Introduction:
"Winning
the Culture War" : Charlton Heston's speech at the Harvard
Law School Forum, February 16, 1999.
The
Culture War: It should be noted that in spite of all the propaganda to
the contrary, the Culture War is not something that has been declared by
Christians. Most Christians simply want to be left alone to spend
time with their families and build their churches. Historic Christian
values were already in place in America. Those opposed to such values
had to declare the Culture War.
Recently there has been a bit of furor over
the Ten Commandments,
which was really a dispute over the 1st, 9th and 10th Amendments
to the Constitution. (If you listened only to the shouting matches and
emotional outbursts, you may have missed the legal point of it all.) But why
do you suppose there are so many people opposed to the public display of
the Ten Commandments? It indicates the increasing friction
between popular American culture and any kind of absolute truth. The
leftist counterculture wants to remove any absolutes from our society and blur the
lines between right and wrong in order to make it easier to manipulate public
opinion. That's part of the purpose of the push toward "multiculturalism"
and "diversity" and "tolerance".
Let me assure you, the things that were right and wrong 100 years ago are
still right and wrong (respectively) today, because truth does not change.
The push toward same-sex marriages and same-sex adoptions is not about "acceptance"
and "tolerance". Its immediate goal is legitimization (not just tolerance) of
homosexuality, which was considered perversion by almost everyone until a few
decades ago. (Homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric
Association's list of mental disorders in
1973.*) And
the ultimate goal of this movement is to do away with
all marriages and eventually all traditions. Why? This will result
in a society of disconnected individuals (people without a solid foundation of
factual history and wholesome tradition) who are fully dependent upon the state,
rather than a society built upon families. It is all about manipulation
of public opinion and increased government control.
Perhaps you have noticed that people who make statements like the ones in the
preceding paragraph are frequently accused of "hate speech", no matter how
rational their arguments may be. Here again, beware of those who try
to manipulate public discussion through the use of emotional outbursts rather than
substantiated facts.
Much of the discussion on these pages centers around post-modernism,
political correctness, and the upheaval of tradition. For your
convenience, this mass of material has been subdivided into several pages:
Semantics and Equivocation in the Culture War
The Collapse of the Family Unit as the Building Block of Society
Feminism and Antimasculinism
Feminism and Abortion
Stem Cell Research
Homosexuality in General
Same-Sex Marriage
Homosexuals vs the Boy Scouts
Anti-Christian/Pro-Islam Bias in American Society
The Anti-Christmas Section
Lowered Standards, Lowered Expectations
The Demise of Stigma and the Erosion of Self-Discipline
Animal Rights vs. Human Rights
Uprooted Traditions
Multiculturalism, "Tolerance" and Diversity
Cultural and political bias in motion pictures
Cultural and political bias on television
The NCAA's battle against politically incorrect mascot names
Recommended Reading
Discussions of political correctness, per se:
[1]
[2]
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The Tyranny of Political Correctness:
Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous
declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behavior, which were then legal, should be forbidden by
law, and people who transgressed should be punished. It started with a few voices but grew in popularity
until it became unwritten and written law within the community. With those who were publicly declared as
being not politically correct becoming the object of persecution by the mob.
Culture
War: We are no longer one nation under God. We are two separate nations with
two distinct and incompatible moral visions. As societal values have eroded over the
past four decades, not only were the valid concerns of Christians ignored but their growing
political involvement was viciously attacked. It was as if only other groups, such as
Jews, union members or racial minorities were allowed to organize themselves to further their
own group interest by democratic process.
Excellent:
The Centrality of
Culture. Today, what was called the "counter-culture" in the
1960s now controls almost every cultural venue: the entertainment
industry (which is now the most powerful force in our culture), the government
schools, the media, even many churches. The ideology usually know as "Political
Correctness," which is really the cultural Marxism of the infamous Frankfurt School, is
using every type of cultural institution in our country to achieve its purpose, which
is the destruction of traditional Western culture and the Christian religion.
The Origins of Political Correctness:
For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of
what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or
insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We have seen other countries, particularly in this
century, where this has been the case. And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to
be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop
where they would be afraid of what words they used. But we now have this situation in this country.
What Is Political Correctness? Political
Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous declaration
that particular ideas, expressions and behaviour, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and
people who transgressed should be punished. It started with a few voices but grew in popularity until it
became unwritten and written law within the community. With those who were publicly declared as being
not politically correct becoming the object of persecution by the mob, if not prosecution by the state.
Our Culture, What's
Left Of It. Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my
study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda
was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it
corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they
are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies
themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies
is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to
resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to
control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is
intended to.
When
I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far
less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's illustrated calendar, is now
monitored lest a fellow employee feel offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile
work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual
orientation.
Now You Tell Us.
The advocates of contraception have finally admitted in public what some of us have known for a while: The
Pill doesn't work very well. … The experts don't seem to consider a major alternative: we could
encourage teenagers to take sex and child-bearing seriously. Our culture actively promotes sex as a
recreational activity. We come up with more aggressive and intrusive forms of contraception, because
we can't bring ourselves to tell teenagers that they should take sex seriously.
The
Slippery Slope is Real (and Real Slippery). Most conservatives I hear from are upset about the
inch-by-inch ground we give up on traditional values. The end result isn't a ball of fire; instead we
wake up in a foggy, swampy mess of concessions that really does impact society. … Frankly, we don't
need to prove a downward slope. The left has done it for us.
America's Culture War:
Believe it not, America is in the midst of its most dangerous Culture War. This Culture War could
virtually destroy America as a nation without any military action from a foreign nation or a terrorist
group. However, the actual cost in lives and money could very well surpass all the wars that America
has fought. In fact, based on the outcome of this war, America could possibly lose its recognition
as the most powerful nation in the world.
Speak up now, or lose your voice forever.
There's no doubt that people who think marriage is something that takes place between a man and a woman, people who trust and admire
the U.S. military, people who believe the Bible — all these people are considered by today's mainstream media and
the left wing which it serves to be freakish Neanderthals. They may not be locked up — yet — but
they are ostracized and minimized, pointed at and laughed at like animals in a zoo.
The War on Common Sense:
College students are not the only persons whom the Left is affecting with its war on common sense. Our society as a
whole seems to have accepted the mental framework which holds as a maxim the idea that we are not allowed to know what we
know; rather, we are only allowed to know what we are told. As a result of this, although common, decent, everyday
people see their beloved culture eroding and intuitively sense that something is not right, they dare not declare that this
downward cultural slide is wrong.
This might be where we are headed.
Japan's 'monster' parents take centre
stage. The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to
enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part
of Snow White. For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs
and no wicked witch was a triumph: a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of "Monster Parents". For they
had taken on the system and won. After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the
monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one
girl to play the title role.
No More Jihadists. The
Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. government is moving to kill off jihadists, Islamo-fascists,
and mujahedeen. Not the people: the words. Reports from the Department of Homeland
Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center recommend discontinuing the use of such terms, because, as
the AP report says, "Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by
giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates." … If we eschew these
words, what how are we supposed to refer to our enemies?
Flying Blind in the
War on Terror: Imagine that following the bombing of Peal Harbor in December 1941, that FDR had
prohibiting the use of the terms "Nazi" or "Japanese Imperialism" due to pressure brought to bear by German
and Japanese-American lobbying groups. Or at the height of the Cold War that the US government had
determined to ban the use of "Soviet" or "communism" for fear of offending the sensibilities of
Russian-Americans or European socialists. Yet that is precisely what has happened following the
revelation last week by the Associated Press that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security
has issued guidelines banning the use of "jihad", "mujahedeen" and other Islamic terminology with reference to
Islamic terrorism. This move lays bare the ideological prison house of political correctness in which
our top policymaker's reside.
The Materialist
Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism: Having rejected God and the religious heritage
of our civilization, [liberals] embrace instead a new order of beliefs of which Communism and Socialism are
logical expressions. A new world order is what they seek, but in order that it can emerge, the existing
culture must be completely destroyed.
Perils
of global warnings: They've finally gotten what they've asked for and it isn't pretty. The
activist groups, plaintiff's bar, and complicit legislators have created an environment where "Sesame Street" is
deemed inappropriate for children … Yes, you read that right. With Oscar the Grouch's untreated
depression and Cookie Monster gorging toward diabetes, it was feared children might get the wrong message.
The warning label must have been brought to you by the letter "A" — as in "absurd."
Americans see media aiding moral
decline. Most Americans think culture is becoming more immoral, and they view the
media — both entertainment and news — as prime culprits, according to a new survey.
Tolerance as a tool for transformation:
Throughout history, "tolerance" has meant different things to different people. A century ago, most
Americans would have defined it as civility toward disagreeable persons, not as acceptance of contrary views.
In contrast, today's "tolerance" demands acceptance of politically correct views but intolerance toward those
who prefer "traditional" values. While media leaders feel free to mock Christians, believers are losing
their freedom to state their convictions. After all, they might hurt someone's feelings.
Why the Right Has Been Losing for
40 Years. A war began 40 years ago, but the Right chose to ignore it. They
refused to fight in the streets of America, which had become the frontlines of this war. They believed
that they were on the side of right, and that right would always win. They forgot the most crucial thing
of all: truth and right need vigilant and never ceasing defense, lest they be overthrown by lies and
wrong. That pretty much sums up the past 40 years.
Dallas judge
rules silence is secular. A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren
has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit
religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law.
Robbing Peter to pay for the appalling.
[In 2005] the 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that members of a Christian employees group for the city of
Oakland could not use words like "marriage," "natural family" or "family values" in e-mail correspondence or
on posters in city offices where a wide variety of groups are allowed to post. The panel decided that
such words were hate speech because they made homosexual city employees uncomfortable.
Sense
in a Senseless Media World. As usual, the magazine racks in the salon I frequent are filled with
rot — just like those at the doctor's office, the dentist, and the grocery store check-out display.
Publishers obviously think that millions of American women will automatically reach for and read garbage when
we're bored — which would be insulting if it weren't true.
Breathing
while white: The story branded as having all the elements of a great tale — sex,
race, class, privilege, as well as town-gown issues at an elite university in the South — has
everything but the truth, which also includes this: White males — descendant as they
are of the imperialistic, colonizing, native-raping patriarchy — are the new culturally
approved targets of the lynch mob.
Keep
'America' in Michigan schools. Censoring the word "America" from our own schools is something
Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would never have thought possible. Michigan has
done it without a whimper. In perhaps a well-intentioned, but pernicious example of political
correctness, the Michigan Department of Education is attempting to ban the "America"
and "American" from our public schools.
Cultural House of Cards: From an
historical perspective we are living in a house of cards. … Once a country's culture goes,
everything else goes too, sooner or later.
Take off the muzzle.
These days, there's very little you can't do on television. However, there are plenty of things that you
can't say, on television or in print. Not because these things aren't true, but because they're
considered politically incorrect.
A turning point in the culture
war: Terri Schiavo's medical condition is in dispute, she left no living will, we don't know her
present wishes, and yet the courts are ordering that her husband has the right to kill her? This outrage
simply couldn't happen in a culture that considered human life sacred.
Liberal Neutrality:
Anyone who believes what the average American believed half a century ago — about the role of the
courts, abortion, sexual morality, and of course Jesus Christ — is now damned as a "bigot" or
"extremist" by liberal opinion.
From a Slippery Slope to an
Avalanche. For all the horror stories we've heard about euthanasia in recent years, there are
still many people who think of it as "mercy killing." Those people need to take a long, hard look at
what's happening in the Netherlands right now. It's very difficult to find anything merciful about what
Dutch doctors are doing to children and infants.
Woman minister re-appointed — as
a man. A woman who has served as minister at St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore
for five years has been re-appointed to the position — as a man, according to church officials.
Choosing Your Gender and a Bathroom Based
on Feelings. When man is made the measure of all things, differences are magnified and community
is dissipated — objective order is replaced by sentimentality. The courts, under the rubric
of "rights," have removed us from a world where rights arise out of what we hold in common and placed us in a
world where rights are determined by how we feel.
Courting
trouble. The current battle over the future of the Supreme Court reminds us
of another foe in the culture war — judges who prefer legislating from the bench
to interpreting the law. Don't think this is just a matter for legal experts, the talking
heads on cable-TV news shows and our politicians in Washington. The Supreme Court has a
more profound effect on the culture war than you may realize.
Sounds like Peggy Noonan visits akdart.com
frequently!
A Separate
Peace: I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated
and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley
off the tracks. … I mean … the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts
with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the
fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our
courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall … The
fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled,
by the popular culture in which we are raising them. … Great churches that have lost all
sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I
didn't think so.
New book:
100
People Who Are Screwing Up America. This is serious stuff for sure. But [Bernard]
Goldberg will also make you laugh as he harpoons scoundrels like the congresswoman who thinks there
aren't enough hurricanes named after black people, and the environmentalist to the stars who yells at
total strangers driving SUVs — even though she tools around the country in a gas-guzzling
private jet.
Katie
Couric's Curious 'Patriotism'. I've come around to the view that the culture war can best be
understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism. On the one hand, there are people who
believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from
"progress." But, while America is certainly an idea, it's not merely an idea. It is also a nation
with a culture as real as France's or Mexico's. That's where the other patriots come in; they think
patriotism is about preserving Americanness.
Lessons on How to Be Constructive, Civil and
Serious. In the early nineties Dinesh D'Souza and "political correctness" were making one another
famous. D'Souza wrote then that the most damaging thing you could say about political correctness was that
it was impossible to parody: satiric versions by people who hated it were indistinguishable from sincere
renditions by people who practiced it.
Political Correctness: The New Marxism.
Although the term "political correctness" has only been in common use since the late 1980s, it has existed in
concept and practice for many decades. Political correctness (P.C.) is a term originated by leftists
describing the totality of the concepts comprising their radical ideology. P.C. incorporates Marxism,
feminism, and an occasional dash of anti-heterosexism. It strives toward an atmosphere of sensitive
oppression and instills its beliefs in the "collective mind" which it aims to help shape by punishing those who
would deviate from the accepted path toward individualism.
Children's
books 'are purged of risks'. Politically-correct publishers are censoring
children's books because of fears over health and safety, according to a leading author.
Lindsey Gardiner, who has written and illustrated 15 children's books, claims publishers
banned youngsters from walking alone in one novel and removed sharp objects from another.
The Editor says...
What about the witchcraft in the Harry Potter books? Does she consider that risky?
The Death of Multiculturalism?
The recent thwarted terrorist plot in England that aimed to blow up commercial airlines between Britain and the
United States serves as another chilling reminder of the horror that multiculturalism has wreaked in Western Europe.
Multicultural madness: How
Western Civilization has been turned upside down in one generation. Multiculturalism, which
started on college campuses during the "cultural revolution" of the '60s, has succeeded in making America so
confused, "politically correct" and "minority-sensitive" that it has all but forgotten its original, core,
Judeo-Christian values.
Teaching the Constitution:
Recent generations know less about the Constitution than they do about sex or the latest cultural trend.
They know little that is immutable or infallible in this postmodern age in which everything is about feelings
and promises seem to be written in disappearing ink.
Medical Pot-heads.
Those who have had an addict living with them or near them — perhaps a loved one — know
exactly what I am saying here. While 9 out of 10 drug users can smoke pot or snort cocaine and return
to their normal life, one cannot. That one becomes addicted and unlike alcohol, drugs can quickly damage
brain cells and cause the addict a lifetime of mental and physical health problems that never go away.
The obscene "reality" at
MTV. It's daytime in the summer, and what are your children watching? The odds are that
it's MTV, cable's raunchiest magnet for the out-of-school crowd.
Planned Parenthood Gives Porn to
Kids. In Waco, Texas, Planned Parenthood hosted the "Nobody's Fool" conference for roughly
350 children, ranging from 5th through 9th grades. As can be expected from the nation's leading
provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood distributed copies of a sexually explicit book titled, "It's
Perfectly Normal."
Ever wonder why?
There is a culture war going on within the United States — and in fact, within Western civilization
as a whole — which may ultimately have as much to do with our survival, or failure to survive, as
the war on terrorism. There are all sorts of financial, ideological, and psychic rewards for undermining
American society and its values. Unless some of us realize the existence of this culture war, and the high
stakes in it, we can lose what cost those Americans before us so much to win and preserve.
Media on Reagan. The liberal-left, as
represented by Rall, Hitchens, Palast and Kunst, represent the worst in America. They are filled with
hate. They were the ones who said Reagan would lead us to nuclear war. They are filled with
artificially incited and politically motivated anger. They are unwilling to employ even the least amount
of common decency, even when death is involved. They represent the faction in this country that not only
want to blame America first but who expect us to comply with their agenda of political correctness while they
reserve for themselves the right to assault whomever they believe opposes them. They are not only
misguided and incredibly wrong; they are mean.
Supreme Court sides with
pornographers, again. Do you ever wonder why the Internet is so polluted with pornography?
The Supreme Court just reminded us why: It blocks every attempt by Congress to regulate the
pornographers. From its ivory tower, the Court props open the floodgates for smut and graphic
sex. Over the past five years, it has repeatedly found new constitutional rights for vulgarity, most
recently invalidating the Child Online Protection Act.
Polygamists take their cases to the
courts. The drive for homosexual "rights" is evolving into a larger effort to "expand" marriage
to include polygamy in the civil law.
Being
a celebrity is the 'best thing in the world' say children. Children under 10 think being a
celebrity is the "very best thing in the world" but do not think quite as much of God, a survey has
revealed. ... Here is a sample of some of the survey's results: What do you think is the very best
thing in the world?
1. Being a Celebrity
2. Good Looks
3. Being Rich
4. Being Healthy
5. Pop Music
6. Families
7. Friends
8. Nice Food
9. Watching Films
10. Heaven / God
A Little Too Much Reality
TV. In a documentary titled "My Foetus," England's Channel 4 showed a London doctor
using the "vacuum pump" method on a woman who was four weeks pregnant — then placing the aborted
fetus on a Petri dish.
Depressing "reality" show
sleaze: Who would have imagined five years ago that the fad, the rage, the phenomenon of network
television would be the "reality" show? Now that it's the 21st century, network executives are
putting expensive actors and their scripts aside for average Americans trying to claw their way into their
15 minutes of fame.
TV or Not TV? Not!
Television emerged as a mass medium in the 1950s and quickly came to occupy a key role in an orchestrated
campaign to eradicate conventional middle-class morals and culture.
See this page for further criticism of
television.
Turn
Them Off — Turn Them All Off. Mitch Altman's invention is
called TV–B–Gone. It
fits snugly in the palm, a near-weightless lump of black plastic. Its shape vaguely
suggests the Batman logo. A tiny diode rests on the very tip of Batman's head,
between his pointy bat ears. Press a button and from this diode a
beam of invisible light escapes that can turn off any television — any
television — within a radius of 45 feet.
Hacking Away at America's
Heritage: No matter what your Marxist, lesbian, long-toothed, community college history teacher
sporting a bad haircut, stretch pants and stale coffee breath says, the vast majority of the founding fathers
of our great nation were deeply committed Christians.
Antiheroes: What does it say about our
society that hero status now is bestowed on an 18-year-old for nothing more than having sex with a
15-year-old? It tells us, perhaps, the same thing as when an admitted liar and plagiarist, Jayson Blair,
recently received a "high six-figure" advance for writing a book detailing his deception while working as a
writer for the once-highly esteemed New York Times. It tells us that we as a society no longer have
bedrock values.
Family and Community in the Shaping of
the American Identity. Author Allan Carlson argues that the United States
has been — and remains — the most family-centered of modern
nations. Since 1900, the American identity has been shaped by carefully
constructed images of the American family and the American home.
Thirty Years of Marriage on Trial: There is a
Latin phrase Ius dicere non Ius dare, which loosely translated means "interpret laws not make laws."
Just as the Hippocratic Oath is taken by doctors to remind them of their duty perhaps judges need a similar vow.
Lather.
Rinse. Repeat. The fact that our current cruddy culture is doing things
that make demons blush takes no great insight for the honest person to perceive.
Morality
Meltdown: The tattered shreds of what remains of Christian civilization are under assault as
never before, yet who is willing to stand in the breach against the attacking barbarian hordes? Certainly
not those who now pose as our political, moral, and spiritual leaders.
The one-sided culture
war: Undeniably, a culture war is still raging in this country, but it's not much of a war
because the good guys are barely fighting back. Is there anything that can shock the so-called majority
out of its complacency?
P.C. and the Crisis of
Liberalism: Political correctness spreads, and once it arrives it stays; few like it, but
no one can do anything about it.
The Perverted State Of
America: How long ago would you have scoffed at the idea of two men getting married? Or the
Supreme Court endorsing sodomy? Or "domestic partners" enjoying the same rights and benefits as married
couples? Or network television featuring shows with gays and lesbians?
Prisoner
abuse and the rot of American culture: Should we be shocked that some Americans are capable of
such barbaric behavior as depicted in the infamous photos?
If the Foundations Be
Destroyed: We find ourselves, as a nation, clashing over social issues that were once non-issues
when the Bible was revered as ultimate truth by our churches, by our schools and even by our government.
Taking
aim at the arms suppliers in the culture war: Most of us value family,
faith, liberty, financial opportunity, fairness and responsibility. We take seriously
the common core of ideas, the "self-evident truths" articulated by the founding
fathers. But some of us don't.
Pro-Family Leaders Predict New Year Will Be
Crucial In the Culture War. As skirmishes are fought in America's courtrooms and on the political
scene, the culture war over homosexuality is moving on to a new front — the workplace.
Christianity Today reports an increasing trend among companies to force their workers not only to tolerate
homosexual behavior, but also to respect and even promote it.
Corporate Thought Police: The
Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is representing
47-year-old Albert A. Buonanno of Denver, and a handful of others. They all lost their jobs for refusing
to condone employment policies they found biblically immoral.
PC Marxist Roots Unearthed: Political
Correctness is intellectual AIDS. Everything it touches it sickens and eventually kills. On
America's college campuses it has diminished freedom of speech, warped curricula, politicized grading and
replaced intellectual integrity with vapid sloganeering.
The
Dumbing Of America: Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of
losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism
and low expectations. … The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard
Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963 … If Hofstadter
had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment
has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.
Rule No. 1 - Don't Complain,
Criticize or Condemn. Marshal Spaceflight Center, the home of the late Dr. Wernher von Braun, was
once a marvelous place where the dreams of a moon landing were brought to fruition. Jim Jackson, a former
NASA manager, explains how it has become jaded with political correctness.
Uprooting our Biblical
foundation: The oft-repeated lie that "we can't legislate morality" has finally born its
poisonous fruit. Of course we can legislate morality. We always have. We must. Try
looking at the criminal code of any state or the federal system and tell me it isn't based on morality.
The
Biblical Roots of American Liberty: It is a fact of history that our
forebears whose religious convictions brought them to these shores in the 17th and 18th
centuries sought to create in this new world a biblically based Christian
commonwealth. But it was not to be a theocracy — of which the world
had seen too many. It was to be a religious society, but one which
incorporated a secular political order.
Tune in,
turn around, drop out: If you are for constitutionally limited government,
freedom, individual rights, self government, personal responsibility and accountability
to God, you are a rebel in today's America. The political-cultural status quo opposes
all of that.
P.C. Nuttiness Invades Medical
Schools: Would you rather your doctor know which side your liver is on or be sensitive to your
concepts of "social justice"? If "reformers" of Western medical education have their way, the latter
skill might be given equal weight with the former.
Lawmaker wants to put feng shui in building
code. A Democratic California legislator has introduced a resolution that would urge state
officials to include the principles of feng shui in the California Building Standards Code, which is used
in the design of public buildings.
Politically Correct Butchers of
the 20th Century.
A Monument to the 20th Century's Greatest Mass Murderer
in Seattle: Matt Rosenberg, a free-lance writer, wrote in the Seattle Times that he was ashamed of
the statue because it was like having a monument to Adolf Hitler. "It's finally time for Seattle's
limousine liberals and bicycle-riding bohemian bourgeoisie to face Lenin's real meaning," Rosenberg wrote.
Other items yet to be categorized:
Reason to
rejoice: You have often heard people say you can't "legislate morality." And
there are those who say the culture is so bad that we can't change it. Well, they are wrong.
Cultures
aren't equal. Anyone who has been keeping up with British opinion since the July 7
bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack. Multiculturalism
preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate
their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot but,
in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, "a gorgeous mosaic." That mosaic, of
course, looks less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers.
What this cultural
debate needs is more dirt, less pure stupidity. Multiculturalism has always been
an embattled idea but the battle has grown fiercer of late. In this, it is terrorism that
is setting the agenda, goading us to respond: terrorism, whose goal it is to turn the
differences between us into divisions and then to use those divisions as justifications.
Parents
take another hit in the culture wars. In a recent ruling, a three-judge panel of the
9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that be the Left Coast) determined that parents do not have a fundamental
right to control when, where and how their children are taught about sex. Rather the
state — in its far greater wisdom about what's right and wrong — has ultimate
power over your kids.
Sexy,
sassy, still in primary school. Tweenage — somewhere between six and 12 —
did not exist 15 years ago. It is a market thriving on padded bras for flat chests, dolls that look
like prostitutes, electronic makeover games your six-year-old daughter can plug into the TV set and magazines
that tell her how to look hotter, and older, faster — just like the tweenage heroines, Lindsay Lohan
and Nicole Richie.
Pure
Sex. Clearly, what isn't being talked about at all is the biblical perspective of
sex. The Bible teaches us that sex between a man and a woman within the confines of marriage
is the only way to have a fulfilling sex life.
The
liberal church in meltdown. The rift within the Episcopal Church is a sign of the failure of
liberal Christianity. … It is a church in demographic free-fall, its numbers now standing at 2.2 million
(by Jefferts Schori's own estimate), down from 3.4 million at its heyday in 1965. At the 2,700
Episcopalian parishes nationwide, the median Sunday worship attendance is 80 people, and the churches they
attend would be crumbling ruins were it not for their substantial endowments left over from the
19th century, when most of them were founded.
The return of
Watergate: I've watched some of the classroom discussions on TV, and, almost to a person,
students say he [Mark Felt] did the right thing because his end was good. This is terribly wrong. I
know we live in an era of moral relativism — everybody chooses what is "right" for them. But
this is a path to chaos and a lawless, ungovernable nation.
Connecting
the dots. A September 2004 report in the medical journal Pediatrics reveals
that teens that watch a lot of sexualized programming on television are twice as likely to engage in
intercourse than their peers who don't watch much TV. … The combination of a culture gone
mad and parents gone AWOL has turned out to be lethal for America's children. The good news
is that American parents are becoming increasingly disturbed by a pop culture that glorifies
gratuitous sex, senseless violence, incivility, broken families and narcissism.
Mary Kay's
crime pays. Webster's Dictionary defines famous as "widely known," but
also "honored for achievement," while infamous is defined as "having a reputation of
the worst kind," a synonym for "disgraceful." In the big business of celebrity
journalism today, there is no discernible difference between fame and infamy.
How
TV can "rewire" the brains of tiny tots: In a study of 2,600 children
ages 1 to 3, researchers found that the more television the little people watch, the
more likely they are to suffer from attention-span deficit by the age of 7. They have
trouble concentrating or paying attention to a toy or a doll for very long.
Judging Michael Jackson and
ourselves: Do you think we have gone too far? Not far enough, some say. Yesterday's
unacceptable (divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, group sex, domestic partnerships and, soon,
same-sex marriage) are today's acceptable. It's just a matter of conditioning.
Brainwashing in America: Why Few
Dare Call it Conspiracy. The word "brainwashing" refers to a planned, step-by-step attempt to
"wash" family-taught beliefs from the minds of those who oppose government ideology. In America, it would
mean replacing the old Biblical values and world view with a new way of thinking that would support a
totalitarian agenda.
Is discrimination necessarily bad?
Modern Liberals know that theirs is a position arrived at through the moral imperative of indiscriminateness;
therefore, any position other than their own must have been arrived at through the employment of
discrimination. Indiscriminateness of thought invariably leads the Modern Liberal to side with evil
over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. If
no behavior is to be deemed better or worse than any other, your expectation is that all behavior should lead
to equally good outcomes, when in the real world different behaviors lead to different outcomes.
To Discriminate Used to a be a
Good Thing: "Discriminating gentlemen don't associate with women," my great Aunt Emma used to
say. "They only associate with ladies." I was a teenager at the time, and she was an old lady, but
I knew exactly what she meant. Well, gone are the days when discriminating gentlemen (or ladies) are even
tolerated. Today, when we are told to be tolerant of every deviant "lifestyle" – regardless of how
repugnant or disgusting – it seems that discriminating attitudes are the only ones not tolerated.
Is Harry Potter A Harmless Fantasy Or Wicca
Training Program? Christians are rightly concerned about the spiritual messages being conveyed
through the Harry Potter books. Wicca or witchcraft is clearly condemned in both the Old and New
Testaments as an abomination to God. Practitioners of Wicca worship mythical goddesses, including the
goddess "Gaia" (the earth), and incorporate radical feminism and homosexuality into their practices.
Does Welfare Cause Terrorism?
Many terrorists take advantage of Western welfare states, the same way they take advantage of Western freedoms
and Western technology. Extreme anti-social terrorist ideologies (radical Islam, in particular) seem to
breed in "oppositional" cultures supported by various government welfare benefits.
The 'Liberal'
Mind: Deceiver Or Deceived? In the United States the past thirty years,
we have witnessed the gradual dissolution of the one society on earth where freedom,
opportunity and prosperity have been made possible for everyone. That decline into
neo-socialism has come because of the power acquired by well-intentioned "liberals,"
who are merely socialists in disguise.
Knowledge can be Lost in
Just a few Generations: It seems we have lost our knowledge of what it means to be moral.
This loss of moral knowledge was abundantly apparent during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.
After years of lying to the American public, when Bill Clinton finally admitted that he had a relationship
with a girl almost half his age and, more importantly, with someone other than his wife, it didn't matter to
the majority of Americans. And after it was so abundantly clear that he had committed perjury, it still
didn't matter.
When the Chips Are Off: If Americans
overwhelmingly favor the V-chip, why don't they use it? In his 1996 State of the Union address, President
Clinton urged Congress "to pass the requirement for a 'V' chip in TV sets, so that parents can screen out
programs they believe are inappropriate for their children." He said the technology would enable parents
"to assume more personal responsibility for their children's upbringing." This was an odd way to
characterize the V-chip, which actually represented an abdication of parental responsibility. Instead of
monitoring what their kids watch and deciding for themselves what was appropriate, parents would rely on
ratings assigned by the networks. There would be no need for active supervision or discussion: Once
the V-chip was programmed, everything would be automatic.
Bread and Circuses: In his book Bread and
Circuses, Patrick Brantlinger analyzes the idea of "bread and circuses" as a narcotic for the masses throughout
history. Brantlinger defines as "negative classicism" the idea that Rome was decadent and that our society
is sliding downhill to a Roman-style decadence. "The shade of Rome," says Brantlinger, "looms up to
suggest the fate of societies that fail to elevate their masses to something better than welfare checks and
mass entertainments."
Express
Line Rage: The Latest Mental Malady?
Retailer Disses Mormon School for Its High
Moral Standards: A Michigan-based, pro-family advocate says a clothing retailer that uses
pornography to sell its merchandise is opposed to anyone who believes in morality. Bill Johnson heads the
American Decency Association, which has led a national boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch because of that
company's use of nudity and sexuality in its quarterly catalog. Johnson says Abercrombie & Fitch views
anyone with morals as the enemy.
The Biggest Bullies: In
Fidel Castro's Cuba, little Elián Gonzalez and his classmates are required to play with guns, some toy and some
real, and to play at using these weapons to kill "Yankee imperialists." In the United States something
just as authoritarian is underway. Leftist educators are bringing political correctness to the playground
in an effort to mold society.
When blue states
attack: ACLU busybodies sued Johnson County, Iowa, demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments
monument that had been in a public courtyard a since 1964. Within a year, the 2,500-pound granite
monument was gone.
The Battle For America — Country
Mouse Versus City Mouse. It is a conflict of philosophy between urban and rural, a simmering
antagonism between those who wish to care for themselves and those who seek cradle to grave oversight. It
is a war between reality and fantasy.
 The last two
articles above make reference to the famous
County
by county map of the 2000 presidential election. This is where the notion
of the "red states" and the "blue states" came from. It doesn't
look like it was a close race at all.
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