Secularism for whatever else it is, separates us not only from religion, but it also and more importantly to this discussion separates us from our societal sense of right and wrong… of our cultural perception of the nature of Truth. Such a foundational shift makes the building completely useless. And I expect this is exactly as intended. You have to tear the building down to replace it with something else, after all.
Who can look at today’s society and the current discussions that we are having and say that’s not precisely what’s happening?
As the old saying goes if you don’t believe in God you believe in anything. It’s not my intent to argue from a religious point of view, but from a societal point of view.
When you remove the basis of a cultural way of thinking all kinds of things pop up which tend to damage if not outright destroy that culture.
Modern-day examples, that Islam is the religion of peace.
(Interesting how as we move more towards secularism in this country, we tear down everything about Western society and its foundations in right and wrong, we establish more connections with Islam. This secularization and multiculturalism that we are exposed to from are on the left is opening the way for our cultural enemy. And yes, they are precisely that.)
That private property is no longer sacrosanct. That profit is immoral.
And so on.
Like it or not, Western society as a whole is based on and is informed almost exclusively by the judeo-christian mindset. As I have suggested in previous articles, it was Martin Luther who gave us the idea of the value… the sovereignty… of the individual. That idea in various forms is in fact the bases of our constitution our culture, and our way of life.
With government tearing us away from that foundation as they have been doing for the last 30 some odd years, the result is quite predictable… and is now most certainly visible all around us.
Ponder the words of GK Chesterton:
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.’ (G.K. Chesterton,Orthodoxy, 1909)
Now, Chesterton was talking about the then building Russian Revolution, which was certainly at its root ripping up the then-existant culture. Then there as now here, ideas of right and wrong of the individual versus The Herd were being forcibly Rewritten by those with governmental power and/or the power of arms.
But I don’t think I’ll get much argument about the idea that this is precisely where we find ourselves in America today. And strange as it sounds, we’re in the same situation for precisely the same reason. The whole concept of communism overrules the value of the individual. It also seeks to remove religion from society and the ideas which it conveys in terms of the value of the individual etc.
With those foundations ripped away, we latch on to anything that sounds good and then are perpetually disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Witness Barack Obama. Witness Bill Clinton.
I would also point to the rise of Donald Trump. So frustrated are some, that they will latch on to anything despite rather large signs that they are heading for a betrayal.
Trump’s supporters recognize that there’s something fundamentally wrong with what’s been happening to our country the last 30 years or so but it’s been so long since we’ve actually had an American conservative in the office of president or for that matter just about any high-level office, that we as Americans have forgotten what American values are about and therefore don’t recognize when somebody doesn’t meet that standard. Since our foundations have been ripped away will latch onto anything that sounds good in the short-term.
The result in terms of both society as a whole and each individual within it, is as disastrous as giving the keys to the Ferrari to a 12 year old.
One of the major effects of this shift of the foundation of Western Society towards secularism and therefore away from the line of thinking that was uniquely American is that those within our society are becoming increasingly devoid of any hope for the future.
I noted on my Facebook page earlier today the increases of incidence that we have seen in suicide by truck suicide by train suicide by what have you. Clearly, What’s Happening Here is we have an increasing number of individuals within the society who see no hope for themselves. No future. And with the foundational shift they see going on around them, who can blame them? Like the Russian Communists before them, they decide that life itself is a waste of time.
Way back in 1998, I wrote The Following and I think it does as good a job as anything of describing precisely what it is I’m talking about here…
Travel back in time with me, to a few summers ago.. Way back when the Lewinsky scandal was under the surface, Remember? We were inundated with more and more news reports about kids going out and breaking out massive firepower, and using it to deadly result. The left was screaming (as usual) that it was all because guns were too easy to obtain, and that the only salvation was Clinton’s new gun controls. It got to the point where even President Clinton, apparently seeing a diversion from his legal problems, took a stab at it. (Pun intended.)
Clinton at the time said, among other things, something which I can actually agree with; (A fairly unique happening, I assure you…) He stated that these violent attacks the result of a changing culture,and the pressure that those changes bring to bear.
As has been pointed out by me in this medium previously, the left gets an occasional point right, but refuses to come to the only logical conclusion that such discoveries offer. Clinton it seems, is no exception, apparently understanding that at the core of the problem is the social agenda that liberals have been pushing for decades. It’s all come home to roost, now, and the left doesn’t know what to do about it, or, more likely, is unwilling to do what’s needed. What Clinton to this day doesn’t get, is that it is he, and those on his side of the political and social isle, who have been generating and encouraging those changes in our culture, which have resulted in such destruction. Each are cultural changes which, alas!, even ostensibly conservative people have been caving in on for years, now. Instead of dealing with the cultural problems he’s identified as being causal, Clinton went on to attack not that problem, but GUNS… something which despite his best efforts, we Americans can still legally own, and use.
The classes in proper gun use and care being given to young people today, including the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program have come under attack from the left, as being the cause, not the cure for such problems.
This is because, we are told, in one case in Oregon the young man in question was a part of those classes. (Notice it’s usually young boys?)
But the connection is less direct than the left makes it; There are many myriad self-defense and martial arts classes going on at any time in our country; my son attends one of the better ones. Given that one commonality they and the NRA’s gun classes share is training on the /proper use/ of their training and the tools given, why do we not see attacks by martial arts students in the news? Could there be an agenda, here, do you suppose?
Now, it is not unlike the left to use a well-publicized issue to work it’s will on another, totally unrelated issue. Race, and welfare rights, are two such. (I.E.; There are more whites than blacks on welfare, but when someone proposes a cut of welfare payments, liberals will invariably scream about how it’s racial bias against blacks.) So, I suppose I shouldn’t be overly surprised when they pull that same stunt regarding guns. One need not look too deeply to find their over-riding concern. It is, of course, the same concern expressed by every other socialist in history including Adolph Hitler; the removal of guns from society, altogether… except for the representatives of government, thereby placing the power in the hands of the government alone. (Let’s not kid ourselves; the founder put the second amendment in place to defend us from tyrants within government.)
Let’s not let the left divert us into thinking that the solution to violence is simply removing guns. Let’s hold them to the core issue; violence vis a vie cultural changes… There has been quite a bit over the last few years, said and written, about the culture’s values, and the effect the change of those values would have on the people within the culture.
Of the people affected by cultural change… a change of the roots, if you will, it is younger people, whose roots have not been established, who would be the most affected. No shock, therefore, that the largest number of crimes, particularly the massive violence under discussion, would be teenagers.
Simply put:These teenagers have lost hope.
And why?
Let’s look at the agenda of the modern America, as driven by the left…Perhaps we’ll find a pattern there.We’re told that man is destroying the earth. The problem is that too many of us exist, we’re told. We’re told that man is a problem for the further existence of the earth. We’re told that we can’t make it without that government handout. We learn quickly, thereby, that we have no real say in our lives, and therefore, no future. As if to give credence to the thinking that life is worthless, abortion has become commonplace. Jack Kevorkian is teaching us that killing ourselves is a valid option, and the government is at least powerless if not unwilling to deal with the issue. Every value we have ever had as a culture is now being abandoned by the government.. Indeed, the government has become outright hostile to the traditional values of the culture that built said government. Can such things be without consequence? The evidence suggests not.
Both parents now work regardless of wanting to or not, simply to pay the taxes… because the taxes imposed by the government consume upwards of 60-65% or our annual income. What kind of basic value will children hold of themselves when parents find they have to work? I understand well the forces that drive such choices, (being driven by
them myself;) but can such choices be without consequence? The evidence suggests not.Mothers who stay at home are universally castigated by the feminist left, as ‘not being in touch with themselves’ and ‘being a burden on the sisterhood’ whatever the hell THAT is. Can this kind of disdain for traditional family values be without consequence? The evidence suggests not.
Remember when America used to have leaders whom you could look up to? Political leaders, ball players, and to a larger degree than today, even film and TV stars were people which could be held up as examples. Granted, many were never perfect, but they were trying to live up to the then universally held American ideals. Who do we have to hold up in their place today? PeeWee Herman. Tupac Shakur. Madonna. Dennis Rodman. The Spice Girls. Larry Flynt, Bill Clinton. Can this be without consequence? The evidence suggests not.
Is anyone of sound mind, foolish enough to suggest that our governmentally induced transition from a values-based society to what is now an essentially valueless society, which provides little if any hope on an individual level, has no effect negative on the people
within it?History, I think, will record the greatest failure of the governments of the last 60 years, to be not in the financial or political areas, and not with it’s law enforcement, regarding guns, but in the cultural… I.E.; support of the majority culture, and the values that it holds dear. Because in the final view, it’s this which is causing the violence, not guns, per se’. Guns are simply a tool. What people do with guns, and for that matter, what they do with all other weapons of every type, and indeed, how they deal with all conflicts, and live their lives , is a product of their environs, as focused through their values.
And when you remove the values, our sense of right and wrong, the rest falls away.
What we need to reduce the violence, therefore, is a reinforced value structure, that, unlike what the left has been forcing on us, does not run afoul of traditional American culture.. Liberals of the last 40 years are afraid of this, they don’t want to be seen as being ‘judgmental’. This is not an issue that is going to be solved by ‘finding the middle path’. If we really want to stop the violence, instead of making political points from it…it’s time to move those of the left who have for decades be neutering our value structure, in the name of ‘cultural diversity’, out.
With that I will close on these two comments.
First, this has been a number of decades in the making and it’s not going to disappear overnight, if indeed it ever does. The move toward secularism and away from traditional American culture is far too deeply ingrained for any solution that we might apply to be a quick one.
Secondly let me point out that at no time during this discussion have I brought up the religious or spiritual aspects of this argument. I propose covering those another time. The reason that I have separated the two aspects is very simple. I think the message that I’m sending here is clear…. Even for the non-believer, the cultural aspects involved with removing the foundation of the culture are too disastrous to ignore.
But it’s a remedy that we must apply, and soon, because if we don’t we’re going to lose our country and our culture. Ronald Reagan called this country freedoms last best hope.
I, for one, tremble in fear at the notion of losing that hope. It is one I fear from which the world will never recover if we don’t get a handle on it, right now.
