Tag: moral relativism

Post-Truth

America, Media, Morality, Reason, Society & Culture, Values

Irrespective of religion, one of the bedrocks of human morality and conduct is the rule, “Thou shalt not lie.” On the Decalogue it was worded “Thou shalt not bear false witness” but only the most ardent cynic would argue that the two phrases aren’t equivalent. Begs one to ask, “What is Truth?”. Regrettably, and sadly, today lying in all its forms is so common that Truth is completely obscured.

Truth is reality. Truth is fact. Truth is truth whether one believes it or not, whether all mankind believes it or not. It is eternal. It is immutable. There is no such thing as “my truth” as one political moron once suggested.

Truth doesn’t come in shades, different colors, isn’t nuanced, isn’t relative. It doesn’t have to be subjected to scrutiny or scientific testing. It is possible that there are truths undiscovered. Consider that as late as the 17th century China still believed the Earth was flat. Irrespective of their BELIEF that the Earth is flat, the TRUTH was and is that it is a sphere. So, the Truth of the Earth’s form wasn’t discovered by the Chinese for millennia but it was still Truth!

Lying, on the other hand, comes in many forms: outright falsehood, omission, misrepresentation, incomplete recounting, deception, misdirection, dissembling, extraction without context, “white”, and today’s favorite form – ‘spin’.

EVERYONE is guilty of lying. As with so many things, however, it is a question of degree. And, I would add, it’s a question of perspective.

I submit the Left utilize lying at a rate and in a quantity many times that of the Right. Consciously, with the argument that “the ends justify the means” continuously in mind, the Left lies almost non-stop. As a group, the class of vermin called professional politicians routinely lie, but the Left does so audaciously, consistently and arrogantly. They believe that if they shout and accuse, bludgeon and scream their words, THAT, in and of itself, creates Truth. They believe that if they say things often enough with catchy phraseology, it will become Truth.

And in the minds of the weak, it does.

Add to the propensity for falsehood the age-old psychological disorder called Projection, the amplification and megaphone aspect of the Internet, the sycophant and pandering broadcast and print media and the addictive and intoxicating dystopian impact of Social Media, and the Left wields far more influence than the Right. Like a steamroller, the Left crushes Truth and replaces it with “their” truth…a demented and sick, narcissistic, megalomaniacal and condescending view of the world that has consistently resulted in enslavement and attempts to suppress free will.

Using its finely honed skill at lying, its legions of mouthpieces all voicing the canon, the Left successfully destroyed the integrity of our election process. They’ve been working on it for decades. They almost got away with it in 2016, and they have provisionally gotten away with it in 2020. In terms of societal destruction, they’ve gone into hyper-drive, seeking to complete the “fundamental transformation” of our country and Western society.

It truly has become a world “post-truth”. Not just moral relativism abounds – EVERYTHING is now relative, even gender.

It is madness and while many of us sane people on the Right like to discount the lunacy as transient, to be rectified in 2022 and 2024, the damage being done to our culture and country, even if repaired, will leave scars and doubt for generations to come. It is the pattern of all great civilizations: from struggle for existence to relative peace to conflict of envy to moral decay to economic decline to war to extinction. In America today we’re for the most part watching the death of Good and the rise of Evil as if it were a sitcom…something that’s happening “out there” rather than in our own backyard.

But it IS happening, and part of the Post-Truth era is convincing the weak that the destruction they’re seeing with their own eyes, experiencing in their own lives, is either not really happening or is GOOD for them!

And all of it can be traced back, in large part, to the lies of the Left. From the lies of the 60’s: “Free” love, “Turn On, Tune Out, Drop Out”, “LSD will open your mind man…”, “All you need is love”, to the lies of today: “The crisis at the border is Trump and the Republicans’ fault,” “COVID-19 spontaneously jumped from bats in a wet market to humans”, “Job training (the unions’ welfare plan) equals infrastructure”, “Police are fascists,” etc., the use of high-production-value visuals, music, narrative and clever slogans constitute a tsunami of lies that have successfully brain-washed the weak-minded and elevated the demagogues.

I fear it’s going to take a cataclysmic shock for America to wake up and regain its ability to separate Truth from Lies. Until that time we will continue to live in a Post-Truth, Post-Reality world. Thankfully, mankind has something called “discernment”. If used, along with Free Will, it may yet save itself from a repeat of history.

I Have a Dream

America, Economy, Education, Family, Government, History, Morality, Politics, Reason, Religion, Science, Society & Culture, Technology, Values

With credit and apologies to Martin Luther King, I have my own dream of what could be. In a sense, what follows is MY version of a Utopian society…not the Dystopian society the Left is pushing.

I dream of an America that stands together, (including for our National Anthem!) as it once did during the Second World War. People from all walks of life, from every background, color, creed, faith, national origin are ALL proud to be American, grateful for the opportunity and freedom we have, bonded together through citizenship in a democratic republic we all believe in and cherish, and where educated, grammatically proper and syntactically correct American English is the national language.

I watched the movie “Miracle” the other night, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s beating of the unbeatable Russian hockey team and our gold medal win. The period leading up to that triumph was a time of great trouble: the winding up of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, the welfare state was growing like gangbusters, the rapid breakdown of traditional families and a continuation of what occurred in the 60’s – a growing fracture between Left and Right.

At that moment, in that hockey rink in Lake Placid, NY, all of America was united irrespective of where we stood on the ideological, political, or societal spectra. Oh that we could bottle and distribute that patriotism and pride today! The same pride we all felt as we heard the words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I dream of an America with leaders who uplift, who inspire, who seek the betterment of all our citizens and who assert with dignity and nobility America’s rightful role in the world as the “beacon on the hill”. In my lifetime, I’ve watched and listened to a slew of presidents, political, religious, academic, military and business “leaders” pontificate and (with apologies now to Shakespeare) “strut and fret their hour upon the stage” telling tales like idiots, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Sometimes the rhetoric resonated with enough people that it became, (to use a modern term), a “meme”, and our nation’s course was altered accordingly. Sometimes it just drifted away on the wind and was “heard no more.” Today our politics is more than ever gutter politics. Both the Left and the Right are talking down and at one another rather than with one another. The public, at least those who bother, are watching this “s-show” and shaking their heads, rolling their eyes and asking themselves, “can’t we do better than this?” I hasten to add, as I often do, however, that while both sides participate in these deplorable political antics, you’d have to be willfully blind or just plain stupid to not see that the Left has deepened and putrefied the gutter beyond anything the Right or any grade-school educated person could ever have imagined!

I dream of an America where children are once again taught about its greatness, about its Judeo-Christian roots and underpinnings, about the sacrifices and struggles of those who, imperfect though they were, united together to build this nation and establish it as the greatest engine of freedom, peace and prosperity the world has ever known. Those lessons we learned in grade school about the founding and early history of America, about 2+2 being 4, not 5 (“but Johnny, that was a good try and I’m so glad you feel empowered to give that answer”), those trophies that we received because we WON, not because we showed up, are not QUAINT! They’re an accounting of what made America great (.sic) not to be trampled upon with New Math, 1619 projects, multicultural and globalist, anti-national revisions to history, and poisonous, Leftist, “nobody should have any more than anyone else”, dystopian idiocy.

I dream of an America where traditional views of right and wrong are once again firmly established in our practices, laws, regulations and politics, where principles of equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes are engendered and manifest, where we don’t compromise, alter or eliminate these principles and harm and offend the vast majority of our people because some minority professes to be victimized by their application. One can argue that there is no black and white, but the Leftists would have you believe that there are no standards…that each and every one of us ought to be the arbiter of what is good, what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. Peaceful marches and protests (ones that don’t disrupt commerce, travel and the lives of those who are not involved) are RIGHT. Riots, looting, assault, battery, disturbance of the peace even… are WRONG. The taking of responsibility, restraint and continence are RIGHT. Infanticide and abortion as contraception is WRONG! Practicing and exhibiting manners is RIGHT. Anything goes is WRONG.

I dream of an America where our legal system is purged of distortion and justice is meted out with equanimity and without political bias, where laws are respected, and people understand and expect to abide by them not from fear of judgement and penalty, but because they’re just and benefit all of us. We were taught as kids to respect police officers, firemen, heck, even “our elders”! Today the Left wishes to destroy respect for just about anything! Weaponized law, weaponized politics, weaponized regulations…all these were started and have been fomented by the “it’s all about me” Leftists who were the hippies of the 60’s, the losers who sought to “tune in, turn on and drop out” and who now form the core of what is known as “the Deep State”. How could the Left use the law to persecute (some might say destroy the lives of) its opponents while allowing its own scandalous, obvious and disgusting violations of law go unpunished?

I dream of an America:

                Where the rights and thoughtful, not shrill views of all are tolerated but where unlawful and aberrant behavior is not!

                Where ALL lives matter!

                Where faith is restored in FAITH!

                Where we can earn an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.

                Where government isn’t the source of philanthropy but individuals, families and communities look after one another.

                Where technology, systems and artificial intelligence don’t substitute for people communicating directly with one another, where human beings answer the customer service 800 number, speak English and are empowered to solve problems rather than belch canned scripts like “I’m sorry you’re having a problem with…I’m here to help with that.” And where REAL intelligence in REAL humans deliver REAL results, and where parents “just say no” to 10 year olds demanding their own iPhones.

                Where drugs, alcohol, pornography, social media and other addictions are dealt with head-on, not excused, tolerated and talked about endlessly.

                Where the real racism and bias inherent in the hypocritical Left’s actions are exposed and expunged so that real fairness of opportunity can prevail.

                Where men can once again be men and are not automatically accused of being misogynists; where women don’t feel they have to act like men (and behave like misandrists!) and where it’s ok for traditional roles of bread-winning and child-rearing to prevail again.

                Where shame is felt for shameful behavior.

                Where government no longer tries to engineer social justice through housing mandates, but allows communities to form freely and the pick-winners-and-losers-robin-hood-taking-from-Peter-to-buy-the-vote-of-Paul no longer takes place.

                Where the rights of those who seek to obey the laws, focus on caring for themselves and their families, and work hard to be contributing members of society are not permitted to be trampled by the obnoxious, repugnant behavior or those who break the laws and seek to impinge on or take from others what is not rightfully theirs, and who do so with impunity.

                Where honest capitalism is not denigrated but celebrated, but where crony capitalism is rooted out, exposed and eliminated.

                Where limousine liberals and people who have no idea of what real suffering is remove their hypocritical, self-righteous, virtue-signaling signs from their lawns and instead, take a weed whacker to the overgrown grass and mess by the side of the road.

                Where our schools teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic again instead of indoctrinating them in multicultural, gender-confused, anti-American drivel.

                Where the term “marriage” is returned to its religious definition, but where the ability of same-sex partners to enjoy the same legal rights as married couples is codified in our laws and where LGBTQ militants no longer try to shove their preferences and ideology down others’ throats.

                Where our military and law enforcement, as well as all other public service occupations are purged of incompetents and bad apples, our churches and the Boy Scouts are purged of pedophiles, our colleges are purged of socialists and marxists.

                Where we can calm down, lower the speed and decibel level of our lives, aspire to be good and do good, do what is right, and actually “all get along”.

Educational Indoctrination

America, Education, Family, Reason, Society & Culture, Values

What is happening in our schools is beyond shocking. A whole generation has been brainwashed to believe things we and our parents would have written off as lunacy.

A firsthand account by a public school teacher in Gross Pointe, Michigan of what’s going on in the halls, academic lounges and in kids’ heads these days alarmingly summarizes what we should find frightening if we care about our children and grandchildren. The article, entitled “Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years“, by Lawrence M. Ludlow (American Thinker, August 15, 2019) describes what he found upon returning to the classroom after a hiatus because the local high school was unable to replace a retiring Latin teacher.

The first clue was the difference between the certification process in 1982, when he previously taught, and 2018. In his own words: “The 1982 certificate only listed the courses I could teach.  In contrast, the 2018 version had a 300-word “Code of Ethics” that amounted to a profession of faith in collectivism, egalitarianism, state schools, and diversity (typically limited to superficial things like skin color and gender, not ideas).”

His next exposure was to the students themselves, who were woefully deficient in English grammar much less ready to study Latin. In what was supposed to be a superior school system, many students didn’t bring books to class, complained incessantly about homework, expected to receive high grades regardless of proficiency and performance and the Principal was instituting a process whereby students would not be compelled to take any more than one test in a day! And this kind of education was supposed to be college preparatory!

The warping and rewriting of history, the Leftist brainwashing on the topics of socialism versus capitalism, communism versus democracy, globalism versus nationalism, nepotism versus meritocracy, redistributionism versus self-reliance, moral relativism, collectivism versus individualism, the blatant promotion of gender dysphoria, group identity, victimology and outrage culture…THIS is what’s being taught to our children and grandchildren in elementary and secondary schools and on college campuses today. (I will leave for another time the attack on boys and boyhood, men and manhood.) Oh yes, occasionally the three R’s are thrown in, but increasingly, this kind of harmful, Leftist nonsense permeates every subject.

It’s no wonder that home-schooling is taking off. It’s no wonder the competition for private school slots is cutthroat. And despite ever increasing spending per capita, it’s no wonder “Johnny [still] Can’t Read.”

Where does the fault lie, and who’s responsibility is it to fix this problem?

As regards fault – I chalk this up to the natural impact of what I call the “fat and happy syndrome.” Briefly, I submit that the Boomers, recipients of the peace and prosperity won by the Greatest Generation and not having to struggle through a Great Depression, allowed boredom, indolence, envy, drugs, moral depravity and many other societal ills to infect a “fat and happy” population.  “Free Thinking”, “Free Love”, anti-establishment rhetoric and the abandonment of God or thousands of years of right and wrong moral yardsticks resulted in a new educational approach. The result, “New Math” (remember?) and now, the Common Core panacea. In short, the hippies took over academia.

Regrettably, George Bernard Shaw was right. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” With exceptions, for example shop and trade-school teachers who pass on truly useful skills and learning, academicians are so caught up in complying with the orthodoxy established by teacher union leadership, publishing or perishing the “proper” material in the case of college professors, or crushed by the collective mob if they try to deviate from the dogma, that there is little chance of a return to the basics.

As for the solution. Somehow, and by smarter people than I, we must eliminate the ability of teacher unions to impose their Leftist canon on our system. Whether we do this by abolishing teacher unions altogether (and ALL government employee unions by the way) or through some other means, we must break up the monopoly and MAKE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM GREAT AGAIN.

I also suggest that those parents who can place their children in private schools do so. If unable to do so, I urge them to strongly consider home-schooling. Something like 2 million school-age kids are being home-taught today, with extraordinary results as compared to public schooling, and that figure is growing exponentially.

Finally, I urge parents to demand that their children reduce their obsession with social media and technology and create opportunities for them to interact in healthy ways with one another. Supervised play dates for the youngsters, organized sports (left me emphasize here the importance of competitive TEAM sports), participation in interpersonally engaging, non-technical social activities like music and theater, science and outdoors clubs for adolescents.

It’s been argued that our ability to influence our children ends about the age of 8. While that’s debatable, those of us who have raised children know that somewhere around the onset of adolescence we become the enemy and what we say is far less important than the current “meme”.

Yet judging by what I see in college and twenty-something, even thirty-something age kids today, when reality bites and they’re forced to become increasingly self-reliant…they become receptive to guidance and influence once again. All of sudden they discover that their parents have grown up. (As an aside, there is nothing more heartwarming than hearing our own words coming out of the mouths of our older children as they instruct their younger siblings, or their children!)

I urge us to find ways of resisting the temptation to become our children’s friends as they morph into grown-ups and, hopefully, adults, but rather continue to set an example for them, teach them correct principles, and help them understand what was right and what was wrong about the subject matter they were just exposed to over the previous 12-16 or more years.

If they haven’t learned them already, teach them about skepticism and critical thinking. Teach them the manners, decorum and civility that they didn’t receive during their ‘formal’ education. Teach them self-reliance and how to rise on the basis of merit, not political maneuvering or nepotism. Teach them about determination and perseverance. Teach them thrift and self-discipline, and teach them by example whenever possible, the difference between Right and Wrong, and Right and Left.

I submit that the blatant Leftist indoctrination of our children and grandchildren in today’s schools and colleges (whether public or private) is the REAL DOMESTIC TERROR threat in our country. May we who believe in Traditional Values be strong enough and wise enough to arm and teach our loved ones how to fight this scourge.

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