Why does this matter? Well, if we saw a child who didn’t obey rules and simply made up his own “rules” — changing them as was convenient — would we say that he was governed by anything worthy of being called “rules” (principles)? Or would we conclude that the word had simply become a euphemism for flights of fancy and feelings-based decisions? Alright now, is it any different when an adult does it? Furthermore:
Is it any different when large groups of adults do it — even country-size groups?
We can put as much lipstick on this pig of preference-oriented decision-making as we want, but it amounts to this striking reality: we are a people that, to a great extent, now operates by the credo “If it feels good, do it.” .
Many of us now believe, in essence, there are no rules governing man.
And we often behave that way.
Oh, we know there are things called laws, regulations, social codes and “values,” but too many of us don’t believe they could have a basis in anything objective (God’s law), anything beyond our own collective desires. I know of a seemingly sociopathic man who once said to someone close to me, “Murder’s not wrong; it’s just that society says it is.” How could the relativistic majority among us answer him? “Well, yeah, I guess. But most of us really, really, really don’t like it”?
To understand the effects of this no-rules mentality, a little analogy is instructive. Imagine that baseball players came to believe there were no rules governing the sport, that it was “whatever works for you.” A pitcher might decide there should be only one strike, while a batter might reckon there should be five. A first baseman might insist that the hitter shouldn’t be able to run past first base, while the hitter might say he should be able to run past all of them. And things would continue degenerating, with everyone writing his own ticket and battling over standards, until, perhaps, players began tackling one another and sometimes wielding the bats as weapons. Games can’t work without agreed-upon rules.
Civilizations can’t work without them, either. And there won’t be agreement when people believe everything is “relative.” This is our lot, and we see the effects all around us.
Far from Middle Age Europe, where, as G.K. Chesterton put it, everyone agreed “on what really mattered,” today we agree on nothing that matters. We’re not just balkanized racially and ethnically, but ideologically, philosophically and spiritually. There are conservatives, liberals, libertarians, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, existentialists, Wiccans, atheists, just to name a handful, and a multitude of variations within most of the categories; reflecting this disagreement on “First Things,” other things are equally fractured. There are nationalists and internationalists, feminists and male-rights activists, multiculturalists and cultural defenders, patriots and perfidious scoundrels, activists and the apathetic, Marxists and free-market defenders, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.
Heck, many of us don’t even know what marriage or sexual propriety is anymore, the difference between a tissue mass and a baby, or even what boys and girls are, as we dial back our maturity level to the infantile stage during which a child can’t distinguish between male and female.
With our agreeing on almost nothing, it’s not surprising most everything ends up in court, as we enrich lawyers and empower judges to become the Ultimate Arbiters of All Things. Meanwhile, not-so-huddled masses, Muslim jihadists and perhaps weapons of mass destruction pour across a border that’s still not porous enough for the miles-wide fifth column in our midst. And the same people tell us voter-ID is oppressive, as our government prints official documents in dozens of languages and we press one for English and hope the customer service representative we get to help us with our crummy Chinese-made product will have a decipherable accent.
Speaking of which, why is China often called the “world’s oldest civilization”? It has seen governments come and go, endured tyranny, disease and starvation, but certain things have remained: the Chinese people, language and culture. China truly is a nation, meaning, an extension of the tribe, which itself is an extension of the family (hence, there’s no such thing as a “nation of immigrants” — unless they’re all from the same country). We’re now the opposite, a federation of competing sub-cultures — some imported, some domestically made — not all of which are trying to coexist within the same borders. Many of us simply hate each other’s guts.
Given that all civilizations rise and fall, being able to determine when yours is close to its terminus may be helpful. Imagine you knew a man who was drinking, taking drugs and indulging sexual misbehavior more and more over time. It was increasingly difficult for him to retain employment, act responsibly, pay his bills and get along with others, as his devolving mindset led to accidents and violent outbursts. You’d recognize that his life was spinning out of control and wouldn’t be surprised to later hear he was in prison or dead. Such is the last stop on the road of inexorable moral decay. Now, would your expectations be any different if it were a group of people exhibiting such self-destructive behavior?
Okay, what about an even larger group — let’s say, a country?
Of course, not all of us are that nigh-to-the-grave reprobate. But America’s collective face does increasingly resemble him.
We can also hark back to the baseball analogy. With people tending to make up their own rules, our “game” is breaking down. Why do you think we have candidates who scoff at enforcing immigration law and a president and judges who wipe their paws and claws on the Constitution? In a land where all is relative, laws are relative to the men; then you become a nation of men, not laws.
This is why none of our “solutions” will solve anything. We can talk about Ted Cruz and constitutionalism. But was John Adams a fool when warning in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”? We are now the “other.”
We can echo Donald Trump echoing Ronald Reagan and say “Make America great again!” But as an apocryphal quotation oft repeated by Reagan goes, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
She married the reprobate or she IS that reprobate? Look around you
Your link doesn’t work.
The HELL itt’s not!
We can’t by main force change the media either. The question of the character of the one who chooses keeps on transferring itself. We could ask who we are to listen to that kind of trashy media.
Ultimately the problem is individual people’s choices before God. There are two kingdoms, God’s and the devil’s, and we can claim one or the other.
Here’s where the bible asks the question of how shall they hear without a preacher. We don’t need a president to preach gospel to us. That is not in his mission. We need clergy and lay evangelists, and they have to keep their mission clear. They can’t be complaining that the president is not preaching gospel. They can’t be trying to get the president to preach gospel for them. And they need to be walking the gospel, not just talking the gospel. I’ve seen folks who weren’t even Christian (at least nominally; maybe God has destined them to become such) who walked a better gospel than our holier-than-thou rollers.
End-of-soapbox
America has been like a man dying in the hospital. This last administration is like a malicious doctor injecting something into his IV to speed up the process.
Obama is not a symptom or cause. The demorats completely sold out to the socialist under clinton. The whole party moved completely left. The publicans sold out also to the new world order and tried to win with romney which caused millions not to vote. Obama never made anything it was all spoon fed by the globalists.
The American Electorate is corrupted:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency, than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
– Translated into English from an article appearing in the Czech Republic as published in the “Prager Zeitung” of April 28, 2010.
I’ll get right on that.
A Theory of Critical Elections
V. O. Key Jra1
a1 Harvard University
Perhaps the basic differentiating characteristic of democratic I orders consists in the expression of effective choice by the mass of the people in elections. The electorate occupies, at least in the mystique of such orders, the position of the principal organ of governance; it acts through elections. An election itself is a formal act of collective decision that occurs in a stream of connected antecedent and subsequent behavior. Among democratic orders elections, so broadly defined, differ enormously in their nature, their meaning, and their consequences. Even within a single nation the reality of election differs greatly from time to time. A systematic comparative approach, with a focus on variations in the nature of elections would doubtless be fruitful in advancing understanding of the democratic governing process. In behavior antecedent to voting, elections differ in the proportions of the electorate psychologically involved, in the intensity of attitudes associated with campaign cleavages, in the nature of expectations about the consequences of the voting, in the impact of objective events relevant to individual political choice, in individual sense of effective connection with community decision, and in other ways. These and other antecedent variations affect the act of voting itself as well as subsequent behavior. An understanding of elections and, in turn, of the democratic process as a whole must rest partially on broad differentiations of the complexes of behavior that we call elections.
Professor V. O. Key, Jr., of Harvard University, is widely known for his studies in party politics. Professor Key was formerly Book Review Editor of The Journal of Politics.
sorry- but many people did NOT make the choice to marry him and therefore have aq right to say they don’t recognize this ocutnry any longer- and to say that yes- the left HAVE destroyed this country- We didn’t want any of this to happen- it’s not the fault of htoze who did not vote for him- We rejected him-
While the gimmedat society may be increasing, there is still a major segment that isn’t- a segment that did NOT go to the alter with him
the quality of writing and opinion on American thinker has been sliding lately-
Not important enough?
Supreme Court nominees.
‘Nuff said.
Wasn’t a whole lot of thinking behind this one.
We all remember the “vote this way or else” elections of the past. We also remember the “never has there been a more critical election”, claims.
Folks, this is that type of an election, and don’t let some lame brained idiot tell you otherwise.
It does matter who wins this election.
I can barely fathom the intellect that doesn’t recognize this.
The problem is that the Barack Obama who ran for president in 2008 pretended to be a moderate who said his goals were to bring the races together.
In fact, he turned out to be a far left anti-white racist and America hater whose goal has been to destroy the country and its institutions as much as he can. He lied about virtually everything he actually stood for (marriage being one of the biggest lies). Sure, some of that was there to see (probably most evident in his connections with Jeremiah Wright), but most folks took him at face value. And as a result, we got the worst president in history.
The sad thing is virtually any Republican should have beaten Obama in 2012, but Romney essentially threw the race. Why? I don’t know, although I would also say there was probably a fair amount of voter fraud going on across the country.
I just remember the next day everyone I know being shocked, because no one could believe someone as bad as Obama could possibly have been reelected.
"Why is China often called the “world’s oldest civilization”? It has seen governments come and go, endured tyranny, disease and starvation, but certain things have remained: the Chinese people, language and culture. China truly is a nation, meaning, an extension of the tribe, which itself is an extension of the family (hence, there’s no such thing as a “nation of immigrants” — unless they’re all from the same country). We’re now the opposite, a federation of competing sub-cultures — some imported, some domestically made — not all of which are trying to coexist within the same borders."
There you have it: Borders, Language and Culture.
"Was John Adams a fool when warning in 1798, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”? We are now the "other."
We have a lot of work to do. Do your best. .
I could see the South and the Mid West breaking off and forming a very viable and productive Judea -Christian based county. Secession is the answer.
Why, America needs a Christian Revival !!!
What we need is a spiritual revival, specifically a Christian revival and a massive turning toward God. Then we will get our political revival as we regain the right road as a people. The one flows from the other. Doing it the other way around doesn't work. It never did and it never will.