whilst I have no disagreement with the general message of this article, nor I suspect of the book referred to, I disagree strongly that a secularist society is to blame. It isn't the lack of Christian values that has caused the downhill spiral, but the lack of any values. You dont have to espouse religion to form decent principles and values. You simply have to understand what makes for a moral life for humans, and it has to be in line with what humans are and how they live.
A course in Objectivist philosophy and Rands work from age 5 upwards, in every school in the land, would reverse this trend in less than 15 years.
That is not a pleasing answer to the secular humanists but it is the truth.
Man cannot stay on course without God's help. Man is fundamentally weak, sinful and flawed and cannot save himself by his own intellect or restraint.
No small child needs to be taught bad behavior. He or she must be taught to maintain proper and moral behavior. We are born flawed. People are not basically good. They are fundamentally sinful, from birth.
Even the concept of sin becomes irrelevant without the guidance of a Divine law because all morality is in the eye of the beholder without it.
It is not the dreaded Christians who invented and defined sin. God clearly defined sin and has left us a written policy manual on the subject.
One of my wife's friends said, "The Ten Commandments are really hard to obey."
My wife asked, "Which ones are you having trouble obeying?"
Maybe it's a good thing we don't have Twenty Commandments.
One Commandment would be too many for a lot of people.