My Scarlett O’Hara Moment

I suffer from what I call the Scarlett O’Hara syndrome, “I can’t think about that today, I’ll think about that tomorrow”.  Tomorrow is now today, and I’m forced to look squarely at things that I’d rather not think about.  Sort of like turning over rocks and trying not to notice what’s crawling underneath.
  
The last time I saw the movie about Sodom and Gomorrah, which I have seen many times, I was shaken by the similarities between that long-ago place and the America that I see today.

America is the greatest nation in the world.  We are the most envied, the richest, the most powerful and, I believe, still the most respected of all nations.  

America also has a high incidence of murder rates, violent crime, imprisonment, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, teen suicide, divorce, single parent households, drug use, pornography and failing schools.  As Bill Bennett remarked, “We have become the kind of place to which civilized countries used to send missionaries.”

America has become a place where heroes have been replaced by celebrities, honor replaced by fame, success and achievement replaced by popularity and instead of human respect we have political correctness.  Much of America has become the, “what’s in it for me state.”  Out culture embraces self gratification and moral principles have crossed all boundaries.

We parents have done a wonderful job of providing the material things for our children that our parents and grandparents were unable to provide for us.  But we’ve fallen far short in providing the essentials that our ancestors provided, honor, integrity, commitment, truthfulness, responsibility and many other virtues that were a part of our everyday lives.

We have become morally bankrupt and it is destroying our country.  Our moral bar has been so lowered that any moral slime can slither underneath.  We have lost our self respect and it is jeopardizing our future.

Our moral principles were always, in the past, a part of American culture.  They were based on faith.  The Golden Rule, The Ten Commandments, and the Bible served as moral guides.  Now the country that was founded on the principle of religious freedom, finds itself battling to remove all thoughts and symbols of religion from our lives.  Of all the wars America has fought, the current war on religion will prove to be, by far, the most destructive.

How can a country whose motto is, “In God We Trust”, try so hard to remove him from its national life? Our children are exposed to every form of sex education, but they might be harmed beyond repair by hearing words about God.
  
A culture in which “everything goes” and the only sin left is being judgmental is headed for a moral abyss.  Without judgement, justice is impossible.  Our legal system is based on judgements.  Without it there will be no punishment for wrongdoing.  But an even greater responsibility rests with us, as citizens, to set the standards of judgement in our everyday lives.  When we are confronted with wrongdoing and unethical behavior within our midst, we have a responsibility, as citizens of this great nation, to speak out and, God Forbid, be judgmental.

Our form of self government requires that people make reasonable judgements based on moral principles.  If past generations had adhered to this non judgmental philosophy, we would still have slavery, child labor and emancipated women.  Indeed, being judgmental is one of the few principles of a free society that establishes the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

Americans now place moral decline as one of the top items in need of repair. We seem to be saying, “Let’s put away these childish things, concepts of God, our human soul and moral responsibility.”

Truth is sometimes as ugly as a worn-out bar girl in the morning, but the truth is, it does not necessarily take a village to do everything.  It is up to each of us to do our part.
  
The course on which we are headed is a disastrous one.  When we are headed in the wrong direction, going ahead is not progress.  The only sensible thing to do after taking a wrong turn is to turn around and go back.

The turn we have taken is a wrong one.  The road signs are enormous.  They are like sand in the Sahara, how did we miss them?   We can not maintain that which we are not willing to defend, and we are losing the America that we love.