There’s More to It

A response about cultural decline

[This is a response to an article by Christina M. Ward here on Politically Speaking, who, after a discussion with Scott Tarlo, the editor, wrote a nice piece that called for actions that might get us back to a friendlier, more respectful world. I agree with many of her encouraging thoughts, but I also felt it was incomplete. I would like to offer some other ideas from a different point of view, but it might be best for readers to read her article first: These Core Principles can Change Everything.]

Dear Christina,

Well done and compassionate. We should all hope to live in the world you dream of. But I also think there are basic misunderstanding in your piece, as often happens when like-minded people solve problems with each other. May I point out a few….

Humans do NOT have a “natural inclination to be empathetic.” Our nature is to be selfish and self-serving. Empathy must be taught and learned, just as your entire article implies.

We can’t just “teach the children” because “WE,” the parents, often don’t know how. Our own injuries and hurts are passed to the next generation because we don’t know how to be any different. The good parents among us need to also put more effort into teaching new parents how to parent.

Laws don’t “prevent” anything. They punish and discourage, but there will always be those who break the law. Ultimate morality cannot be legislated. This is why gun control laws make no sense. They took all the guns away in London, but still, people are murdered, sometimes, even more people than in New York City, because knives kill too.

Many of our problems come in the name of Liberalism. I’m not trying to pick a fight, we just have to open our eyes to who is doing what.

You say we should be taught to respect life and that “this is my body, not yours,” but this is forgotten when it comes to unborn children. “That’s not a life,” many liberals says, “that’s just a mass of cells.” Even in my once red, but now solid blue state, we allow abortion up to the moment of birth. Really, where is the respect for that life?

You say, “This belongs to me; you cannot just take it.” But most young people today are being taught the benefits of, and believe in socialism, which undermines property rights for the sake of the collective good. Big cities are retracting misdemeanor theft laws and raising value limits. In 13 states, all of them blue, liberals have passed laws similar to Proposition 47 in California, which allows theft of items valued up to $950 with basically no consequence, which of course has led to more theft. Eminent domain laws also nullify personal property rights. Are these policies of the left or right?

Another leftist mantra is to gin up envy among the weak-minded by saying that the 1% need to pay more because “you didn’t build that,” when in fact, they did build that and they already pay 38.5% of the income taxes while the poor pay nothing and built nothing. No wonder people are confused about what belongs to whom.

You say, “This is a rule….follow it,” but we see in the news that BLM protesters break the rules, loot, and disrespect life every day while suffering no consequences, and liberal politicians in big cities allow it, sometimes even condone it. So what are people to think? Right now, there is no consistency. There are double standards everywhere.

Just yesterday, the story in the news was that a black girl was killed by a cop, which is unfortunately true, but the cop was also defending another black girl from being stabbed. The video is clear, yet the press chooses to vilify the cop, teaching us to not respect authority, which divides us further.

Much of our divisiveness is created by the media. A lot of the cultural anxiety we feel today could be reduced if the media would just get back to the facts, all the facts, and stop telling lies. There selective outrage, favoritism, and double standards are obvious to most, but not enough.

Funny you mentioned the Girl Scouts, because it was also twisted liberal thinking that destroyed the Boy Scouts, who also believed in caring for the environment. But radical liberals feel justified because of their misguided belief that the Boy Scouts were somehow a foundation of gender oppression and “toxic masculinity.” Result? They succeeded in bringing down a great American tradition that taught boys positive values. Was this done by the left or the right?

If there is one person in history who exemplifies the world in which you describe, the one where we can live in peace, respect and love for all, it is Jesus Christ. Yet, we drove Him out of our schools 60 years ago. Then we drove Him out of Hollywood and TV and media. These are the megaphones that shape our culture. It’s no wonder church attendance has fallen below 25%. The lessons from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) have fallen away because our culture increasingly tells us to reject Him.

At the end of His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and slammed against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall.”

America is getting ready for a great fall because we have built our homes on the shifting sands of Liberalism. It is liberal policies that make exceptions to what is life. It is liberals who continue to change the definitions of words like “gay, gender, family, toxic masculinity, equity” and now “infrastructure,” and many more. We were once told that women are equal to men and deserve equal pay for equal work, which is great. But now we’re told women ARE men, and men ARE women, if they just think they are. See how the sands are shifting?

We were once told that skin color didn’t determine a person’s value. It was the content of their character and over time millions of minorities broke the shackles of poverty and became successful. Yesterday, I talked to a black man who makes $700 to $1,000 a DAY driving a tanker truck, and there are many successful, college-educated professionals too. But now we’re being told that skin color predetermines everything and that all whites are racist because they are white, and blacks in Georgia are just victims who are too stupid to get an ID so they can vote. We must open our eyes and reject this nonsense. Look at who is doing this.

It is liberal policies, in the name of political correctness, that enforce the rule of law unequally while many other laws are simply being erased. And if you look at history, it is liberals who are primarily guilty of America’s greatest sins: slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Japanese internment camps, Trail of Tears, the founding of the KKK. All of these policies were created, promoted, and defended by liberal Democrats. But for some reason, we haven’t learned our lessons and we’re now encouraging segregation once again in the new-found racism called Critical Race Theory. Who is doing this?

And for those who don’t toe the line with these self-proclaimed Marxists, like BLM, or who preach the actual science about gender or global warming or criminal justice, well, we’re told to “shut up!” And if we don’t, then we are cancelled. Liberals might speak empty words of “unity.” But there actions are divisive and violent, just as the riots were last year and the ones that are coming this year. They already have them planned. And so it goes.

The rain, the floods, and the winds of cultural decline have blown our houses down. Our foundation is exposed and it is sand. As we’ve driven God out of our schools and culture, we have become more depraved, degenerate, and violent. The more we bend the knee to this “wokeness,” they now call it, the more oppressive, violent, and lost we will become. It is the way of human nature without God.