“The church” really is at the epicenter of the issue. Not so much how it preached, as how it walked. Gospel values never did fare very well on a “do as I say not as I do” model. Imagine the nerve of Jesus, asking you to actually BE his friend....
Rather than invent an agenda to fit a problem....ask the question if anything really has changed over 200 years. Then go back and review newspapers of various eras. It was common place for assault, murder and robbery to occur from 1776 on. To think we were pure and clear at some point is a fraudulent way of thinking.
I finished a book from a guy’s journals of traveling around the eastern side of the US in the 1820s recently. He described in great detail the perils of murder and robbery between various urban areas of the time. No, folks didn’t really wait around for some marshal or judge to enact punishment. Murder was a comment event.
The film industry plays a MAJOR role in the moral decline. Joe McCarthy tried to clean out the Communists from Hollywood but was destroyed for his efforts.
Bush's FaultTM
The Supreme Court made immorality the law of the land and continues to do so at every opportunity.
When Rhett Butler said, Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!
The “Moral Majority” rallied to the cause when our morals appeared ready to head down the crapper in the 1970’s.
Those men have since passed on, and nobody has stepped up to take their place.
Progressive godfather FDR did what progressives do best, hijacking the crisis at hand, the Great Depression, and molding the U.S. government into a pseudo-god. Although both New Deals failed on multiple levels, some of the programs and subsidies permanently persuaded people that an interventionist government is good. That was not enough. Progressives understood the "God-factor" must be removed to accomplish their goal of secularization, wherein religion loses cultural and social significance. In 1947, the Supreme Court, largely packed with FDR appointees, decided the First Amendment instituted a "wall of separation" between church and state in Everson v. Board of Education. In so doing, they were able to separate morality and ethics from government and daily life. Hence, the immoral mess we see today.
I would argue that the decline actually began well before that, with the pietism movement that took the same position, only from the church's point of view. That's about my only complaint with this otherwise excellent article.
The only way progressivism wins is without the presence of absolute truth. Without it, morality is defined by ever-changing social whims; what’s wrong today is right tomorrow.
The absence of right and wrong is not so much that no one is wrong (itself a very attractive goal for Progressives and other children) but rather that everyone is ‘RIGHT’, and all the time... since no one at any given time can point to an absolute and unqualified wrong.
It’s the world we all dreamed it ought to be... WHEN WE WERE FIVE YEARS OLD, before we grew up.
The Beatles.
Some old lady told me this 35 years ago.
I had to laugh.
Our Constitution is based on Absolute Truth (Objective Truth and God’s Laws) Natural Law Theory (Lockean philosophy) is the underlying Supreme Law of the Nation.
Destroy “Just (virtuous) Law” and you will collapse the culture. (Cicero).
We used to have Rule of Law (Higher Law) but Oliver Wendell Holmes, jr and the “progressive” (Marxist) crew replaced our legal system with Rule of Man (the oligarchy/”justices” who embrace vice and theft and unequal law based on base emotions). Promoting vice (socialism/theft) like sodomy and theft and “special” rights will ALWAYS collapse a culture.
Justice is the queen of virtue and to get Justice, it has to exist in the fundamental laws. Our “Justice” system is based on Right Reason (Logic and Reason based on Natural Law and God’s Laws).
The Progressives threw out God (Higher Law) for Marx/man/sodomites.
Constitution? ... Moral decline is a spiritual malaise. Too much bread and circuses brings it on don’tchaknow.
Greedy SOBs in the so-called “entertainment” industry.
“The only way progressivism wins is without the presence of absolute truth. Without it, morality is defined by ever-changing social whims; what’s wrong today is right tomorrow. Truth is, it’s impossible to define morality without a plumb line or divine standard.” There ya Go! Any wonder democrats have systematically corrupted the taboo structure of America?
Media is responsible.
TV played a big part in destroying the moral fabric of America. Millions of people watching hours of irredeemably worthless trash on TV every day... not only billions of man-hours down the toilet, it’s billions of man-hours of the finest brainwashing.
BUT... has America’s morals declined.. generally and specifically?..
Any that says NO.... is riding a slippery slope..
Look at the songs(lyrics) penned during the 1930’s/1940’s and the songs NOW...
American black culture is poisonous.. infecting all who it touches..
Vatican II
subjectivism:
whim worship + self actualization = anything goes