Welcome to the Swamp

a repost with a new title from my rasberry palace blog over at word press. There was a time in my life I was a lapsed Catholic, a liberal and probably had one foot (or both)on a banana peel headed for hell. Once this happens you acquire a darkened intellect. What is that? You can’t see the truth when it’s right in front of your nose. No, the cause was not Vatican II,the English Mass or a set of abusive rotten parents. We had a wonderful mom and dad. They saw to it we went to Catholic school, knew our faith, attended Mass every Sunday and were disciplined. We were definitely not abused. They gave us everything that most kids could only hope for these days.I don’t mean materially either. Although we had decent clothes, ate well(but within our means)and a home that dad built. Was I grateful? At the time,no. As I grew older and eventually lost both parents I regret that I didn’t show them more gratitude and respect when i was young. It came late. I miss them terribly now.What they must have gone through but they gave us their unconditional love anyway. (We had a role reversal of sorts when dad took seriously ill and mom’s cancer returned). That said, the one thing that had the strongest influence was the culture of the time. Or the change in our culture. Up till the 60′s I think our country was more stable and secure-except for the civil rights minorities had to fight for. That was the one negative spot I could see. The tv shows were family oriented. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t watch and feel embarrassed about having mom and dad in the room. Abortion was illegal but teen pregnancies were rare. A lot of folks went to Church and being a Christian didn’t mean intolerant. Nobody would have raised an eyebrow if you were patriotic, respected authority or said a prayer in a public place. You would never have been able to get a book like 50 shades of grey. Your parents were the best model of relationships between men and women. Seemed like everyone I knew had parents who were married forever. Our parents were married for 60 plus yrs to the day they died.Their parents were married just as long. They didn’t have no fault divorce back then but divorce was almost as rare as teen pregnancies. I’ m not trying to suggest that bad things didn’t happen back then. I just know that the culture was more secure and stable. There didn’t seem to be as many disorders back then(depression etc). I attribute it directly to the culture. It’s sick-we’re sick. Then came the 60′s and for some reason there arose a radical group of people who decided that we would not only question the values of the previous generation-nothing wrong with questioning(it was due)-but we would throw them all out the window. They didn’t bother to question with any integrity. They just decided that all the rules and values of the past were too restrictive. I bought into it. I couldn’t say that everyone my age bought into it but the teen yrs are impressionable and some of us bought into it. Probably far too many. Now-look at what’s going on. The previous blog entry was about a book presented in school that took the parents putting their foot down to have it removed. This is only one example of what our culture is doing .Not just to kids but to adults. We’re all affected by it. We’ve become coarse. People will not tolerate decency. People will not tolerate a set of values. They will only tolerate a LACK OF values. There are people not wiling to admit it either. Teen pregnancy is the norm,not the exception. In this country alone 53 million abortions have been peformed. Many women have multiple abortions. We say if we give our kids contraceptives that will prevent abortions. It’s a mixed message. We can’t say kids should wait to have sexual relations and then hand them contraceptives. The reasoning is-they’ll engage anyway. I don’t know how we have gotten to the point we think of our kids as having the capability of a dog. Teen moms who have babies born out of wedlock end up in poverty.Rather than being honest about the cause of the problem we create a government program that deals not with the cause but with the end result .Too late. Either hand them a contraceptive and tell them it’s great to do whatever you want. Or tell them to respect themselves and others and that you doing whatever you want has dire consequences but don’t treat them like dogs who aren’t capable at all. We can see with our own eyes that a government program and a do whatever you like mentality doesn’t get anyone out of poverty. Abstaining does work but it’s going to take years to get out of this mind set that human beings cannot control their behavior or make good decisions. You can’t say abstain and then hand a young person a condom both. It’s a mixed message. The consequences have been dire and if you don’t think that teaching kids to respect themselves and others isn’t worth it you’re dreaming. Why should a young man today feel responsible about anything? There are people who call me a prude. The truth is I believe we should teach young women self respect and have them demand respect from others. What do we do? We throw them role models like Madonna,Beyonce and Lady Gaga. Some parents have the courage to give their kids good role models. The rest are dead silent.

Is our culture uplifting? Are kids well behaved? Are kids doing well academically? Have we failed them? Yes. We need to start acting like adults.

We need to begin to realize we are responsible for the kind of society our kids and THEIR kids will grow up in. We have a clear choice. Values or lack of. You want to see a society collapse? Destroy its culture. Did you get to see any of Pope Francis visit to Rio for World Youth Day? How many young people traveled thousand of miles just to hear him speak? Try 3 million. Our young people are ready for better folks. They’re thirsting for values, truth, orthodoxy. You don’t have to be hip and ‘with the times’. They need adults who act like adults. So what do we do? We elect the most radical President we could have elected. Someone who intended to fundamentally transform America. Someone who mentored with communist Frank Davis. Someone who believes the state is the answer. They will regulate all kinds of things and pass laws thousands of pages long. It is because he does not have a moral compass. They don’t like his policies but they “like him.” The President of celebrity. I hear he’s cool too.You can call me racist because I think electing Obama was a big mistake. I KNOW there are plenty of black conservatives out there who know EXACTLY what i’m talking about and they’re fighting against a sick [for the most part white] culture that is poisoning their children. You can call me intolerant. Is there some reason to tolerate PERMISSIVENESS? Or confuse licentiousness with liberty? Or to know that we can do better. One day you’ll wake up and realize you’re living in a cesspool and there’s no way out. Call me intolerant. Remember,i was a liberal. I’ve been down that road and I know how lame all the arguments are. I know how it ends up and where it’s going. There isn’t an argument you can throw out there that is defensible.

GK Chesterton on Modernism and Orthodoxy: The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is especially up to date or particularly ‘in the know’. To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age. It is caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion (All Things Considered, p. 5). * * * People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It is easy to be a madman; it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect (Orthodoxy, p. 187). Source:http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2009/aug2009p9_3103.html Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, a convert to Catholicism, and one of the Faith’s outstanding 20th century apologists.