Our National Amnesia: Forgetting The Truth That Made Us [re: freedoms,liberalization,standards]

Toogood Reports ^ | April 3, 2002 | Paul E. Scates

[Stand Watch Listen]

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge… – Hosea 4:6

The Catholic church in the U.S. has finally admitted the continuing homosexual abuse of young boys by some priests. They´ve now admitted to first calling it ‘pedophilia,´ then sending guilty priests to counseling and re-assigning them, only to have the same thing happen elsewhere. Instead of then removing that priest, they simply repeated the erroneous ‘solution ´…over and over again. For that failure of responsibility, the Catholic church is now deservedly suffering a major scandal…but it is the men who made those choices who deserve the shame, not the Christ whose teachings they abandoned.

Last week in National Review Online, Michael Novak wrote the best article about this scandal I´ve yet read. In it, he pointed out that it was the practical, if not official, abandonment of long-standing church standards that created the climate in the church and in the seminaries wherein priests with homosexual desires felt more free to act on those desires. Ironically, the same proponents of that liberalization of standards are even today blaming the abuse on celibacy and a repressive church, instead of acknowledging Novak´s point: if the priests had but remained faithful to their vows, to those ‘repressive´ church standards, the abuse would have never happened!

Of course, that point can never be acknowledged by the ‘liberals,´ be it in the church, Catholic or Protestant, or in the society at large. For any standard of law or behavior that was established before, say Roe vs. Wade, is automatically condemned as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and thus ‘needs´ to be changed to reflect the modern inclusive, tolerant and multicultural wisdom. (Like an irritating song fragment that you just can´t get out of your head, the Clintonian intonation of ‘working for change´ comes to mind.) No matter that the impact of the ‘change´ is for the worse in measurable, objective fact, ‘liberal´ orthodoxy says change is by definition good. So whatever gymnastics of the mind are required to re-define the damage of such change is simply one of the costs of ‘liberal´ ideology.

Contrary to that ideology, ‘change´ is not ‘good´…or ‘bad´; as any reasonable person can attest, the value of the change depends upon its impact on the process, the programs, etc. Ultimately, though, that value judgment must be made based on what the change does to people—does it improve their lives, materially or spiritually? Does it relieve the burdens of life in any appreciable way? Are they enabled and encouraged by such changes to become better citizens, better parents, better people?

It´s miraculous, I guess, that the United States became the most prosperous and the most powerful nation on earth under the ‘old´ standards of individual freedom and responsibility, of equality of opportunity and equality of accountability before the law. Even the wrongs in omitting blacks or women from that equality were, under those same old standards, eventually redressed. Even the poor in the U.S. have material prosperity that four-fifths of the world can´t even dream of. Yet the ‘liberals´ tell us that those old standards, created by a bunch of ‘dead old white men,´ are repressive and stultifying, and must be replaced ‘for the good of the children,´ et al.

So the church is not the only institution that has loosened its hold on ‘old standards.´ Public education immediately comes to mind as an area where the new standards are plainly visible.

In the lower-working class community where I grew up, few people even aspired to a college education. That was a dream far beyond means and even hopes. This was before athletic scholarships were so common, so it was only through military service and the G.I. Bill that any at our level could hope to go to college. ‘So what?´, those under thirty are probably asking. The ‘what´ is that, in those days, a college degree was truly a key to a better life, ensuring a better, higher-paying job, even a career. Today´s college graduates are guaranteed the same thing high school grads of yesteryear were promised—an interview.

The reason for that is that a college education fifty years ago meant you had actually learned something of value, were equipped to meet the challenges of the marketplace in science, technology or commerce. Likewise, a high school diploma back then meant that you could read and write with at least some degree of competency, do basic math and even some algebra or trigonometry, were familiar, at least, with the history of this nation and perhaps of Western Europe, and had some grounding in basic science. But talk to employers about the quality of college graduates today. They´ll tell you that many, if not most, are not as equipped with the knowledge and skills that high school graduates used to be. How can that be?

At least part of it, if not the major reason, is that ‘the three R´s´ are no longer reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, but have been replaced by the ‘liberal´ indoctrination version—redistribution (of wealth, substituting collective or government control for individual responsibility for one´s life), rejection of traditional moral values (church, family, individual responsibility, etc.), and redefinition (everything from grading standards—Pass/Fail; giving ‘A´s for effort, instead of achievement, etc.—to what constitutes ‘education´…today, how to put on condoms makes the grade…American history doesn´t).

Do you believe that, with all our resources, with all the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on education in this country, the U.S. should rank behind all but three or four industrialized nations in education achievement levels, and behind some that are not industrialized? But that´s the current state of our ‘educational´ establishment (and that´s just math and science and language; so the right-wing fanatic´s emphasis on our national history doesn´t figure in.).

Yes, you might say, but practically everyone who wants to can go to college today. To which I say, ‘at the enormous costs of lowered academic standards,´ which has a huge impact on the nation´s economy, culture and politics. I´ve worked at power plants where the majority of engineers were from foreign countries (India and Pakistan), because of the shortage of qualified American engineers. How much of that money goes ‘back home,´ rather than into our own economy?

As Patrick Moynihan wrote years ago, deviancy has been defined downward in our culture, and we have adapted to those lower standards, to our detriment. Much public behavior today would have brought immediate response and indignant demands to straighten up twenty years or so ago, and from common citizens, not to mention the police. Yet today, even the police will stand by and do nothing when crowds of men run through New York´s Central Park groping and undressing women. Fear of arousing minority—racial, religious, sexual identity, etc.—outrage has overwhelmed what used to be standards of common decency and respect for others.

It´s no accident that political campaigns amount to little more than sound bites—our people will not listen to anything more complex…and couldn´t understand it if they did! And politicians recently passed legislation—which the President signed—inhibiting First Amendment rights to free speech…with hardly a whimper from any but ‘the right-wing fanatics.´ Our people are so ignorant of our system of government that they don´t even recognize when cynical politicians are destroying the foundation of the freedoms we so mindlessly spend on material pursuits and personal pleasure. We´re unable to recognize that when those political freedoms are gone, so are the economic and cultural, and personal, benefits they have provided.

Is our nation better off? Is a system of government that enables common working people to achieve prosperity based upon their own efforts to be so lightly tossed aside? Are the freedoms for which so many have sacrificed and died so common in this world that we should listen to the blandishments and so-called compassionate pleas of those who would put the yoke of forced equality on all of us? This nation has been a glorious miracle, but we´ve forgotten and abandoned the foundations of that miracle.

Just as the Catholic (and the Protestant) church has forgotten and abandoned the standards they received from God, resulting in the scandal and shame of the church—and the untold damage to millions of souls—so have ‘we, the people,´ forgotten the standards established by the Founding Fathers, standards that resulted in what was once the greatness of this nation. Many of the resulting changes to our basic institutions—the church, the family, the government, the concept of individual freedom and accountability—have come from those who would have us all ‘equal´...even if it means equally miserable and equally in chains and poverty. Then, at least, those so full of…´caring´ won´t feel so guilty.

‘What you don´t know can´t hurt you´…want to bet? Just look around you.

[fporretto]

This is a very nice piece with a lot of passion behind it. All the same, I am put in mind of Thomas Szasz's sarcastic definition of freedom: "That which you want for yourself but would deny to others."

There's no problem about getting Americans to sign on to "freedom." Every American is in favor of "freedom," as he defines it. Restoring the original understanding to our national consensus is the tough part.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com