From the Mailbag: Dialogue About Morality
Dean
Blogs for Bush author Mark Noonan recently wrote me in regard to recent discussions we've had here on Dean's World about American morality:
Dean,
I think you're mistaking "happened" for "acceptable"... sins have always happened, but they used to be unacceptable, even if fairly common.
To tie some threads together, Empires fall when the citizens of the Empire lose their belief in same. The British Empire didn't die for lack of power - it was, physically, more powerful in 1945 than it had ever been - it died for lack of belief. A lot of bad things can be said about the various moral supports the British Empire enjoyed, but once those supports were kicked away, the whole edifice crumbled with amazing rapidity. You and I, in 2005, are appalled by "white man's burden", correctly detecting the racist undertones...but you and I also should sit back and remember that the British really believed that they had a duty to bring the best things to their subject peoples. But, when your belief system has been corroded and all that remains is the bothersome burden of maintaining control of territory which brings you no benefit (hard fact of life: outside of Malaya and India, the British Empire was a money-losing proposition)., then you just toss it away. Toss away what your father's and grandfather's gave their lives to preserve and extend.
The United States, as an entity, derives a great deal of it's strength from the Judeo-Christian ethic and worldview. I, too, am fully aware that many of the Founders had little use for either and almost all of them were at least influenced by the decidedly anti-Christian Enilightenment - but the fact remains that from day one, most people of the United States were deeply religious and their institutions of government reflected this fact. What we built over two centuries was built upon the bedrock of these Judeo-Christian ethics...anti-Christians might point out the absurdity of Prohibition...but the same Christian ethic which created Prohibition also fought the Civil War to end slavery, fought hard to end the racist aftermath of slavery...and created in the public mind the concept that the poor and helpless have a claim upon the aid of the wealthy.
While the non-Christian - or the quasi-Chrisian liberal - can have all the complaints he wishes about Christianity, it must be kept in mind that you can't separate the baby from the bathwater - you can't, as it were, try to excise Christianity and it's ethic from the body politic and expect to maintain the body politic in it's current condition. God commands me to love my neighbor - if he's no longer in command, then why should I love my neighbor? Should I not seek whatever advantage I can gain over my neighbor? No one's watching me and the old morality is proved false...to what standard should I adhere when it has been authoriatively stated that there are no standards?
God does not curse us - but we can very easily curse ourselves. God does provide a shield over the United States...but he isn't shunting it aside as we sin; our sins are forcing it aside...we are, in a way, desperately seeking a way around God's shield so that the bullet may more easily be shot into our foreheads.
When I say that morality is worse today than it was 50 years ago I'm not actually saying that 50 years ago we didn't sin - or even necessarily saying that we sinned less (though I do believe such to be a correct assertion) - but that 50 years ago a sin was recognised as a sin. Our problem in 2005 is that sins are not recognised. People likely did booze it up more 50 years ago than they do today - social drinking (as well as smoking) as considered a norm. But 50 years ago if you became an alchoholic you became a disgrace - you'd lose your job and be lucky if your own family would take you in...these days, you get therapy and are protected via US law from "discrimination" based upon your desire for a double-shot at 11am.
Adultery is only barely considered an offense; divorce just part of normal life; children having sex is just one of those things; vulgarity pitched at children is just good marketing; out of wedlock children are not "bastards" anymore; men who don't do the right thing by their children (something which requires far more than just keeping current on the child support payments) are not ostracised; no one would think of censuring a woman who has four children by three men, none of whom she ever married...on and on it goes; sin after sin not recognised for what they are.
The corrosion of the belief system has already had a marked affect upon America - 50 years ago when we suffered a dastardly attacked, we united, dropped everything we were doing and went after the enemy until total victory...today; well, it wasn't a week before I started reading the defeatist opinions. Right now, probably 30% of the American population actually advocates American defeat...why? Because they don't believe in America...and this is because they don't believe in the moral code which made America what it is. You can't have one without the other - if you want the America which secured the liberty of its citizens for 200 years, then you'll have to bend the knee a bit towards the moral/religious underpinnings of that society.
Mark
My response:
My own view is simply different from yours; in middle class society people today do frown on out of wedlock births. 60 years ago, before the widespread availability of penicillin, syphilis cut down millions, in an epidemic so bad that Franklin Roosevelt led a (now mostly forgotten) nationwide campaign against it; divorce today isn't as common as some people think because it's a certain group of people who are serial divorcers who make up most of the divorce rate; meanwhile, so-called "deadbeat dads" are treated as the scourge of society.
Furthermore, on some areas of morality we are FAR more moral than our ancestors. We no longer put up with public duelling or even fisticuffs. Beating your children or your spouse in public is highly frowned upon. Words like "nigger" and "spic" get you shunned (or even fired!) today whereas when I grew up everyone I knew let fly with that kind of language on a casual basis. Drunk driving used to be considered a source of humor and not outrage. And time was when lynchings were public celebrations that people brought their families to witness. Even if speaking from a strictly Christian perspective--it's an ethos I'm at least well-steeped in--all of those things are as sinful as fornication.
We are more casual about sex now because we have managed to minimize the damage it presents. Yet still most people frown on overt promiscuity, recognizing it as dangerous, destructive behavior. And despite claims to the contrary, I know absolutely no one in middle class America who thinks that single moms popping out kids from multiple fathers is anything but bad. If it's not viewed as quite the disgrace it was 50 years ago, that's to the good so far as I'm concerned: stigmatizing children as bastards is hardly decent behavior, after all. Furthermore, people were poorer 60 years ago, and medical care nowhere near as advanced, and so certain behaviors were literally a lot riskier to the participants and society as a whole than today; nevertheless, the so-called "sexual revolution" came to a crashing halt 20 years ago and for good reason: most people recognized that licentious behavior isn't healthy.
As for Americans uniting behind World War II: I'm afrad that I have a more cynical view than you on that too. Having looked at how Americans behaved in wars prior to World War II, we see there were all along people who hated what we were doing. A nasty little secret is that prior to Hitler's invasion of Russia, most of the American left said we should "stay out of the fascist war" with Hitler and stay "neutral." But once Hitler went after Uncle Joe, then America's hard left, as well as its right, came to favor war with Hitler.
In other words, the left and right were united then. I no longer know if they ever will be on such an issue again.
There's also the phenomenon that so many talk about in the Pentagon: Americans have turned sour on just about every war we've ever fought that lasted more than about 3 years. We face that now I'm afraid, and I don't know the fix for it.
I may reprint all this if you don't mind.
Mark sez:
Dean,
Publish away, if you like - I think it a fascinating debate.
You're correct in that we're just going to have to agree to disagree, but it is a worthwhile thing to talk about. It has made me rethink some presuppositions I've thoughtlessly carried around for, well, my whole like as far as I can tell.
Mark
I do agree that it's worth talking about. Especially because conservatives seem to take it as a given that Americans today are far less moral than we were 50 years ago, and I just don't buy it.
I freely admit that this may have something to do with the fact that I was born in the '60s as the product of a broken home--and that my parents were both products of the World War II generation, and both products of broken homes themselves.
I also often find myself wondering if I'm the only person under the age of 50 who knows about Franklin Roosevelt's war against syphilis, or the cry, "We must not allow V-E day to become VD day!"
(Note for the young: Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) used to be known as "Venereal Disease" (VD).)
I'm just tired of social conservatives' casual sneers that Americans today are a bunch of disgusting slackers and perverts.
Related Posts (on one page):
I'm just sayin'...
Personal, consensual choices can effect many others beyond you. At some point those others are going to say "Enough, we don't want to keep cleaning up your nonsense." And thus the societal debate about where to place the boundaries takes place. Don't like that? Well, too bad. Unless you want to be Robinson Crusoe you have to deal with societal boundaries.
The only thing I (kind of) take issue with is the idea that social conservatives think people today are slackers and perverts. I agree that some social conservatives think that, but I'm not sure why that bothers you any more than what other groups think. For example, much of the left thinks Americans are just as immoral, if not more so, for somewhat different reasons.
The idea of "morality" always gets dumped on social conservatives as if we're the only ones trying to tell others what to do. Part of the reason why I drifted toward the right side of the aisle was, in part, because I found the left side too oppressive in terms of what I was and was not allowed to say and do (political correctness, while always somewhat of a joke, was taken a bit more seriously when I was an undergraduate in college). It seemed as if being a "liberal" meant that you could no longer even criticize other people on the left. You had to take any leftist idea seriously, no matter how silly. You had to be non-judgmental at all costs, while constantly being judged by others. Forget that. If I get thrown out of the coalition of the enlightened for criticizing feminist ideas once in awhile, so be it.
I never quite understood why a bunch of supposedly rebellious young people signed up for a doctrine that was every bit as strict as the Catholic church.
I prefer vanilla, by the way.
Because they're every bit as human and therefore every bit as hierarchically inclined as the strictest finger-wagging Chrisitan conservative. They're rebelling against a <i>specific</i> authoirty, that is, their parents, not against all authority.
And I fully agree with Dean, and I'd say by any sane measure the United States is a more moral place now than it was 50 years ago, and <i>a fortiori</i> more so than it was 150 years ago. While I agree that sexual sin is somewhat more acceptable now than it was in the past (which makes a bit of sense as the consquences are less grave than they were once upon a time), most other broad categories of sin, such as sins of violence, reckless disregard, and enslavement, are much less so.
The golden age of humanity, if such exists at all, which I highly doubt, must lie in our future, because our past is distinctly non-auraceous.
It's obviously not all of society. No, it's the "mainstream" media. Take a look at any sitcom, or even any drama ("Desperate Housewives"?). You've got every variety of extra-marital sex, violence, drug use, general irresponsibility, the glorfication of selfishness and "feelings" as paramount, and it's all portrayed as normal. Very few of these traditionally-frowned-upon behaviors seem to carry any negative consequence. The failure to condemn sin as sin by the media goes all the way back to Dan Quayle busting on "Murphy Brown" for doing the out-of-wedlock baby storyline. (Of course Murphy as a mom was completely unbelievable, the kid was little more than a prop, and the show died anyway.) Dan Quayle was right.
Another aspect of this problem includes the political correctness and diversity movements, which promote the ideas that to be judgemental is bad, and that all cultures are equally good. These ideas form the basis of the sitcom/drama worldviews. People who hold to these ideals are lauded, people who do not are mocked and destroyed -- along with people who practice religion, who are nearly uniformly played as idiots (Ned Flanders) or psychopaths (any number of Fundie Christian serial killers.)
As a result of all this, there are very few fiction-based programs I allow my children to watch. I don't need them absorbing lessons about what's right and good from such a warped perspective. If American middle class morality is holding fast, it's because we're fighting a rearguard action.
But all that "entertainment" does have a corrosive effect. We become desensitized and weary when presented with outrage after outrage. After a while, the tendency to say, "Oh, who cares" becomes inevitable.
Shakespeare depicted murder and suicide, both very serious sins, on a not entirely irregular basis. So did the great Greek playwrights, who also threw in some licentiousness for good measure. Should we then ban these great works from our schools?
Entertainment is different from reality, and always has been, and people are perfectly capable of drawing the distinction.
It wasn't that these things didn't occur, it was that they were affronts to the normal order of things, they unbalanced society, and that only the punishment or repentance of the sinner could restore the balance.
They weren't celebrated. These things were condemned, no matter how much sympathy the audience had for the character. It was wrong and retribution or repentance needed to follow before the curtain closed.
It isn't by happenstance or a contrivance of the patriachical oppressive system that this comes about. This disturbs the order of society and swamps the boats of the innocent.
Review Hamlet and see what affect Claudius' murder of the king had on Denmark, and Ophelia, and Hamlet, and Polonius.
I agree with you here Dean. What people do is pick and choose what counts as morality. As an example, in 1965 it was common throughout the country to see racially segregated facilities. There may well have been less out of wedlock sex, but is that really a worse moral position than engaging in racism? I certainly prefer a society that promotes racial equality to one that ostracizes teenagers for engaging in premarital sex. Of course it would be nice to make progress in all areas, but let's not overlook the progress that has been made.
Heh, you are not the only one, but certainly one of the few...
Yeah, I agree, why pick on today's Americans when there is ample documentation since 1776 that such has been the world's opinion of Americans since the founding of the Republic?
But, despite the ebb and flow of different emphases on aspects of morality, the idea that the Viking loot, pillage, and casually slay warrior is morally on a similiar level to an American G.I. Joe is incorrect.
There are Dark and Golden Ages. We live in a Golden Age.
There are significant efforts to turn this into a Dark Age...see moonbats, "reason is patriarchical oppression", etc.. There are also feedback loops which restabilize society...one of these is social conservatives, another is the news articles that come out every few years about "So and So Country is going to topple America from #1", and there are plenty more, I'm sure.
If not for the feedback loops this country would fall to pieces.
Incidentally, if the socons want to take over completely, they have to find something that fills the function of the liberals without their corruption. That is, the desire for art, for improving things, and so forth.
Because otherwise you will create a vacuum. We need some sort of socon progressivism. Just make it real progressivism rather than the version created by the Left.
Remember that most social progressive causes had the churches squarely behind them until recent decades.
Once we destroy the Left, we can have the incubating projects take off...
I do not believe that America is sliding into decline, moral or otherwise, God-caused or otherwise. On many social and moral issues, we have made great progress. Overall, I would gladly choose to live in today's America over any time or place in history, and would probably bet only on America's future as a better time.
But I do think that family cohesion is a concern, and that changing attitudes towards sex play a role in hurting family cohesion.
When talking about these things, I don't want to be lumped in with the "decline and fall of America" crowd. We can be doing just fine overall, while still having problems that need attention.
Half the humor is watching fictional people repeat stupid mistakes that even all but your densest real-life individual learns from after at least the second time.
So morality does inform some modern art.
Yours,
Wince
Oedipus' sin is but the first stone tossed into the pond. It's ripples harm or destroy many, and bring damage to the polity. Civilization can be fragile, as we saw in New Orleans. Not internalizing a morality, a code of do's and don'ts, will in the absence of external force quickly devolve into chaos which will destroy the polity, the society, and individual people, innocent though they may be.
This is where this comes from, this idea of judgment and retribution for sin. We are dealing with the same human we have dealt with for millenia. Humans have not changed much from the Old Testament, ancient Greece, or Shakespearean England. Or Twenty-First century Ameica. There must be a public morality and violators must be punished or censured in some such way so that the society does not break down and we all go under for the sins of a few.
So what is the morality to be? Beats me. Abrahamic times, ancient Greece, Elizabethan England all had different do's and don'ts. But what they had in common is that there must be a code, a floor, beneath which none should be allowed to descend without rebuke.
What should that be for us? Good question. Anyone up to finding out?
Therefore, what in hell are you talking about?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And it's not just entertainment media outlets that advance the normalcy of the deviant (if you'll excuse the hyperbole.) The news outlets are worse, because they editorialize under the guise of "reporting" the news.
May I guess ? Auraceous from aura:
The aura of majesty or glory surrounding a person or thing that is regarded with reverence, awe, or sentiment.
McK
I've also been listening to people complain about all the immoralit in soap operas forever. That's all Desperate Housewives is you know.
As for numbers: what numbers do you want? I gave reference to the great syphilis epidemic of the depression era, in which literally millions died of that horrible STD--more than AIDS has ever killed in this country, just by example. What other numbers do you want?
I think it's fair to discuss the issue of the family, and what is and isn't functional behavior. I think those are important questions, especially in an era wherein we routinely expect people not to marry until their 20s or 30s.
And don't the constant complaints about soap operas prove my point? Mainstream morality finds them repulsive, because they are. It's one thing to depict sin if you're going to make some larger statement about it, but showcasing sex just because the actors are pretty is execrable.
Therefore, what in hell are you talking about?
It's a word I made up, meaning "golden", as in the Latin root. I tend to do that sometimes. Sorry.
But if you watch enough soap operas you know that bad people almost always get their comeuppance sooner or later.
And no, the point isn't made on soap operas, because many of them have been on the air for 30, 40, 50, 60, even in at least one case over 70 years (having started on radio), and the complaints about them have been constant and virtually identical for generations.
However, one of the nasty issues that David Brooks and others have touched on recently is that unrestrained sexual libertinism is enormously expensive, to both the individual and to society, and if poor people indulge in the sort of sexual libertinism that movie-stars and such idolize, they'll perpetuate their own poverty. The rich can hail "sexual openness" because they can afford it.
My mother's parents married in their mid-20's, as did many of their peers. In those days, a young man wouldn't expect to marry a young woman unless he had a means of supporting her, and the family that they would expect to have. As a result, many young men found that, when they finally could support a wife, they were a little ripe - so they chose a younger bride. Women, therefore, realizing this, often wouldn't wait for their childhood sweetheart to get the money together, but would chose another man - someone often older and better able to support her. The melodramas of the day alluded to that tortured choice, and the sacrifice of true love to expediency.
The more impulsive members of society reaped their just reward by being very strapped for cash. Thus, early marriage was penalized, not by society, but by economic principles.
The "Irish solution" was to delay marriage until the late 20's or even early 30's. Fortunately, then, as now, the Irish are notoriously fertile, and were still able to produce a bumper crop of children.
In that case, why didn't you simply describe mankind's past as leaden, colorless or drab, rather than trying to force-feed a Latin root into a word apparently never heard of even by the compilers of the dictionaries?
As for sin, I recognize no such concept, having never been exposed to the influence of priestly busybodies whose interest seems to focus most closely on the sexual lives of young women trapped in their confessional boxes. (And frequently to young choir boys assigned to their supervision for prayer but perhaps put to use for vile purposes.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I see someone already corrected the question of whether David was punished or not. Also, technical-speaking, David murdered Uriah to protect Bathsheba from the accusation of adultery, not to steal his wife, per se.
When Bathsheba told David that she was pregnant, David sent Uriah (Bathsheba's husband and one of David's soldiers) home to sleep with his wife so that Uriah would think that the child was his. But Uriah felt that he would be shirking his duty and didn't go home. When David found this out, he put Uriah on the front lines of battle where he was sure to get killed and get killed he did.
Of course, that's still a horrible thing to do and David was punished for it. BTW, David and Bathsheba's second child was the famed King Solomon. God is a funny guy.
Just wanted to clarify things for those of you who wouldn't open a Bible on a bet.
Because I do that sometimes, a human habit to which I am particularly susecptible. Someone has to coin new words, right?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
One of the concepts mentioned here is "Defining Deviancy Down".
David got punished, but part of the morality of the story is "If you're one of mine,and you really mess up, I'm more likely to be nice to you." Like a father is more likely to mitigate certain severe punishment for his kids, and more likely to punish them for minor things. And since David was "a man after God's own heart", God had a special love for him.
Another point is that each society has a basic morality. Some of this is individual to that society, some universal. I'd say that there are certain goods, and ways of doing things that the society values, and they critique the ones most likely to interfere with those. And no society, or person has infinite energy or attention to spare to critique all the sins they would like to, so they have to prioritize.
And I like the concept that sin forces God's protection aside. My father said that he used to think God waited in heaven with a big, baseball bat to bash people with, but not anymore. My current model would be how I relate with a child of mine.
Is it a golden age, yes, but with definite streaks of decadence. Some might be the type of thing you fight because thats what you do to restrain it (such as the softness of the people), but some such as abortion is a black spot that we did not have to have trouble us.
And while negative population growth will probably be fixed, it is a decided negative sign. Roughly equivalent to someone giving up the fight to thrive at best, and near-suicidal at worst. And it will probably require some fairly significant changes in viewpoint to beat. At least as great as beating back the Japanese Challenge of the 80's, and possibly as large as the Conservative Revolution that took 30 years of blood, sweat, and toil to achieve.
We have to:
1. End abortion
2. Possibly do this Teen Marriage/adult support thing.
3. Destroy the last remnants of the over-pop dogma.
4. Destroy the "people are net consumers, not producers" view.--this is part of the usual array of modern socialism, btw.
5. Create more of a culture of life
6. Lower the cost on having kids by lowering taxes, reigning in insane demands on parents, new tech to support kid raising
7. Smack around anti-kid forces like the snot-nosed narcissists who want to have a beautiful restauraunt without hearing one happy kid's voice raised to remind the spouse of another they are seducing of consequences. (Me, nasty? A little bit. Anti-kidders irritate me. They are orcs who think they are elves.)
Easy? Not so much.
More and more I admire your views on religion and morals.
If you know about the Samaritan Woman, the Woman at the well...that would be me and the well was full of vodka in my case.
Religion has hurt me at times in my life as I know it did my Mother. She was a beautiful woman with good morals, a truly beautiful outwardly woman and also, in her soul. I saw her try to live her religion and I saw it tear her up because she could not always live the self that life following a doctrine Later she found a lot of peace in Metaphysics and I adored her attempt in that religion too.
I have read Dean and Arnold for quite sometime and find myself totally agreeing with their decision not to believe in God. I have been there as well.
If you were to read the headlines in the 1800's you would see things that would raise your hair with the morals of the day. A well respected minister, Max Lucado read some to us one morning and he left the year in the 1800's out until the end of his sermon. You would have thought it was todays headlines.
I think about what Mark has to say as well our resident minister, Paul and sincerely appreciate them as well. Many people have turned from God and the bible and many are turning to the bible. I think this is a great thread. I haven't seen too much about our genes and how they do play a role in our religion. Oh well, FWIW.
It doesn't fit, because we're not less moral today than we used to be.
It does fit because it matches Mark Noonan's concern with defining sin as not sin.
Its seems to have devolved into suggestions regarding judeo-christian belief (or anti-such-beliefs) versus counting ethical prohibitions. And apparently the generation with the least sins wins. Since neither side can claim victory, we can announce, we're no less moral today than however many years ago. What claptrap.
Being fair minded, I word searched Mark Noonan's comments and Dean's and the all the other comments
and nowhere does the word <i>virtue</i> appear.
But at least Mark Noonan does allude to it in one of the commandments that isn't a prohibition that
instructs: "God commands me to <i>love</i> my neighbor".
If a nation, or an empire fails, it seems to me it will not be because of lynchings or syphilis or the number of abortions because of a lack of <i>virtue</i> amongst it leadership or maybe perhaps, a result of a national political consensus that morality is inconvenientally unimportant.
I am really quite disappointed in this discussion.
Its seems to have devolved into suggestions regarding judeo-christian belief (or anti-such-beliefs) versus counting ethical prohibitions. And apparently the generation with the least sins wins. Since neither side can claim victory, we can announce, we're no less moral today than however many years ago. What claptrap.
Being fair minded, I word searched Mark Noonan's comments and Dean's and the all the other comments
and nowhere does the word virtue appear.
But at least Mark Noonan does allude to it in one of the commandments that isn't a prohibition that
instructs: "God commands me to love my neighbor".
If a nation, or an empire fails, it seems to me it will not be because of lynchings or syphilis or the number of abortions because of a lack of virtue amongst it leadership or maybe perhaps, a result of a national political consensus that morality is inconvenientally unimportant.
As for "the generation with the least sins wins," that's a bunch of poppycock entirely fabricated by your imagination.
That said: those of you who are convinced America has become a vile and sick country in decline need to do more than simply assert that it's so. Otherwise, the charge that you secretly despise your country and its people looks to be quite valid.
Hey, I've made the big time - I've gotten into the Dean's World Mailbag!
Once again an endlessly fascinating debate -
JDS,
Morality never changes over time - just what people are willing to let others get away with. The only difference between the attitudes of today and the attitudes of yesteryear is that sin is not condemned - indeed, very often sin is lauded as a positive virtue!
17th century Restoration rakes in England attended Church and kept a public face of morality while engaging in hedonism on the side which would make Hugh Hefner blush - they did plenty of wrong, but they knew full well that it was wrong. These days, we congratulate a woman upon her pregnancy even if she's unmarried.
Laura,
You are aware that the murder/rape/armed robbery rates per 100,000 persons are vastly higher than they were 50 or 150 years ago, right? They've come down from their all time highs a few years ago, but in 1940 (or thereabouts) there were 200 or so murders in New York City...in 2002, 575 were murdered in NYC (the population in 2002 was actually less than in 1940, by the way). The sin of violence is certainly much worse than it used to be...
McKiernen,
I think it self-evident that if I believe that sin is greater than before then virtue must be less...
Also there are about 6 million people in New York now, you're saying the population was higher than that in 1940? Funny, the US population as a whole was less than half what it is now back then....
You know, conservatives used to like to tell the tale of the woman who was brutally raped and murdered in broad daylight screaming for help in New York City, and no one ever came or even called the cops even though dozens of neighbors reported hearing her cries for help. Remember that story? Yeah, that was in the 1960s....
Even taking into consideration better reporting, I doubt we were missing the number of corpses in New York city by a factor of greater than 2.5. Bodies are hard to miss...on the whole, taking one thing with another, I'm going to remain extremely firm in my conviction that the violent crime rate in the United States is much higher than it was 50 years ago...heck, I'm just old enough to remember when a run-of-the-mill murder would make the front pages of the newspaper...these days, unless its a multiple homicide, a murder only makes for a back-page filler item. And can you imagine a New York City public school allowing children to bring guns on to school property? Many long years ago, New York City public schools allowed just that - as part of gun clubs, which kids could be members of...because there wasn't a huge worry that the kids would use the guns to murder their fellow students.
There has been, in my view, a disintegration in public morality - the "broken windows" theory works in my mind as an established fact...if the little things aren't dealt with, then larger things will result...by refusing to condemn the smaller sins, we have made major sins seem smaller...and thus essentially encouraged more of them. A good liberal is likely appalled at the concept that 50 years ago an unwed, teen mother would be shunned and disgraced...but how many other teens were saved, by fear of public exposure, from the disasterous path of unwed teen motherhood? How many 20 year olds sit in jail today because their mothers felt no social risk, twenty years ago, in getting pregnant and giving birth out of wedlock - when youthful, unwed birth is the surest indicator of a future life of poverty and/or jail? How many are in their graves?
I ask the question: How many people have to suffer and die so that rich liberals can feel validated in their immoral behaviour? Upper class people can afford poor morals - they've got the money and the support systems which make stupidity bearable...but the poor don't have that money or those support systems...they are left to flounder about on their own. When will someone point out that while we have our rights as individuals, we also have our responsibilities to our fellow men and women? When will people start to relearn that their duties are far more important than their rights?
During a discusion on your "sin and wickedness" post a short while ago, I suggested that what was important was not whether people sinned or not, but whether or not people accepted it as OK or called it sin. I also suggested that comparing acceptable behavior now with acceptable behavior ages ago was not an indicator of our current state of declining or rising.
I was quite tickled to see your quote of Mark Noonan making the same points in far more eloquent manner. You don't agree with him any more than you agreed with me. That is a fair debate. But not too bad for an unserious, ignorant, blathering jackass like myself, no?
In my experience, really fulminating arguments come from miscommunication: situations where each party talks past the other about separate points without realizing it. On top of that is a tendnecy to get drawn into side arguments that are irrelevant to the main point. Take this thread. A great deal of it is devoted to what is right or wrong (irrelevant), and to comparing whether what we do now is better or worse than what we did some thousands of years ago (irrelevant). Those are interesting arguments, but they are NOT the subject of Mark Noonan's text.
IMHO, you have a tendancy to focus on side arguments; though less so than many of your posters. IMHO, you have a tendancy to speak to the wrong point; not a side point, but the wrong point. On a personal level: focus on my lack of knowledge about Nero rather than addressing decline versus rise; focus on my ignorance of Simon Wiesenthal's history, rather than addressing whether or not keeping Nazi horrors front and center and in need of justice is a good thing or a bad thing. You fall prey to this because you are easily offended. On a purely debate level, and from this topic only: focusing on whether or not we have improved over the last thousand year rather than whether or not we have improved over the last few decades; focusing on whether a behavior is good or bad, rather than on whether people accept bad behavior as OK or not.
I am not complaining. This site is remarkable. I am merely sticking my two cents into the fray. There is nothing like poking an iron into the forge and reshaping it afterwards.
John
I will also remain firm in my conviction that it is highly immoral to stigmatize children, and to stigmatize single mothers in a way that encourages them to have abortions. These people need help and understanding AND some discipline, not the shameful ostracization of the past.
I also remain firm in my conviction that in several areas which neither you nor anyone else has addresses, we ARE a measurably more moral and virtuous people today than we were 50 years ago. Except for one person, no one has even tried refuting those areas.
I also ask again: where did those millions of syphilitics come from in the depression era? More people back then got the clap than anyone in America ever got AIDS.
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JFC: the fastest way to get your ass banned off my blog is to patronize or engage in armchair psychoanalysis of your host.
Furthermore, whether it's the discussion of Simon Wiesenthal, sexually transmitted disease, or Rome under Nero, when you say demonstrably false things you don't do yourself any favors. When you admit to merely skimming your opponents' arguments, you make a complete ass of yourself. When you then try to excuse all that by saying they're side issues.... dude, here's another free piece of advice: engage brain before engaging keyboard.
"Ah officer, it was a young, black male, thin, wearing a hooded shirt, at night" In a majority black neighbourhood.
"Citizen, we'll get right on it."
Uh hunh.
I'd suspect that there's more mobility now, and that has people who don't know each other committing and being the survivor of crimes. Plus there's a generalized societal knowledge that you might as well not bother, except for insurance, with telling th epolice your house was broken into.
People keep saying more crimes are reported nowadays. I'm not so sure.
Thank you. Virtue now leads the word count. I wasn't being facetious without purpose. There are actually some people that believe that restoring civic virtues and classical virtues can actually end cultural wars. If that can be accomplished without one side accusing the other that America is hopelessly vile and sick, wouldn't that be a value of civic merit. Liberals seem to believe all the social ills are on the Right, and if the social conservatives merely got out of the way, America will be self-correcting. No ?