Because with all due respect to Robert Altman's son, suicide is painful. Both for individuals and for societies. It is one of the most horrible crimes a person can commit. And yet, it is becoming all too common in our liberal dominated world of affirming our awesomeness and promising no more skinned elbows. This could come as a shock to some, but suicides in the US have increased a staggering 24%. That's a huge increase since 1999. Especially when you think of how much time and effort we spend affirming everyone, silencing all speech that might offend anyone, and pouring endless funds into mental health strategies and therapy for the busy American.
If you consider the overall trends of our society over the last half century, you do have to ask at what point we'll say liberalism has failed. After all, we've been a liberal nation for most of the last 60 to 70 years. Yes, there's been some level of traditional ideals and values still running about, but from the top down, we've been pushed by increasingly post-Christian, secular and progressive ideals since before I was born. In the last couple decades, they have come to dominate with almost no resistance.
The ideals of post-Christian liberal values and theories dominate our academics, out mental health, our medical and scientific communities. They are firmly entrenched in our entertainment, music, movies, literature. They are the official curriculum we teach in our schools, our high schools, our colleges. The are increasingly the prism through which our courts interpret the laws. And they've been this for decades.
And the result? Crime is dropping only compared to its historically unprecedented peak twenty years ago. It's still disastrously high. Violence among young people is worse than we've ever tracked. Pessimism about the future is rampant. We're watching our society - the pinnacle of two and a half thousand years of clawing, scratching, kicking and biting our way to a free and democratic society based on human rights and equality - slowly erode. Drug addiction and STDs (including, but not limited to HIV) continue to run rampant.
I mean, at what point do we say "Liberalism, you had your chance. But you have been weighed on the scales and found horribly wanting. Your legacy is one of despair, death, suffering, depression, hopelessness, pointlessness, with dreams of narcissism and hedonism unbound and without consequences increasingly dashed on the harsh realities of the real world. Therefore, we insist you relinquish your claim to truth, and allow those ideals that have been around for centuries the chance to make things better."? Or something like it.
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How many tens of millions more will need to die of AIDS? How many generations will need to be aborted and euthanized out of existence? How many millions of lives will need to be shattered and brought to ruin under the banner of progressive individualism before we finally say enough? How long will we continue to allow the progressive revolution to insist that it's all the old traditions that are to blame, and if we just more fully embrace the latest, hippest theory or solution, the planets will align, the sun will shine, the flowers will bloom, and we'll all skip through the green grass chanting John Lennon songs every day?
I get that there are always problems. I understand that crime or suicide or other problems have ebbed and flowed throughout the ages. I know the past had blind spots and that people in the past could be wrong. I get that things will always change. But the changes are supposed to work. When we've allowed the changes to come in and, at best, cause social upheaval while solving nothing, and at worst, oversee developments and consequences that are worse than they've ever been, I think we are obliged to stand up and do something. Or shall I say that when a long train of abuses and disastrous ideas pursuing the same catastrophic results that only evince an inevitable Despotism, it is our right, it is out duty, to throw off such revolutionary movements and provide ideas and cling to traditional values that may have worked better than we've been told by the same ones leading our society to perdition.
When my ex/wife was telling me why she had to divorce me. She went through this tale of all of her failed relationships and explained to me that I was just another disappointment. The thought that ran through my mind, and that I still regret that I didn't blurt out was, 'You were the common denominator all these failures'. The liberals, like my ex/wife will never understand that the simple fact, is that their ideas are the common denominator in our civilizations failures.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear the context, but you're spot on. "Liberalism" has been calling the shots and making the changes for decades now. Almost everything we teach and mandate is from a liberal POV. When we point out how bad things are, the best they can say is 'they've always been that bad.' When you consider how much upheaval and chaos is being done to achieve 'as bad as always', and quite frankly, when we can see some things are in fact worse than they've been, it's time for liberalism to fess up. As you say, when the common denominator is 'we've been listening to liberalism for generations', it might be time to try a new strategy.
ReplyDeleteBut Dave, all that talk sounds an awful lot like Consequentialism and several Catholic luminaries tell me we can't have that.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly starts to make a lot of sense why so many nowadays object to ever judging an action by its consequences - because then we might have to face the reality that intention doesn't really ensure outcome.
That's true. I've often said there is a difference between consequentialism and consequences. Sure, we shouldn't do evil. But we shouldn't do what results in evil, even if our intentions were the best.
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