As Walter E. Williams points out...
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A civilized society's first line of defense is not the
law, police and courts but customs, traditions, rules of etiquette and moral values.
These behavioral norms — mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and
religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages
through experience and trial and error. They include important thou-shalt-nots,
such as thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not cheat.
They also include all those courtesies that have traditionally been associated
with ladylike and gentlemanly conduct.
The failure to fully transmit these values and traditions
to subsequent generations represents one of the failings of what journalist Tom
Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation." People in this so-called
great generation, who lived during the trauma of the Great Depression and
fought World War II, not only failed to transmit the moral values of their
parents but also are responsible for government programs that will deliver
economic chaos.
Behavior accepted as the norm today would have been seen
as despicable yesteryear. There are television debt relief commercials that
promise to help debtors pay back only half of what they owe. Foul language is
spoken by children in front of and sometimes to teachers and other adults.
When
I was a youngster, it was unthinkable to use foul language to any adult. It
would have meant risking a smack across the face. But years ago, parents and
teachers didn't have "experts" on child rearing to tell them that
corporal punishment was "wrong" and "ineffective" and
"timeouts" would be a superior form of discipline.
One result of our tolerance for aberrant behavior: According
to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the 2011-12 academic
year, 209,000 primary- and secondary-school teachers were physically assaulted
and 353,000 were threatened with injury. As a result of this and other forms of
school violence, many school districts employ hundreds of police officers.
Nowadays baby showers are often held for unwed mothers.
Yesteryear such an acceptance of illegitimacy would have been unthinkable.
Today there is little or no social sanction or shame for illegitimate births.
There are no "shotgun" weddings to make the man live up to his
responsibilities.
But not to worry.... taxpayers bear the financial burden
of illegitimacy!
Any economist worth his salt will tell you that if
something is taxed, expect less of it. If something is subsidized, expect more
of it. Taxpayers have been forced to subsidize slovenly behavior. The
statistical evidence proves it. According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, that year 11% of black children and 3% of white children were
born to unwed mothers. Today 72% of black children and 30% of white children
are born to unwed mothers.
For nearly three-quarters of a century, the nation's
liberals have waged war on traditional values, customs and morality. Our youths
have been counseled that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what's moral or
immoral is a matter of personal opinion. During the 1960s, the education
establishment began to challenge and undermine lessons children learned from
their parents and Sunday school with fads such as "values
clarification." So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination
that undermines family and church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of
abstinence were considered passe and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth
control pills and abortions. Further undermining of parental authority came
with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions with neither
parental knowledge nor parental consent.
You say, "OK, Williams, the Greatest Generation is
responsible for our moral decline - but what about our economic decline?"
Ask yourself: What are the massive government spending
programs that threaten to bankrupt our nation in the future? The answer would
have to be Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Over 50% of today's federal budget is spent on these
programs.
Around the time when many in the so-called Greatest Generation
were born (1920), there were no such programs, and federal spending was $53
billion. In 2014, federal spending was $3.5 trillion.
If it were only the economic decline threatening our
future, there might be hope...
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