Posted on 01/21/2013 8:08:40 AM PST by Kaslin
When people reminisce about what America used to be like, some act scornfully toward us. They say living in a Donna Reed world was great for a few, but that there were many suffering souls. The way our country is today makes some of us long for those days which seemed so innocent compared to the harsh, cruel, coarse, and sometimes murderous days we exist in today.
Yet most would argue that there were still injustices when we were growing up fifty years ago. Black people who had been freed a century before were still not treated equally in most parts of the country. Many women were limited in their businesses, political, and professional opportunities. And if they did enter any of those careers, they were capped as to what they could achieve. Few would want a return to those aspects of days past. Yet they would seem almost welcome compared to the experiences we have had in Newtown, Aurora and Tucson.
Even though now more than a month has passed, the pain of what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary school stills burns deeply in our hearts. There were some who started assigning blame for what happened within days which was clearly indecent during a national mourning period. Yes, we need to find paths to resolve the deep divisions that trouble this country. But will that really take us back to a simpler time? After all, the residents of Newtown likely lived there to avoid all this cultural degradation and live a Leave It to Beaver life where the biggest challenges were errant children chewing gum in class.
A yearning exists for the days when children rode their bikes to schools, which were open with flowing green fields where they frolicked under minimal supervision. Now children are escorted by grownups to their schools, which are fenced in and then locked down. Remember even at Sandy Hook the school was locked down at 9:30 each morning, just as almost all elementary schools are today.
What does it say to the children of our country that they have to be escorted everywhere they go? Are they left to think that wherever they go there are people in uniforms providing security and their parents are on a constant vigil watching them? What kind of country have we passed to them?
That we cannot as the grownups in this society come to some agreement of how to resolve this only makes matters worse. With every single massacre, we instantaneously divide into two camps. There are those who immediately shriek that it was the gun at fault, completely ignoring the other societal factors that brought a deranged madman to execute an unfathomable act. Then there are those who argue that there exists nothing that we can do to keep the means of mass murder out of the hands of these freaks.
Come on folks, we can do something about this, but the suggestion by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA to put armed guards on all campuses seems so distasteful. Already an estimated third of our children go to schools that have armed guards. We should not unreasonably restrict our Second Amendment rights because of these maniacs, but putting our kids on lock down would just make matters so much more obscene.
We have not yet had a coherent conversation about how to move forward. The people who want more gun control lurch into nonsensical talk about bazookas or tanks with very little knowledge of guns or how they function. People like the editor of the Journal News (Westchester area of New York), who listed the names and addresses of local gun owners in the newspaper, display to what extent the left will go to restrict gun ownership. They are scary as their actions are reminiscent of command and control countries that totally restrict gun rights.
Some people do not understand that there is a difference regarding gun owners. It is not like obtaining a drivers license. That is a privilege. The right to own a gun is embedded in our Constitution. It is there for a reason. The unrepentant Caryn A. McBride, Editor of the Journal News which listed the home addresses of prison guards and district attorneys in her cause to restrict gun ownership, scares us and should scare you. It brings into question the rationale for a federal gun registry when ownership is a right not a privilege.
Yet, there are things that are just not going right. We have lost sight of the faith, family, and community that built this country. Our government has become too big yet cannot even confront the truly mentally ill among us. As Charles Murray taught us in his most recent book, Coming Apart, even our rock solid middle-class communities are falling apart. The amount of children being raised without proper parenting is just appalling. And when people do get married, far too many are getting divorced for their own selfish reasons while thinking their children will be just fine. Boys need fathers and not just as appendages.
Never being a fan of video games, we would just as soon trash them, but that would be a First Amendment problem. Yet, when politicians decry weapons, they should really assault the culture vultures who sell these games that desensitize young males. Our President booted this issue to be studied in his recent proposal. That means zero will happen on this aspect of the problem. Why do we have to hear this nonsense that only protects these products? Moral suasion still works as has been effective with cigarette smoking, so why cant we do the same with these disgusting games? Why do parents acquiesce to allow the constant devolution of young male minds?
You may wonder why so many people bemoan our current culture and hark back to happier times. Maybe it is not as bucolic as we paint it, but our children certainly lived a more innocent existence. What our goal should be is to bring all children to those wonderful times instead of bringing every child down to the lowest common denominator. The innocence of childhood can never be devalued. It can only be lost. Lets not have the innocence of another group of youngsters lost like we have at Sandy Hook. Lets show some leadership.
I no longer have a country, but I can work on having a tribe. That’ll have to do.
Said the man with hte eay privileged life
*******
True, but he did have the courage to serve his country with distinction during WWII.
1) worsening demographics
2) libtardism
You left out the effects of rabid feminism which diminished marriage, men and the commitment to raising children causing the breakdown of family values and the family destroying the basic cell of society. This particular form of narcissism is the most lethal.
“Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.”
“A nation”. This is a rerence to Culture since all the people of all the nations are sinners and always have been. When our nation abandoned Him, culturally, God abandoned America.
40th anniversary coincides with his almost free reign. Ahh, the irony.
The DIFFERENCE was that the "suffering souls" pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, with the INCENTIVE of bettering their lives by WORKING.
Today, with the Socialist/Union-protected Teachers, they are taught they are "victims", and THE GOVERNMENT will take care of them by redistributing wealth from "those Rich White Guys".....
4 generations of parasitic living, and Obamamoney, and their is NO INCENTIVE to be self-sufficient, responsible, or self-determinate!
You have a RIGHT to be taken care of, by those you don't even know, and you don't care!
I am a relatively new psych student and marijuana use is NOT and has NOT ever been recommended by any of my progressive liberal textbooks. They are scared to death of the psychotic, LSD-like damage it does. I was shocked but most psychiatrists are against the legal use of marijuana.
And that's exactly what got Israel King Nebuchadnezzar.
Furthermore it is a most unwise time to allow yourself to be disarmed.
Free people are not equal and equal people are not free. ~Jerry Pournelle (paraphrased)
That’s what I mean. They KNOW that marijuana is not harmless and are already working on cures for the damage that it does. Much worse than the short term memory loss and adhd is the link to psychosis.
I never believed it when friends or relatives told me that the doctors blamed the psychosis of a relative on early drug use, mostly marijuana. I always thought that the person was in denial, that they were afraid to admit that their relative was just psychotic or was suffering from the impact of much stronger drugs, but this is what they meant when they labeled marijuana a gateway drug.
I live in WA State, where the Libertarians and the Democrats both claim that marijuana is harmless. Recently, Obama has made noises about not prosecuting federal laws against marijuana. The reason is that they claim that marijuana is harmless, much less harmful than alcohol.
Start a thread here, on FreeRepublic, asking if marijuana is harmful and see who answers. Legalizing marijuana and other drugs has always been one of the first things that George Soros incourages when he goes into a country. The other is legalized abortion. The left uses it as an organizing technique.
[[True, but he did have the courage to serve his country with distinction during WWII.]]
That is true- That defiantely sets him way above today’s liberal in office- I’m not sure what his record is, whether he sought and saw combat? At least thel iberals back then actually loved their country (well, at least until thel ikes of kerry betraying his country and fellwo soldiers- that was the beginnign of hte end of respect for freedom and ocuntry
It never was a racial thing...it's a cultural thing.
Many brilliant black men and women have shown what that race is capable of (from George Washington Carver to Thomas Sowell).
But when a huge population chooses to rebel against productive society, they end up with abject failure.
Too bad...but that's just reality.
24 Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts* for the mutual degradation of their bodies.
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural,
27 and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.
29 They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips
30 and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents.
31 They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.z
Au contraire, mon frere. I'm black, and lived through the 'Donna Reed' years in the US. Unfairness directed toward blacks was endemic in this country at that time.
That's not to say that there wasn't opportunity for bright, skilled, and determined blacks to achieve something approximating the American Dream, but my fathers had to work twice as hard to get half as far as men in the majority culture.
Luckily for me, that oppression was largely a relic of the past when I came of age.
Basically, what happened to the country is liberalism.
Hugh Hefner, the pill, the acceptance of abortion.
These all encouraged women to be promiscuous. I remember hearing someone say that civil society depends on women saying “no”. Women lost a lot of leverage with an anything goes attitude before marriage. However, even worse is abortion - another life pays for the woman’s lack of responsible behavior. Hefner must be thrilled that so many women have willingly turned themselves into the fulfillment of his perverse fantasies.
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