Many of our society's problems result from the disappearance of the
stigma associated with being on welfare, committing crimes, going to prison, or going back to
prison. Lots of people these days have no qualms about watching
disgusting filth on television; no misgivings about filing a lawsuit; no aversion
to describing someone as a "whore"; no hesitation to vote for a socialist; no problem
with immodesty, promiscuity, abortion, dropping a newborn baby in a dumpster, having illegitimate
offspring in the house, or any of several other things which were once
taboo. (How often have you heard, "It's no big deal; everybody
does it.")
According to The World Almanac 2005 — which now lists illegitimate birth rates under the
politically correct heading "Nonmarital Childbearing" — nearly 70 percent of black children
are born outside of wedlock. With Latinos, the rate is almost 45 percent, whites
nearly 30 percent, and Asians 15 percent. Overall, almost 40 percent of America's
children today are born outside of
wedlock.*
Hopeless drunks and people with sexually transmitted diseases are now considered
"victims" instead of being ostracized as people whose situations are the result of
phenomenally poor judgement.
Also you may have noticed that food stamps have been changed into what appears to be a
credit card so that there is nothing embarrassing about buying groceries with someone
else's money. (It's called Electronic Benefits Transfer
or EBT.) And
apparently there's nothing embarrassing about living in government
subsidized housing. To quote a familiar phrase, "The safety net has
become a hammock."
Roger Scruton has expressed some of the same kind of opinion in his
editorial, Bring
Back Stigma. In it he says, "Inner sanctions more
dependably maintain society than such external ones as policemen
and courts. … The dwindling of stigma inevitably
means that the task of social control is bequeathed to the state."
Shame is a virtue
— one of which we see entirely too little these days. It's an unpleasant
emotion, yes, but it can yield great things. It can be what makes us take responsibility for wrongdoing,
change old, bad habits and avoid falling into new ones. It can be what makes us see a mistake for what
it is and never make it again. It used to be that if you couldn't muster your own healthy sense of shame
that society would make up for it in most cases by telling you when you should hang your head a bit.
The Wrong Things are Stigmatized. Historically,
stigmas surrounded things like philandering and divorce, unethical business dealings, illegitimate children,
abortion, homosexuality and crime. The general thinking was that behavior should be shaped around those things that best
contribute to the common bond of a people into stable communities and societies that adhered to American founding
principles. Thus stigmas (and their accompanying shame and guilt ) served as sanctions far superior to mere
statutes, whose only shaping force was risk of punishment.
Colorado Governor Signs She-Male Restroom Bill.
This bill makes all public accommodations — including public restrooms and locker rooms in the state —
"gender free." This law now means that anyone who identifies as the opposite sex, can freely access public facilities
formerly reserved for a single sex. Sexual predators can now enter women's restrooms and claim they have a sexual
identity different from their birth sex. It makes it legal for drag queens, cross-dressers and anyone else with a
serious Gender Identity Disorder to use opposite sex restrooms and locker rooms. But it goes further. It defines
"public accommodations" as including malls, restaurants, schools, and small businesses.
You call it copying; today's college students call it
collaborating. Duke University's business school recently announced that 34 of its first-year
M.B.A. students will be expelled, suspended or awarded failing grades for cheating on a take-home examination
in a required class.
Pimps,
Pedophiles: Welcome to San Francisco. A quick reading of the measure that will go before
San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression
that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes
and implement policies "to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes." A
careful reading of the initiative, "Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers," however,
shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings.
The Proliferation of Public Profanity is
a Cultural and Spiritual Problem. Raw profanity has become an acceptable part of popular culture
today. Rap music — the most popular music among young people today — is filled with
gutter language. They play it loudly in their cars. Movies and television programs use hard
profanity on a regular basis. In a way, we have become desensitized to it. This has been the
goal of Hollywood for many years. There was a time before the mid-60s when foul language was not
used on television, in movies or popular music.
It's about time to clean
up our act. There is virtually no aspect of our culture which is not tainted with selfishness
and coarseness, yet as a society we simply don't care. The reasons range from laziness and foolishness to
formalistic belief in the First Amendment as a guarantor of the right to be naughty, sophomoric and offensive.
Stop Dressing Your Daughter Like a .... My baby
was growing up. And apparently into a prostitute. "Where are the sevens?" I asked the
sixty-something clerk who wore her glasses on a chain just like me. "You're standing in 'em," she
said. … "But these look like things a hooker would wear!"
Speaking of hookers...
Prostitution measure
makes in onto S.F. ballot. A measure that would make it more difficult to investigate and punish
prostitution crimes in San Francisco qualified for the November ballot on Friday [7/18/2008], opening another
passage in the city's long fight over decriminalizing the sex-trade industry.
The Editor says...
The goal, of course, is legalization of prostitution. But the public might not vote for that all at
once. That is why liberals use these smaller incremental changes, scattered over several years, to
accomplish their goals.
Have We Raised A Generation Of Narcissists?.
Growing older has many drawbacks and one unalloyed pleasure: passing judgment on the younger generation.
Lately, people have been scrutinizing the members of Generation Y and finding them deficient. What's
wrong with the kids? A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported that because they have
been told since infancy that they were special, they believe it and expect to keep hearing it.
The Editor says...
Kids are also told there is no absolute truth, and they can make up their own standards of right
and wrong, which is why some of them decide that Columbine-style shooting sprees are justifiable. They
are also told in kindergarten that they can grow up to be anything they want to be. That's true as long
as they aim low, but we can't all be brain surgeons, rocket scientists, or 8-VSB specialists.
The rebirth of shame.
ABC News has the story of parents who are actually -- gasp -- acting like parents and refusing to
let their children get away with rotten behavior. They spotlight some creative methods of
discipline. Naturally, the self-esteem uber alles crowd is horrified.
Stop 'medicalizing' bad
behavior. It may be hard to recall, but once there was a time when people took responsibility
for their behavior, without recourse to the psychiatric and psychological communities. It wasn't even
all that long ago. There was a day when drug addiction, alcoholism and other pathologies were
seen for what they were: human failures by individuals who had lost control of their lives.
Chase
mortgage memo pushes 'Cheats & Tricks'. A newly surfaced memo from banking giant JPMorgan Chase
provides a rare glimpse into the mentality that fueled the mortgage crisis. The memo's title says it
all: "Zippy Cheats & Tricks." It is a primer on how to get risky mortgage loans approved
by Zippy, Chase's in-house automated loan underwriting system. The secret to approval? Inflate the
borrowers' income or otherwise falsify their loan application.
Flying Foul:
Passengers Behaving Badly. You'll never look at, or reach into, an airline seat-back pocket the
same after reading this. Besides being a repository for magazines, newspapers, books, iPods and
air-sickness bags, seatback pockets get stuffed with all kinds of disgusting trash, from toenail clippings to
mushy meals. People do things on airplanes that they would never do in other public settings. They
pluck eyebrows, polish nails and pick noses. They stick chewed gum in places only other passengers will
discover. They blow noses into blankets that get folded up for the next weary traveler. They prop
bare feet up on bulkheads and seats. Sometimes they even engage in sex acts.
Memphis
High School: Reading, Writing and Bumping & Grinding. The purveyors of porn have got to be chuffed after
watching Memphis school kids hump (en masse) both the floor and each other during Mitchell High School's "talent show"
this month. Yep, it doesn't look as if sellers of smut are going to be taking an additional night job to pay bills
anytime soon because they have formally tapped the teenage market. At least in Memphis they have. Good job,
Memphis.
Iowa Mom Gets Probation for Attempting to Sell
4-Year-Old Son to Pay for Wedding Dress. A Davenport woman received five years of probation
Thursday [12/6/2007] for attempting to sell her 4-year-old son to help pay for a wedding dress. Marcy
Gant, 32, was convicted in October of purchase or sale of an individual and could have been sentenced up
to 10 years in prison.
Bunks for drunks. An experimental social-service
project rewards chronic alcoholics with room and board, no strings — or help — attached.
Thoroughly modern
mutilation: Have you noticed how many young people are wearing jewelry these days? I don't
mean wristwatches, bracelets, and finger rings. I'm talking about nose rings, lip rings, tongue studs,
bellybutton rings, and even baubles dangling from pierced eyebrows. I've heard of several other places
that have been pierced and "adorned" with trinkets, but propriety prevents me from mentioning them in a
public forum.
Art and Degeneration:
Several months ago I had the pleasure of viewing an exhibition of three-dimensional photo collages by Renee
Kahn, who has an unerring eye for the artistic aspects of reality. … One of the presenters, photos of
whose work were warmly received by the audience, has made his career by illegally plastering graffiti "art" on
public buildings and private property in New York City. One has to wonder what such artists' conception
of a good society is.
Not so 'hilarious': Dumping
ice water on a 90-year-old. A Cloquet, Minn., teenager told police that he found it
so funny when he dumped a pitcher of ice water on a 90-year-old nursing home resident in June that
he returned and did it twice more, in December and again last month.
Mom
Taught Children to Fake Retardation. A woman admitted Monday [2/26/2007] that she
coached her two children to fake retardation starting when they were 4 and 8 years old so
she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf. Rosie Costello, 46, admitted in
U.S. District Court that she collected more than $280,000 in benefits, beginning in the
mid-1980s. Most was from Social Security, but the state social services agency
paid $53,000.
Almost 40% of Children Born in the U.S. in
2005 Were Out of Wedlock, an All-Time High. While out-of-wedlock births have long been associated
with teen mothers, the teen birth rate actually dropped last year to the lowest level on record. Instead,
births among unwed mothers rose most dramatically among women in their 20s. The overall rise reflects the
burgeoning number of people who are putting off marriage or living together without getting married.
Let's Get Journalists To Report The Truth About The
'Pregnant Man'. Thomas Beatie has gained worldwide attention for allegedly being the first "pregnant man."
Mainstream media outlets are reporting Beatie's story as if were fact and referring to her as "he" instead of accurately
reporting that Beatie is really a woman. Thomas Beatie is actually Tracy Lagondino who lived in Hawaii with her
lesbian girlfriend Nancy. Lagondino and her girlfriend were lesbian activists who lobbied for "gay marriage" in that
state. They are now transgender activists working to redefine what it means to be married, to be male or female and
to be parents.
Moral
turpitude ain't what it used to be. What a funny world. Where once it was
scandalous to be unmarried and pregnant, now it is scandalous to disapprove of another's being
unmarried and pregnant.
The case of
Michelle McCusker: The case of Michelle McCusker, the unmarried and pregnant teacher
fired by a Catholic school, may turn out to be an important one, with heavy impact on our
understanding of religious liberty.
Teen
Pregnancy is Not An Accident. Seventeen magazine is a great gift to the youth of our nation.
Before the magazine's February issue, our nation's adolescent girls were in danger of "accidentally" falling
into pregnancy, or so their cover implies: "Shocking Ways You Could Get PREGNANT By Accident." Last
time I checked, pregnancy results from an activity that requires some effort, some decision-making.
Seventeen's editors, however, don't seem to live in my reality. Instead, it buys into the same dangerous
and conventional wisdom that kids will have sex — end of conversation. So all adults can do
is help them prevent disease and pregnancy.
Birth leave sought for girls.
Kayla Lewis, a senior at East High School, asked school-board members last month to establish maternity
leave for students who are new mothers. Pregnant students in a Denver high school are asking for
at least four weeks of maternity leave so they can heal, bond with their newborns and not be penalized
with unexcused absences.
The Editor says...
These ignorant girls are determined to give birth to illegitimate bastard offspring
so they can get on the welfare state gravy train and blame society for their poverty.
Fifteen years later (maybe sooner) the cycle repeats. The school is merely accomodating
and enabling these girls, rewarding their negligence, ignorance and poor judgement. Instead, the
school officials should be ostracizing, humiliating and shaming them all for the betterment of society.
Warning: The
following commentary contains information not suitable for children.
Hugh Hefner's
legacy: According to a Wall Street Journal article by Matthew Scully, [Hugh] Hefner wants
to be remembered as a philanthropist, social philosopher, cultural revolutionary. In fact, Hefner
wants to be remembered as anything but what he was: a smut peddler, and the exploiter of
women. … The fact is Hugh Hefner did more than anyone else to turn America into a great
pornographic wasteland.
Evolving
Standards of Decency. William Kristol sarcastically thanks the US Supreme Court for
its recent decision saving the life of Christopher Simmons, the youthful sadist who murdered
Shirley Crook for the fun of it in 1993. In seven paragraphs of well-tempered fury,
Kristol contrasts the judicial sensitivity to "evolving standards of decency" that spared
Simmons from the death penalty because of his age with the absence of any such sensitivity
when it came to Terri Schiavo.
Accepting sinful
behavior as the norm hurts society. My answers may not be what you want to hear, but I think we
are reaping what we have sown! We have allowed everybody and everything to come out of the closet and
now we are facing the consequences of our actions.
Hit-and-run
deaths at 10-year high. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington
show that hit-and-run pedestrian deaths have risen 20 percent since 2000. A total of 974 pedestrians
were killed in hit-and-run cases in 2005, marking the highest level since 1996, when 982 people were killed,
USA Today reported Tuesday [10/17/2006]. Overall pedestrian deaths totaled 4,881 in 2005, a 2-percent
increase from 2000 but less than the more than 5,400 deaths in 1996.
Motorized Scooters
and Laziness: Over the last few years I've noticed an increasing number of these scooters meandering
along the sidewalks ... Are more disabled people buying them, or are there more disabled people? Or could
it be that an electric scooter is the perfect answer for lazy people everywhere? ... Could the proliferation of
these devices actually be impairing mobility?
Manners and
virtue in a modern world: Many people have no notion of propriety when in the presence
of other people, because they are not actually in the presence of other people, even when they are
in public. With everyone chatting on cell phones when not floating in iPod-land, "this is an
age of social autism, in which people just can't see the value of imagining their impact on
others." We are entertaining ourselves into inanition.
Survey:
24 percent between 18-50 are tattooed. The telephone survey on tattoos included 253 women
and 247 men and was conducted in 2004. It has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Ink-Stained
Wretchedness. The tattoo is the battle flag of today in its war with tomorrow. It is
carried by sure losers. About 40 percent of younger Americans (26 to 40) have tattoos.
About 100 percent of these have clothes they once loved but now hate. How can anyone who knows how
fickle fashion is, how times change, how their own tastes have "improved," decorate their body in a way that's
nearly permanent? I don't get it.
One
Third of Adults in the UK use Overdrafts "to Stay Solvent". The United States isn't the only
country with a negative savings rate and high level of credit card debt. In Great Britain, the Daily
Telegraph reports this weekend that "over a third of adults with bank accounts are relying on their overdrafts
to keep them afloat."
Bad
credit is a way of life — It shouldn't be! The billions or maybe trillions of dollars
being spent in advertising to show you how easy it is to live today and worry about it tomorrow trumps a lot
of people's resistance. The credit card companies didn't get as big as they are by accident. They
know how to push your buttons and they do!
Stimulants are harmful to the economy.
In the 1960s, people complained about the redlining of inner-city neighborhoods. Banks would not lend money
to people to buy homes in the slums. Politicians changed that. Today, banks loan money to people
who can't repay loans. These are called subprime mortgages. Lo and behold, the live-beyond-their-means
crowd defaulted on these loans. Now the politicians are blaming the banks and want to save the "homes" of
those who don't pay their bills.
The Moral Economy:
In this heated campaign season, housing prices are plummeting. Banks write off billions of dollars in
unrecoverable debt. The stock market wildly fluctuates almost hourly. Candidates promise painless
and near instant relief. But despite the politicians' rhetoric, it is not hard to understand why America
is in trouble.
Self-harmers to be given
clean blades. Nurses want patients who are intent on harming themselves to be provided
with clean blades so that they can cut themselves more safely. They say people determined to
harm themselves should be helped to minimize the risk of infection from dirty blades, in the same
way as drug addicts are issued with clean needles.
[What a completely inappropriate response! Individuals bent on self-destruction are mentally and spiritually ill
and need therapy and wise counsel, not enablers. Abnormal and perverse behavior should be corrected
and eliminated, not normalized. We should all recognize that there are some people who should be
incarcerated for their own good.]
Study Shows Seven Percent
of Workers Drink on the Job. Just over seven percent of American workers drink during with
workday — mostly at lunch — and even more, nine percent, have nursed a hangover
in the workplace, according to a study.
Students get message:
Leave phones at home. Schools across the USA are cracking down on students whose cellphones
disrupt classes and make it easier to cheat. Starting Monday [1/29/2007], the 222 public schools here
will enforce a ban prompted by fights that escalated into brawls when students used cellphones to summon
family members and outsiders.
Welcome to the
culture of rudeness. Not for a long, long time have parents enforced the notion
that children should be seen and not heard. All us fogies, even young ones, flinch when
the kids talk at loud length on their cell phones at school, at play and in their living
rooms. They turn the music up as high as it can go no matter where they are.
For whom the
phone rings: There are those who use [cell phones] and, then, there are those of us who
think that there is something awfully silly about people who can't go five minutes without having one
glued to their ear. Knowing people as I do, I know that 999 out of a thousand cell
phone conversations are totally unnecessary.
Miami
tops auto club list for rude drivers. Stressed Miami drivers speed, tailgate and cut off other
drivers so frequently that the city earned the title of worst road rage in a survey released Tuesday
[5/16/2006]. AutoVantage, an automobile membership club offering travel services and roadside
assistance, also listed Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston among the top five cities for
rude driving.
Poll: Americans See, Hear More
Profanity. Nearly three-quarters of Americans questioned last week — 74
percent — said they encounter profanity in public frequently or occasionally, according
to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. Two-thirds said they think people swear more than they did
20 years ago.
Arrested
for asking for quiet in cinema. An Australian tourist has been charged with assault
after telling a Texas woman to stop talking on her mobile phone at the movies. Pauline Clayton
was enjoying a matinee screening of Brokeback Mountain in a Texas cinema when her day suddenly turned
ugly. The former Sunshine Coast councillor said about halfway through the movie, a mobile phone
started ringing nearby, a woman answered it and started talking.
Theater
owners want cell phones blocked. The National Association of Theater Owners wants the
Federal Communications Commission to allow the blocking of cell phone signals in theaters. John
Fithian, the president of the trade organization, told the Los Angeles Times theater owners 'have to block
rude behavior' as the industry tries to come up with ways to bring people back to the cinemas.
A month later, the same story showed up on Reuters:
Movie
theaters may ask to jam cell phones. Movie theater owners faced with falling attendance
are considering asking federal authorities for permission to jam cell phone reception in an attempt to
stop annoying conversations during films, the head of the industry's trade group said on
Tuesday [3/14/2006].
Mental
illness is the new normal. According to a new government-sponsored survey,
most Americans qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis at some point in their lives.
Goth
who walks fiancee on a leash is banned by bus driver. A goth, who likes to take his fiancee out for
a stroll on a leash, claims that a bus driver told them "no dogs allowed" and banned them from boarding. Dani
Graves, 25, and his girlfriend dress all in black and like to take unusual walks, but the pair have been branded
"freaks" and pushed off buses.
Homeless
Alcoholics Receive a Permanent Place to Live, and Drink. Rodney Littlebear was a homeless drunk
who for 15 years ran up the public tab with trips to jail, homeless shelters and emergency rooms. He
now has a brand-new, government-financed apartment where he can drink as much as he wants. It is part of
a first-in-the-nation experiment to ease the torment of drug and alcohol addiction while saving taxpayers'
money.
Divorce:
The Cause of the Shrinking Middle Class. The average middle class family cannot support two
households (and two divorce attorneys) without falling out of the middle class.
Unwed Motherhood Has Lost
Its Stigma. Births to unmarried women in the United States hit a record 1.4 million
in 2003 … Births to unmarried women increased to 34.6 percent of all U.S.
births — also a new record, said researchers with the National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS), which released its final report on 2003 birth data
yesterday [9/8/2005]. The rise in out-of-wedlock births worries social
conservatives, who say the problem is linked to poverty, juvenile delinquency
and poor social and educational outcomes.
Victims. The
government is still subtly, slowly and surely destroying the human spirit, creating a dependency that
Katrina has so clearly and powerfully revealed.
This Tolerance Industry is
Killing Us. The authors of One Nation Under Therapy say what the older
moralists spoke of as irresponsible behavior due to bad character, the new champions of
therapism – an array of helping professionals, journalists and
educators – speak of as an ailment, dysfunction and brain disease.
Thank You for Not
Sharing. Our nation is under the thrall of a movement that exerts its
loathsome and self-righteous influence upon us whenever we tug at a dog's leash or
tell somebody that they should "toughen up." The name of this movement and
belief system is therapism and its takeover of America has displaced traditional
values like resilience, drive, pride, and honor.
When society is
the asylum: A survey for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) says that
more than half of all Americans will develop mental illness in their lifetimes, and that a quarter
of us are already suffering from a mental disorder. These extremely high numbers suggest
inflation of rhetoric if not reason, or at least an appetite for a larger budget appropriation.
NYC to change ID rules for
transgendered. The city wants to make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to switch the sex
listed on their birth certificate (sic) even without undergoing sex-change surgery, putting the city at the
forefront of efforts to redefine gender. Under present city rules, only people who can show proof of
surgery qualify for getting a revised birth certificate. Even then, the only change made is the
elimination of any reference to gender on the document.
The Editor says...
All this "stuck in the wrong body" stuff is nonsense. It is a sure sign of mental illness
and should be treated as such. God does not make mistakes in the assignment of gender
to individuals.
Ladies
Restrooms: Who is That Male-Bodied Woman In the Next Stall? The
New York Association of Gender Rights Advocacy has won a victory over restroom use
by individuals who believe they are a member of the opposite sex.
Candidate
worked as prostitute. A Dallas Democrat who is seeking election to the Texas
House … acknowledged Thursday [2/16/2006] that he once worked as a prostitute.
The
word 'prostitute' is banned in favour of 'person'. In a dramatic softening of the law on prostitution,
only 'persistent' street offenders will face any police action. The term 'common prostitute' will be
banished from English law. Instead, sex workers must be referred to as 'persons'.
More women have
abortions as it loses stigma. Women are finding it more acceptable to have an abortion than to
drift into an unplanned pregnancy, the head of Britain's leading abortion agency said yesterday. Ann
Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said one women in five was now
childless at the age of 45 and an increasing number were making the choice not to have children at all.
Ms. Furedi said there had been a shift in public opinion about parenthood. The stigma of abortion
had diminished but there was now concern about being a poor parent.
Attack
on decency. Years ago, the lowest of lowdown men wouldn't use the kind of
language that's routinely used today not only in the presence of women but often to
women. To see men sitting while a woman was standing on a public conveyance used
to be unthinkable. Children addressing adults by their first name was also
unthinkable, not to mention the use of foul language in the presence of or to adults.
Take
care of yourself. A major reason why government has grown to the
point where President Bush has submitted a record $2.57 trillion budget to
Congress is that too many Americans have ceded personal responsibility to the state.
Leaning
hard on government: Is America, the country that produced the Declaration of
Independence, becoming a nation of dependents? Specifically, are we now a nation of
people tethered to government, a society that has abandoned a proud and grand tradition
of self-reliance and rugged individualism?
A Call to Let
Felons Start Fresh. San Francisco supervisors urge deletion of the question about
prior felonies from public job applications.
The 2005 Index of
Dependency. A citizenry that reaches a certain tipping point in dependency
on government runs the risk of evolving into a society that demands an ever-expanding
government that caters to group self-interests rather than pursuing the public good. Today,
are we more or less dependent on the government's income and social support programs — especially
federal programs — than we were 40 years ago? Are we close to a tipping point that
endangers the working of our democracy? Or have we passed that point already?
Residents think "Whorehouse
Days" festival has a bad ring to it. A group of angry citizens showed up at a [Gilbert, MN]
City Council meeting Tuesday [1/25/2005] to protest the event. The festival's name refers to a time when
Gilbert was known for its bars, gambling and "working girls" during Prohibition.
Staged
alienation: Apologists for the grotesque, vulgar noise called "hip-hop" music like to
point to those songs that contain positive or "constructive" messages, when defending against the
critics of this genre. The defenders would have you believe that the more benign lyrics found
in occasional songs are as representative of this music style as the songs containing blatantly
coarse lyrics.
Vulgarity
as an art form: Some truths about the gross noise called "hip-hop."
Grand Theft Auto
and us: Game play in the San Andreas and earlier versions of Grand Theft Auto
also features buying and selling drugs, stealing cars, foul language, racial slurs, running
down pedestrians, attacking people with chainsaws, sexual jokes, evading and killing police
officers, and feeding people into a wood chipper.
New
Jersey's "Sex, Etc."— Your tax dollars at work. "Sex, Etc." gives us Jerseyans something to
be ashamed of besides the governor. The cyber-version is available to anyone with a computer, while the monthly
print version is found in many local schools and libraries. It's hard to write about this X-rated
publication, whose purpose seems to be to persuade "teens" — or anyone else who reads it, regardless
of age — to practice sex unrestrained by morality.
The Anti-Self-Responsibility
Movement: Enforcing a curfew, particularly in a town where rampant crime, riots
and war are far from the rule or are nonexistent, is just another way of taking away more
responsibilities from parents. Just as parents must decide whether their teens can
drive the family car, date and smoke cigarettes, they must determine when their kids should
come home at night.
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?
Top 10 Best and
Worst Network TV Shows for Family Viewing. Each year, the Parents Television Council rates
the best and the worst shows on primetime television on the seven major broadcast networks. The PTC
Best and Worst list does not examine artistic quality. But it measures series' appropriateness for
family audiences from a content perspective.
Attitudes
Toward Crime, Police, and the Law: Individual and Neighborhood Differences. Fifty
years ago, criminologists argued that traditions of delinquency and crime were powerful forces
in some communities but were only a part of the community's system of largely conventional
values. Recently, ethnographic studies of urban neighborhoods in New York and
Philadelphia suggest that in certain disadvantaged communities, conventional values clash
with a "street culture" in which crime, disorder, and drug use are accepted.
How an older citizen might view illegals:
Harold is a white retiree who … hates illegal immigration with a bitter passion. … "Already
we have these Mexican gangs, we have people working illegally, we have people buying fake documents, stealing
people's identities. We have signs in Spanish, stores where they only speak Spanish. It's got to
stop or our country will end up as lawless and corrupt as their country. Old guys like me who played
by the rules are going to die off. The young people will have learned all their lives that illegal
isn't bad, it's OK. If you decide something is unfair, or you want a better life, just break
the law, that's the way to get ahead."
Ex-welfare
queen exposes "Uncle Sam's Plantation": "America has two economic systems,"
says Star Parker, "capitalism for the rich, and socialism for the poor."
How are little kids and immigrants
supposed to learn to read English when people put their illiteracy on display like this? I
can remember when it was rather shocking to see a misspelled word on a professionally painted
sign. In this case, even the name of the business is intentionally misspelled, in order
to attract a very narrow range of customers.
Is This The America We Want? The
anti-obesity campaign might seem preposterous and amusing were it not for the successes of the anti-tobacco
campaign premised on the idea that individuals are not responsible for their choices. It's a logical
follow-up: Food producers, not people themselves, are responsible for overindulgence.
Bring
back human kindness — please! Recently I was taking a van loaded
with kids, ages 11 to 16, home from a night at the movies. When I dropped them
off at their respective homes, something was obviously missing as nearly every
child jumped out and slammed the van door.
Real
Reality: "Reality" TV is out of control. Cameras have faithfully recorded
everything from contestants eating rats to foolish women marrying for money, and soon
French TV will show live action in — you guessed it — a brothel. I have an idea to put
all those cameras to good use, in a way that will benefit the citizenry.
Here's
a pony! A parent cannot possibly raise children in this country today
and protect them from this growing, stinky, mound of garbage. We used to protect
our kids, and at one time we actually tried to be a better people, but apparently
no more.
Complaints to
FCC Over Use of "F-Word" Top 150,000: The American Family Association
has announced that, to date, more than 150 thousand of its supporters have sent
letters to the Federal Communications Commission, criticizing the agency's recent
ruling that the use of the "f-word" on radio and TV was allowable in
certain contexts.
Slouching
Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. America
as a nation is rapidly deteriorating from within. In Slouching Towards
Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American
Decline*, Robert
H. Bork analyzes the likely cause for this decay: the modern liberal
philosophies of radical egalitarianism (belief in equality of outcomes rather
than in equality of opportunity) and radical individualism (belief in removing
all limits to the individual pursuit of pleasure).
Virtue
is freedom's handmaiden: Freedom without virtue is a logical impossibility. Self-government, and
the governing of one's own passions necessarily precedes free government. "Only a virtuous people are capable
of freedom," said Ben Franklin.
McFollishness [sic] In
pursuit of corporate deep pockets, a substantial number of Americans seem willing to portray themselves
as complete idiots. Yes, we are talking about the lawsuit filed against McDonald's on behalf of
eight teen-agers who have become obese and have other health problems after years of gobbling
Big Macs and fries on a daily basis.
Sanity has left the
building: In 1962, a young truck driver named Elvis Presley had become a rock superstar singing
about hound dogs, tender love and his mama, whom he apparently loved. In 2002, Marshall Mathers II,
aka Eminem, has become the country's hottest recording star rapping about rape, drugs and his mother, whom
he apparently hates. In both cases, polite society cringed.
The
Prison Revolving Door: Recidivism is the rate at which ex-convicts
become convicts all over again. You thought that all those in-prison rehabilitation
programs were working, right? You figured that if you ever had to spend time in
prison, you would learn your lesson and make sure you never went back, didn't you? Well,
that's not the way it happens. U.S. recidivism is estimated to be as high as 76%. The
lowest estimates place it at more than 50%.
Family Law and the
Collapse of Culture: Creeping statism is destroying family law and the protections granted
families to raise their children. In their stead, the state is seen increasingly as the primary
care giver. Welfare agencies thus gain the upper hand to take children from families
and profit from adoption and foster home systems.
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.
Grandma Gets Stuck Raising the
Children: The high rates of teen pregnancy and cohabitation among young couples are the main
reasons why nearly 2.5 million Americans are raising their grandchildren, according to conservative
pro-family groups. The cohabitation rate has increased by 73 percent in the past decade.
If A Tree Fell on Dad, Who
Would You Sue? Within days after The Day Everything Changed we heard whisperings of a government
compensation fund for the victims who survived the attacks on the World Trade Center and the families of those
who died. There was no such fund for the victims and families of the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy, the
USS Cole, or the Embassy bombings. No one gave millions of dollars to the families of those who died in
Vietnam, Korea, World War II, or the Spanish-American War. What makes these people so special?
Illegitimacy
is the Major Cause of Child Poverty.
Cronyism 101: The Perks of Being
"Disadvantaged". The "Disadvantaged Business Enterprise" program, run by the U.S. Department
of Transportation and adopted by states and cities across the country, is one of the most atrociously corrupt
government endeavors in existence. Opportunists of all colors have used the racial set-aside law to
win billions of dollars worth of federal contracts for themselves and their friends under the guise of
being "victims."
Legal jam over prisons'
supply of peanut butter and jelly: Inmates are "heavily invested emotionally" in certain foods
and could riot if the prison cut off their daily two-ounce ration of creamy peanut butter and strawberry or
grape jelly, the state declared.
Statism: The
Opiate of the Elites: One of America's leading investors and philanthropists argues eloquently
that we have forgotten about the Golden Rule as it applies to business and politics. Worse yet, we have
traded our biblical principles and individual responsibilities for the empty promises of secularism and statism.
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