward addressing these issues with possible solutions.
First and foremost, I believe the issues facing the U.S. are almost all stemming from a lack of moral values based upon time-tested Western Civilization values. “Moral values” you say? Yep. For quite some time, probably beginning as far back as the time period of Nathaniel Hawthrone’s 19th century slanders against Puritans, the tendency in these (dis)United States has been to redefine “morality” almost strictly in terms of sexual morality, and then to disparage such sexual morality as dehumanizing (or worse, as “merely” quaint, outdated, unrealistic).
Morality, though, encompasses much more than what contemporary Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and others have brainwashed American sheeple into thinking. First, and here’s where the sub rosa communist-socialist agenda of mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nut Fruitcakes find cause to reject morality for an easily disparaged subset, moral values require an ultimate arbiter of truth, and Western moral values have always appealed to a Judeo-Christian God as that arbiter. That is, of course, why Mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nut Fruitcakes are in the forefront of those relegating God to the ash heap of superstition, even if only (if only!) by continually mis-representing people of faith.
Sidebar: it’s not only by misrepresenting Christians and their values in such Mass Media Podpeoples’ candy-coated cyanide pills as “Seventh Heaven” and “Touched By An Angel” and even more open slurs in other TV shows that distortion and misrepresentation of a couple of millennia of Christian thought (and a much longer span of Jewish thought) tears at the fabric of a “public faith” as practiced from the Founders on. No, it’s also by misrepresentation of other, non-Western, religions such as Islam that Mass Media Podpeople and their ilk attempt to destroy any sense of morality in America.
Oh? Well, what could be more immoral than the lies damned lies and Mass Media Podpeoples’ lies (the progression is intentional, with apologies to Twain) widely and continually propogated as truth (amid an atmosphere that also proclaims that all truth is subjective… except for the “truth” of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish lies)?
Consider: when Christians, for example, are regularly portrayed as candy-coated wimps or fire-and-brimstone bigots but rarely–if ever–as, well, Christians, while Islam and Muslims are NOT presented honestly, the whole cult getting a bye on the little thing of veneration for a founder who is the very prototype of the modern Islamic terrorist, then that alone is enlough to establish the fundamental immorality of the Mass Media Podpeoples’ culture of lies.
Americans cannot be a moral people until we the people are first brought face to face with the reality that we are answerable to a Higher Power (and no, government is NOT that Higher Power) for our day to day behavior. We are answerable for our political choices, our business and financial decisions, our decisions in entertainment and leisure time.
Over at Thought Renewal, Lyn (formerly of Bloggin’ Outloud) has instituted a discussion of a recent book concerning the “law of attraction.” It’s a discussion worthy of our attention, IMO. One statement of the principle Lyn has noted (one that long predates the watered-down and more than slightly twisted restatement in the recent popular self help book) is a principle that former generations understood well, at almost a bone-deep level (because they were not biblical illiterates):
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” –Luke 6:38
In another post, he goes further and restates the principle with this citation of Galatians 6:7,
“You reap what you sow.”
Unfortunately, IMO, Lyn fails to cite the entire quote, and that is critical to understanding the “reap what you sow” aspect in this case, for every principle linked to faith, to moral conduct, to one’s normative daily behavior has attached both a blessing and a curse… and the choice is ours which it is. Here is the rest of the verse as not cited above:
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
And that is the crux of the issue: the influence of Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes et al, says, “Your behavior is not linked to real consequences. Good and bad events in your life are not influenced by your moral choices. Life is capricious; you will not be held accountable for your actions.” Oh, MMPP and ANFs don’t always say such things blunty (although sometimes they do), but it is at least a the subtext of most of their product.
For example, what rational, moral (as in committed to truth, at the least) person, after reading the Koran and the history of Islam from the time of the Butcher of Medina (Mohammed) on, could not see that the so-called “radical” Islamic terrorist is simply an honest expression of the principles laid down by the life and teachings of the founder of Islam? That claims by Islamic apologists, both among Muslims and among the dhimmis in the West, that Islam is a peaceful religion are all lies?
Well, the obvious answer is there is no rational, honest person who can make such claims for Islam, but nevertheless, we are subjected to such lies on a daily basis.
And this is but one example of the chief failure of morality in our society today: lies–about the nature of people, about various cultures, about “political realities”, about nearly every aspect of public and private life are daily pushed upon us with very little in the way of public outcry calling for condemnation of the lies and the liars who propogate them. In fact, anyone who points out simple truths is calling for their own condemnation! [Outdate alert! ;-)] Take for example Vice President Cheney’s recent observation that Nancy Pelosi and her cadre of surrenderists are espousing al-Qaeda policy. A simple comparison of Pelosi comments with verified al-Qaeda pronouncements reveals that Cheney’s statement is factual, true. And for this he’s been roundly excoriated in the media.
Oh, my. What an evil person! He spoke the truth.
M. Scott Peck wrote some 20 years ago or so about “People of the Lie” (a pretty insightful book, IMO, and one with particular application to understanding the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind and politicians *spit* as a class) wherein he said that the truly evil “are masters of disguise and cloak themselves with masks of respectability, goodness and often piety.”
The Lie is central to the destruction of a moral culture, and it is by continually lying about darned near everything, continually selling the culture of The Lie that the culture of the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (almost entirely congruent with a culture of The Lie) makes its lies into reality, as sheeple ape the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind in their daily life, in everything from envy of the lifestyles seen portrayed on the dullertainment offered to the political agenda of the Hivemind as revealed in dullertainment and “news”-ertainment programs.
And art. I saw a segment of a public television show the other night featuring an “artist” who painted on wood using house paints. The “artist” was shown as an example of a modern primitive painter. The “artwork” displayed was crap. And that’s speaking kindly. The worst stuff I’ve seen in years. Presented as “art”. When the very idea of art is debased to such a level, is it any wonder that in performance art we have such excrescence as “rap”? (Go on: try to make a convincing argument that listening to rap “music” does not debase an individual. Try. Please.)
I suspect (well, no, I do not suspect; I know) I could simply have used any of the traditional lists of “Seven Deadly Sins” (there’s a slight variation in the listing over the millennia :-)) as an outline for this post in reference to how moral behavior impacts (in no particular order)
Immigration/border control policy
Essential liberties/lies from the Left… and the Right
The growth of anarcho-tyranny (and the death-by-inches of justice)
Islamic Jihad/GWOT
Education, so-called
Abortion, or “murder by euphemism”
Science and pseudo-science (a materialistic approach to truth)
Energy, productivity and responsible management of resources
Work ethic
And a few more.