Posted on 08/07/2019 9:33:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
The nation must now endure another gut-wrenching tragedy, with at least 31 having been senselessly gunned downed in Texas and Ohio over a weekend.
This following a week where three were gunned down in California.
My appeal is to consider these tragedies a crisis of culture and not to turn them into politics, which is already happening.
I'm thinking about the words of Robert F. Kennedy when he spoke to a crowd in Indianapolis in April 1968, after hearing the news that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered.
"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in," said Kennedy. He himself would be assassinated shortly thereafter.
Kennedy appealed to Americans to move away from "polarization" and "hatred" and toward "love and wisdom and compassion."
It is a great temptation to simplify what is complex, and this tends to mean translating everything into politics, looking for some particular individual to blame and looking for some simple policy answer that will allegedly solve the problem.
But these tragedies are not simple and not partisan.
They have occurred too often in our nation and have occurred under Democratic as well as Republican regimes.
There is a sickness in the soul of our nation, and that sickness plays its way through and winds up expressed in deadly, pathological acts of lonely, lost, confused individuals -- disproportionately, young males.
We must try to grasp the nature of this pathology and consider how it may be addressed.
If we look, we can see other telling symptoms.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the rate of suicide in the nation is the highest since 1942.
From 1999 to 2017, the suicide rate increased 33 percent, and in 2016, suicide was the second leading cause of death in the age range of 10 to 34.
The rate of suicide among young men is more than three times higher than that of young women.
On the other side of the spectrum, while young Americans are taking their own lives at an increasing rate, fewer are bringing new life into the world.
The CDC reports that in 2018, for the fourth year in a row, the nation's fertility rate -- the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- dropped and hit a historic low.
And this has occurred coincidentally with a drop in the rate of marriage. The percentage of American adults who are married is one-third less than where is stood half a century ago.
Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has written about the huge exit of prime-age males -- 25 to 54 -- from the workforce. In 1965, according to Eberstadt, 96.6 percent of prime-age males were working. Now it's 88.5 percent, meaning millions of prime-age males have abandoned the workforce.
All this has occurred as Christianity, once a pillar of American society, has been pushed to the margins.
Per Gallup, in 1974, 65 percent of Americans expressed "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the church or organized religion. By 2019, this was down to 36 percent.
Faith builds a sense of belonging to something true and greater than oneself. It provides meaning and an anchor in times of difficulty and uncertainly.
As faith and eternal truths become more marginalized, more young people, particularly young males, become isolated and left with a sense of meaninglessness. They lose the key framework through which one takes personal responsibility for his or her life.
It produces an inclination to look for others to blame for their difficulties, for their personal struggles. Sometimes it becomes violent.
There is a great price to be paid for a culture of meaninglessness.
This is what we should be thinking and talking about, rather than simple political answers and who to blame.
Leftist lunacy and stupidity. Appealing to the ignorant and the stupid for votes and power.
What we need is federal licensing and IDs for corrupt, lying, America-hating Democrat politicians. RED FLAG THEM!!
Very few ask the question; WHY are faith and "eternal truths" (whatever that is) being marginalized? I have an answer (and you ain't gonna like it); many have discovered the old gods don't exist, never existed and can't exist.
You may argue with me, but I've been observing it happen since I was a young man.
Oh, and Robert Kennedy was an evil man. I observed that close up as well.
Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” rings truer with each passing day.
“AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
Absolutely, cure the disease not just treat the symptoms. We are trying to cure leprosy by only putting bandaids on the open wounds.
bkmk
She’s absolutely right. Even Bishop Chaput of Philadelphia, who can be a nutty liberal on a lot of things, came out and said it wasn’t the guns, it was the people behind them, and these people had been created by our sex-obsessed, fragmented society.
And he is 100 percent correct
bttt
PING!
In the meantime, please read The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. It helped lead me to being Saved.
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