Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation II

Pleae see “Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=958. That article discussed moral absolutes, gay views on those absolutes, and the general decline in America’s moral attitudes and behavior and what all that means for Western civilization.

This, obviously, is largely a subjective analysis and comments have clearly shown that there are differing opinions, mostly from the gay community. But that’s what makes for horse races and crap games.

As a disclaimer, I should concede that I am no moralist or social philosopher. I am commenting and reflecting simply on the basis of many years observing the social scene in America as well as on evident truths which too many of us refuse to confront.

Despite the gay reaction, this is not part of a campaign to single out homosexuals which, it has been alleged, was the purpose in numerous other articles here. Gays represent a prime example of America’s slipping into the cesspool of moral degradation and eventual oblivion but they are hardly the only examplars.

Cases in point:

AmericanThinker.com recently featured a piece entitled, “Moral Education for the New Order,” http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/moral_education_for_the_new_or.html, which primarily focused on on the ethical values of America’s young people. That article by Kyle-Anne Shiver cites various polls on the political, religious, and social views of our youth. All are intimately related and all indicate a downward spiralling of the quality of their lives and, as a consequence, of America’s future.

Cheating in school, lying to parents, stealing, plagiarizing, etc. all have two common denominators: Those most likely to cheat, lie, steal, and plagiarize tend toward the liberal and irreligious end of the political spectrum, and they have an outstanding sense of self esteem.

Liberal thinking leads to moral ambiguity and ambivalence at the same time it confers a false sense of self worth predicated on bad choices liberals make. Lie and cheat today, and get away with it, and it becomes an ego boost that’s carried into adulthood when the the liars and cheaters will continue those habits. No matter what they do, those youths–and their liberal elders, as seen in a related poll–believe they are “better than most people.”

As Shiver concludes, “Liberals tend to think of themselves as not only smarter than conservatives, but also as more honest, more charitable, more loving and more just in their relations with other human beings. . . [whereas] the exact opposite is actually true.” (See her article for a host of examples, details, and sources.)

To forestall misinterpretation, neither Ms. Shiver nor I suggests that conservatives are sacrosanct. Witness former Idaho Senator Larry Craig who, though never convicted, apparently tried to play footsie in a public men’s room with a non-footsie- playing law enforcement agent. Craig’s main challenge now is to convince his wife and kids that it was all a mistake.

More hurtful than Craig to conservatives is Mr. Hollywood Conservative, Mel Gibson, who seems to have let his libido overcome his common sense. . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation

A topic such as “Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation” immediately raises suspicions that this will develop into a lecture on the evils of immorality and the need for repentance before America is destroyed from within. That is not the purpose here since it is a given. Rather this very mini-treatise is intended as a quick review of the effects of those realities, how far we have come, and how far we have to go before America–and the rest of the Western World–are forced to call it quits, call it a wrap and join the ranks of previous great empires in history’s dustbin.

Morality is something of a subjective value, although civilized people and civilized societies tend to subscribe to certain moral absolutes in order to give their lives and environments meaning and order. Thus, senseless murder is morally and practically repugnant to the vast majority of humanity; to accept it as an alternative to civilized behavior is to reduce the status of individuals to the level of the beasts in the wild and their societies to chaos.

That is a flawed comparison because most of those beasts kill to survive whereas most human murders are committed for lesser-qualty motives but the point still holds true: The consequences are the same for the victims and in human society the unrestricted taking of another’s life undermines and demeans the worth of any society.

Murder aside, other moral absolutes, such as prohibitions against casual sex and even modes of sex tend to change with the times altering an absolute into a relative value. Homosexuals, for example, try to illustrate the “rightness” of their lifestyle by hearkening back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks and Romans and pointing out that in those very olden days homosexuality was not only condoned but believed to be the norm as opposed to heterosexualty. The latter obviously was the only recourse to propagating the race, producing heirs, and having families.

Our gay brethren tend to de-emphasize the facts that homosexuality may have been the preferred route for much of the Greek and Roman nobility who gradually became more and more corrupt as their empires disintegrated. However, it was far from a universal practice and the vast majority, numbering among them commoners, tradesmen, and lowly plebeins, were more traditional by our contemporary standards with committments to wives and husbands, of the opposite gender, and to families.

Gays today also overlook the extant pagan culture, the existence of slavery, the cheapness of life, the popularity of pederasty in Greece, the extreme militarism, and numerous other negatives in ancient times.

Although as the old cigarette commercial went, we’ve come a long way, baby, we seem hell bent on a significant retrogression toward trivializing and rationalizing our behaviors in the last half-century or so, to our individual and to societal detriment.

Few would dispute the moral decline in Western civilization today, a decline accented by the almost total disregard for previous prevailing attitudes toward sex and sexual partners. Not to be outdone in our highly competitive world, younger and younger children are becoming participants in this latest sexual revolution.

Rather than accenting that decline, some would say that today’s widespread, looser sexual mores are precipitating the decline. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the cart before the horse, accent or precipitation, will be only be definitively determined by future historians who will benefit from the advantage of hindsight.

Other societies are way ahead of the game when it comes to what’s sexually acceptable and what is not. Many live in “anything goes,” some in virtually “nothing goes” cultures. The latter would incorporate much of the Islamic world.. . .

(read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

A Melange: President TDB, Sexting, Oprah

These stories currently on the wires are unrelated, unless you consider that they all reflect some form of human frailty and/or idiocy.

Gimme an S, gimme a T, gimme an I, gimme an M, gimme a U, gimme an L, gimme another U, gimme an S! S-T-I-M-U-L-U-S! YAAA!

Hold onto your shoes! You’re all, or most of you, are about to be stimulated! Yee-hah!

President TDB, for Trillion Dollar Baby, made sure in all his generosity dispensing billions to banks, insurance companies, auto makers, credit card issuers, and other well-deserving recipients of his boundless largesse, that the wee people, not the leprechauns, weren’t forgotten.

Whether they voted for him or not, most working taxpayers will be receiving–good thing you’re sitting down for this news!–a grand total of about $10-$15 a week! There are some qualifiers, of course, but legally married couples could get up to $20! (http://www.walletpop.com/taxes/article/_a/bbdp/here-comes-your-stimulus-bonus/406933?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Ftaxes%2Farticle%2F_a%2Fbbdp%2Fhere-comes-your-stimulus-bonus%2F406933)

Before you dash out to Burger King and blow that windfall, just be advised that everything you eat, drink, consume in any way, such as everything in BK or Mickey D’s, supermarkets, department stores, gas stations, as well as the heating oil and electricity you use, the cigs you smoke and the booze you drink, will soon reflect the price of President TDB’s war on carbon emissions.

Translation: You will be paying more for those everythings, in some cases a lot more, but TDB will still be able to say he didn’t raise your taxes. Those dastardly oil companies, utility companies, and everyone else are just charging more, for some inexplicable reason, probably for a greedy, insatiable, capitalistic reason.

In any event, it’s all former president Bush’s fault. If you haven’t already noticed, that’s the mantra for the TDB regime and will be for the next four years. Even Bush’s tax cuts will be the cause of all working people paying more in taxes.

How’s that? Pay attention, now!

When the much-reviled President GWB’s tax cuts are allowed to expire in 2010, American workers will be paying even more money to the government, through the nose or through some other body aperture. But, again, TDB won’t be raising your taxes. He and his Democratic congressional cohorts will just not be renewing Bush’s tax cuts. See why Bush is responsible, now? If he had pushed for no sunset on his cuts or a twenty year window you would still have them next year and beyond to 2020.

Suggestion: Hold off on Burger King and instead use coupons and skip the temptation to superzize. Bank that ten or twenty dollar weekly gift from Obama. You’ll need it to pay your future taxes. Better still, since your bank may go belly-up, stuff it under a mattress. At least then it will afford you some, temporary, cushioning.

Any Obama voters ready to repent? If not, just remember he’s only been in office for 70 days. Imagine the havoc he will wreak over the rest of his term!

Oh, yeah. If you’re among the 38% of Americans who don’t pay any federal income taxes anyway or if you don’t bother to work at all, no worries, you’re immune from the hikes in payroll taxes. You will be coughing up more for everything else but take solace in the fact they’re not direct taxes. Indirect taxes are easier on the wallet, right?

Sexting and Parenting, Or How Dumb Parents Don’t Teach Their Children Well: On different but no less disturbing news, some teenies are fighting back over their constitutional and God-given right to be junior amateur porn stars by disseminating child pornography without being charged with disseminating child pornography.

The topic of “sexting” by teenies, the super fun extra-curricular and co-curricular activity of posting pictures of themselves partially clad or in their birthday suits by cell phone has been the subject of recent articles here, notably, “Teen Sexting, Texting, and Suicide,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=924. There are always little quirks that distinguish the stories, however.

For example, a federal judge in a Pennsylvania case, “temporarily blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography. . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)