Building Lives and Nations Requires Unchanging Truths

From Janice Shaw Crouse at the American Spectator:

Listen to John Adams and George Washington.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams

Why do progressives so aggressively persist in creating flawed public policies that run counter to the Judeo-Christian faith and the values that create strong families and strong nations, when the facts so clearly demonstrate the cost to the American people and our nation of the folly of their inventions? Anyone not blinded by ideology can see the exorbitant price we are paying for the breakdown of the family, disintegration of moral restraint, and cultural upheaval. Years of analyzing the trend data have convinced me that the left’s rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian morality is at the root of most broken relationships — including family breakdown. Growing up in material prosperity can never compensate for those conditions of moral poverty that inevitably produce isolation, despair, and emotional pain.

In the absence of family and faith, ideas, values and behavior are subconsciously imbibed from the cruder elements of the culture and are cheapened by the activities of those who seek to make a profit or advance themselves without regard for morality or even decency; likewise, in the absence of a strong religious influence, culture and circumstances are also affected by the era’s dominant ideas and values. They interact like a river and its banks. Usually the flow of the river is directed by the banks, but at times, the river shapes the banks, as powerful surges erode and overflow the surrounding territory. A seemingly invulnerable boulder in the midst of a river redirects the current; but, under certain circumstances, the current of the river can move the obstruction, or over time, reshape the hardest rock. Sometimes cultural ideals and values are as obvious to observers as the dam that blocks the flow of a river; other times they are hidden from view like a riptide under the ocean’s surface that only the trained observer can detect even when people are getting caught and swept away.

For nearly fifty years, opinion leaders, from Hollywood actors and entertainment celebrities to academic intellectuals and policy makers, have relentlessly sold and modeled a self-indulgent lifestyle that is supposedly “natural” and completely free of any negative consequences. Fiction has been labeled fact: narcissistic self-centeredness has been the epitome of glamour, sophistication, and a natural characteristic of the good life. “Edginess” and “attitude” are essential to a “hip” and “cool” image. No effort has been spared to promote a rose-colored view of promiscuity.

Read more: American Spectator