A person should be upright, not be kept upright.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius
Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
In a recent discussion with my students, I asked if they saw a connection between the demise of school prayer and devolutionary changes in American society. For example, in the mid-1960s the vast majority of children were born legitimate; the result of an intact marital union. Compare this with today, where the typical American is conceived in circumstances other than from a functional marriage.
The teenagers said that any connection must be circumstantial, rather than causal. They continued that, while many school prayers such as the famous one from Cranston High School West in Rhode Island lauded genuine virtues, the effects of such a prayer were slight when compared with the myriad changes we’ve experienced since 1965. They did acknowledge, though, that they saw benefit in encouraging moral development alongside physical and mental growth.
They are probably correct. Social norms and near-universally-accepted cultural values are each too complicated to be explained and manipulated through the use of such a blatant tool as school prayer.
Whatever the cause, over the past sixty years our American variant of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization has been fundamentally altered. I credit this change primarily to a purposeful and nearly ubiquitous push to de-Christianize our society over the past sixty years.
In every facet of both high and popular culture, Christianity is equated with an ignorant and pedantic bigotry that is most distasteful. Believers are lampooned as being humorless and sexless martinets eager to condemn the conduct of
their neighbors.
All forms of public Christian expression, from “Merry Christmas” to the Before Christ/Anno Domini dating system are castigated as bullying and excluding non-believers. In fact, the fundamental Judeo-Christian values of our Western Civilization are themselves being denied as being significant. Simultaneously, these very ideas are being cancelled as “problematic” by contemporary Woke Social Justice Warriors.
All of this and more has had an undeniable effect on the way that we Americans live our lives, assess our priorities, and develop our convictions. In short, a shared moral absolutism rooted in what C. S. Lewis famously called “mere Christianity” has been abandoned.
In its place, a libertine moral relativism has taken hold. All moral value, even up to the sanctity of human life, has been relegated to the realm of optional and discretionary notions. When ninth month abortion and infanticide is excused, or even celebrated, then the basic maternal instinct possessed by most human beings (both male and female) has been brought to a shattering crisis.
Instead of some Ten Commandments or Golden Rule sensibility, today’s fashionable luminaries instead advocate that all choices, no matter how vile or destructive, should be permissible and even celebrated. The only limit they abide is that a person’s choices should not directly harm others. Of course, even this does not apply to fetuses, some small children, people like Charlie Kirk and President Trump, and anyone else whom the Woke find objectionable.
Excepting that one scruple, anything goes!
The results of all of this are unmistakable. Public apathy regarding political corruption is rampant.
Democrat electioneers strive to involve tens of millions of illegal aliens in voting when they can and in ballooning Congressional population-based apportionment when they cannot. Insecure mail-in voting as well as infinite vote counts are championed alongside schemes to indirectly pay people to vote by monetarily rewarding them for attending Leftist propaganda “classes”.
No broad public revulsion has yet ensued.
Both parties are deeply committed to feudalistic nepotism. I am ashamed to have voted for the son of a President to become President. At least I never voted for the wife of a President to become President!
The late Lindsey Graham’s sister, of all people, is the Republican nominee for US Senate in South Carolina. Sen. Lisa Murkowski inherited her office from her daddy, Frank. Rand Paul’s claim to fame is his paternity from Ron Paul. From the Gores and the Romneys to the Kennedys, American politicians are increasingly hailing from a small set of wannabee aristocratic families.
I recall the mantra in Bill Clinton’s time that his marital infidelities were irrelevant to his public actions. This, as if a man who made an art form out of cheating on his wife would be faithful to his voters. Ludicrous!
Worst of all is the macabre “Weekend at Bernie’s” marionette performance manipulating the effigy of Senator Mitch McConnell. Whatever RINO cabal is puppeteering that husk of a man is self-evidently committed to do anything, no matter how disgraceful, to hold onto power.
From legalizing and using narcotics, to undermining marriage and family, to succeeding through chicanery and blackmail, our increasing toleration of all forms of corruption speaks poorly for us.
Even our growing resignation to political violence is growing! People openly laud the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump, Luigi Mangione for murdering a business executive, and the enabling of Antifa thuggery. All would have shocked and revolted earlier generations of Americans.
No one can escape their fundamental nature. To the extent that we have become corrupted, our possibilities will be blighted.
We need not be stereotypically Puritanical in order to re-establish basic standards of decency. We can be more clear about what we will and will not tolerate without becoming totalitarian. We can be free without being anarchic or libertine. We can enforce reasonable limits without stifling creative inspiration. Americans did these things reliably before 1965. We can and should certainly do them again!
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER,
School Prayer: Cranston High School West, Cranston, RI
GRANT US EACH DAY THE DESIRE TO DO OUR BEST,
TO GROW MENTALLY AND MORALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY,
TO BE KIND AND HELPFUL TO OUR CLASSMATES AND TEACHERS,
TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES AS WELL AS WITH OTHERS.
HELP US TO BE GOOD SPORTS
AND SMILE WHEN WE LOSE AS WELL AS WHEN WE WIN.
TEACH US THE VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP.
HELP US ALWAYS TO CONDUCT OURSELVES
SO AS TO BRING CREDIT TO CRANSTON HIGH SCHOOL WEST.
AMEN!
