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Turn Down for What?
Townhall.com ^ | October 29, 2014 | Ben Shapiro

Posted on 10/29/2014 6:08:12 AM PDT by Kaslin

On the way to the airport the other day, my Uber driver, an elderly Russian chap, turned on a Top 40 radio station. Not being one to complain, I actually sat and listened to the lyrics. The song blasting through the speakers of the late-model Honda Civic was titled "Habits." The singer, a young, presumably wealthy Swede named Tove Lo (actual name: Tove Nilsson), warbles about her need to visit sex clubs, do drugs, "binge on all my Twinkies, throw up in the tub." She laments that she "drank up all my money."

Why? Well, she explains, "You're gone and I gotta stay high all the time."

The next song featured a rapper named Lil Jon screaming loudly at the listener that it is "Fire up that loud, another round of shots. ... TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!" Translation: We're drunk and crazed, and we won't stop being drunk and crazed. The music video, as described by creator Daniel Kwan explores, "this other universe where dudes are so pumped up on their own d***s -- and they're so into their testosterone -- that the way that the show that is by breaking s*** with their d***s." The video, which shows a young man crashing through ceilings and into furniture as his erect penis swivels wildly in his pants, currently has nearly 130 million views on YouTube.

No wonder Tove Lo needs to stay high all the time.

The end of Western civilization, it turns out, comes with both a bang and a whimper. The bang: endless sex, animalistic, primal, without strings. As Adam Levine whines, "Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down, eat you alive, just like animals, animals, like animals." In 1971, according to the National Survey of Young Women, 30.4 percent of young women aged 15-19 living in metropolitan areas reported having premarital sex. By 1979, that number was 49.8 percent. Today, 62 percent of young women overall have had premarital sex according to the Centers for Disease Control. In 1950, men's median age of first marriage stood at 22.8; today, it stands at 28.2. More people having sex younger, and without commitment is not a recipe for societal happiness.

Thus the whimper. In a culture in which emotional connections are degraded to the level of bovine rutting, is it any wonder that 9.2 percent of Americans -- some 23.9 million people -- have used an illicit drug in the past month, and that nearly a quarter of those aged 18-20 have done so? Or that nearly a third of men over the age of 12 and 16 percent of women have participated in binge drinking in the last month?

From what are these people running? Drugs and alcohol are an escape -- but we are the most prosperous society on the planet. We are wealthier and healthier than any nation in history. So why the angst?

That question sticks in the craw of the materialists of the secular left, who insist that endless supplies of Soma and government-sponsored sex, complete with Malthusian belt -- to borrow terms from Huxley -- should bring happiness. Obviously, it doesn't. America's suicide rate recently hit a 25-year high. Suicide has surged among the middle-aged, those aged 35-64, jumping 30 percent from 1999 to 2010.

Turn down for what? For survival. Or we could just keep going to sex clubs, throwing up in the bathtub and drinking up all our money. After all, isn't that what freedom from consequences -- our God-given pursuit of happiness, according to the left -- is all about?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 10/29/2014 6:08:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Complete this sentence: The difference between liberty and license is ________________.


2 posted on 10/29/2014 6:16:05 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: IronJack

A moral framework?


3 posted on 10/29/2014 6:18:36 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("I am a radicalized infidel.")
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To: Kaslin

First of all, do your research elsewhere and tell the Uber driver to turn it off or way down and tell him why? I look for ways to evangelize wherever I go.


4 posted on 10/29/2014 6:25:53 AM PDT by Mercat (In Islam, making a ritual pilgrimage to Mecca is almost as sacred as stoning women.)
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To: Kaslin

Tove....

I once was acquainted with a young woman named Tove.... I wonder what became of her.


5 posted on 10/29/2014 6:28:52 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ..... Obama is public enemy #1)
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To: Kaslin

This is what is now considered “popular culture”. Soddom and Gomorrah will be owed an apology if judgement doesn’t rain down on this society soon.

Habits

I eat my dinner in my bathtub
Then I go to sex clubs
Watching freaky people gettin’ it on
It doesn’t make me nervous
If anything I’m restless
Yeah, I’ve been around and I’ve seen it all

I get home, I got the munchies
Binge on all my Twinkies
Throw up in the tub
Then I go to sleep
And I drank up all my money
Dazed and kinda lonely

You’re gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe
I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I’m missing you
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh

Pick up daddies at the playground
How I spend my day time
Loosen up the frown,
Make them feel alive
Oh, make it fast and greasy
I’m numb and way too easy


6 posted on 10/29/2014 6:31:08 AM PDT by Junk Silver
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To: elcid1970

Let’s go with that.

And that moral framework arises from ____________________.


7 posted on 10/29/2014 6:40:01 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: IronJack
Complete this sentence: The difference between liberty and license is

The third, fifth, sixth, and seventh letters. Which is how a postmodern deconstructionist would discuss the issue.

8 posted on 10/29/2014 6:56:21 AM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: Kaslin

Must be a slow news day


9 posted on 10/29/2014 6:57:22 AM PDT by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: Junk Silver
"This is what is now considered “popular culture”. Soddom and Gomorrah..."

When Billy Graham says it...you know we're lost:

"Rev. Billy Graham: "America is Just as Wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah Ever Were" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3216513/posts

10 posted on 10/29/2014 6:59:14 AM PDT by moovova
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To: Kaslin

To relax I listen to the big band sounds of the 1930s and 40s. Soothing music!

Along with 200 year old classics like Mozart and others.
Even the sounds of Guy Lombardo, Cab Calloway, Sammy Kaye, and the band sounds of the 1950s and 60s are soothing.

There is no need to listen to crap on the radio. I listened to a certain teen rock station from the 1960s through the 1990s and remember how the music slowly became degenerate over the years. Finally I found an easy listening station which I listen to all the time.

What is really interesting is that I was born at the beginning of the Rock and Roll era.


11 posted on 10/29/2014 7:52:03 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: chajin

And which is how a post-modern deconstructionist would consciously miss the point entirely.


12 posted on 10/29/2014 7:53:40 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: IronJack

“And that moral framework arises from God’s heavenly grace, which influences those who live according to an inner-directed standard of limits on individual behavior, making external coercion or observation unnecessary.”


13 posted on 10/29/2014 8:17:34 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("I am a radicalized infidel.")
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To: elcid1970

Who is John Galt.


14 posted on 10/29/2014 8:40:25 AM PDT by bicyclerepair (Linux rocks. TERM LIMITS ... TERM LIMITS)
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To: Kaslin

I feel bad for Ben. I end up listening to the music my teenagers like, but it isn’t as bad as all that. I’ve gotten to like Avenged Sevenfold and Slash.


15 posted on 10/29/2014 8:41:31 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I am not tense. I am very, very alert.)
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To: elcid1970

“... an inner-directed standard ...”

That’s what I was looking for. Monkeys have no such standard. They respond only to stimuli, not reason. They have no morality and therefore, no conscience. They don’t feel bad about their behavior because “bad” and “good” have no place in their world.

People like this are primates that resemble humans, but that lack the inner direction that elevates humans above beasts.


16 posted on 10/29/2014 9:17:05 AM PDT by IronJack
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