The new normal devalues life

With our heads still reeling from the awful events that took place in a crowded theater in Colorado last week, trying to find answers to how we have gotten to this place in our culture is not easy. Last week’s column dealt with the heinous crimes committed against the innocent minor children who were sexually abused by the now convicted coach at Penn State. There is a link between the two crimes. At the root of the issues we are facing in our culture is the value we place on human life. The aberrant behavior of some in our society causes us to look at what is now considered to be the new norm. One could argue we have always had people killing other people, since Cain killed Abel. It could also be posited that as long as there have been people, there has been sexual misbehavior. Even though we can find antidotal evidence to support various positions on the norms and mores of culture, we also know that certain behaviors have been seen as normal and certain behaviors have been admitted to be abnormal in every civilization.

In modern time, we can trace a change in the direction of our morals to the Woodstock era and the so-called sexual revolution occurring in the 50’s and 60’s and continues to this present day. The loose adhering to the moral codes of former generations has led us to the day when a book attempting to mainstream (deviant) sexual practices involving bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism (BDSM) has set a new record for the fastest selling paperback book of all time. In keeping with the reality that once a person dabbles in the darker side of personality and society there is always the pushing of the envelope to try more heinous ways of being satisfied. We see this being played out in the erotic novels by British author E.L. James in a planned trilogy. At first, one begins with Fifty Shades of Grey, then secondly, Fifty Shades Darker to the final Fifty Shades Freed. Many libraries across the country have refused to allow the book on their shelves. Uproar always follows the decision by library boards, as some people claim their freedom of speech is being harmed by not being able to read the titillating verbiage in the book.

In the 1970’s, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon revealed the results of studies on the relation between pornography and crime where they recommended fewer restrictions on porn. President Ronald Reagan issued an order for a comprehensive investigation into pornography bringing about the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography when the 75th Attorney General, Edwin Meese III followed through with the publishing of the findings of the commission in 1986. At that time the pornography peddlers cried that their freedoms of speech rights were being trampled. A person only needs to read the first hand testimony of the victims of child rape, prostitution, and other crimes against innocent boys and girls to realize the depth of the depravity of those who are victims of a culture that looks the other way when the issue of pornography is brought to light.

Moving forward in time, we have continued down that slippery slope into the quagmire of perversion to the place where the new norm is to the point of allowing any type of perversion as long as it is acted out in the entertainment or publishing segments of society. At the root of pornography is the act of fornication (Greek word porneia), and fornication is the devaluing of human life. We are now at the stage where people are arguing for after-birth-abortion up to three days following the birth of a child. As we have continued to mainstream filth and see others as objects for personal deviant pleasure, we are seeing the full cycle of this behavior. The killing of innocent human beings by a murdering thug, the degrading of a human being by violating and robbing them of their innocence, and the taking of a human life simply because having a baby does not fit into the career plans of a couple can all be seen as the ultimate devaluing of the worth of a person.

 Human life is precious. Human life has worth, value, and dignity, and should be treated with the utmost respect from conception to natural death. We must once again mainstream morality, respect for others, and life as the new normal.

How many more sports scandals are out there?

The day after the information began to be reported in the media about the full investigation into the horrific heinous abuse of the minor children at the hands of the perverted-deviant-convicted-felon-coach from Penn State, a friend sent the headlines from various newspapers in Pennsylvania to me. They told the story of what had happened as college leadership did everything possible to keep an alleged major crime out of the media. The long years of the cover up are now being made known to the public. The desire was to keep as much information as possible from the public eye. The motive was to protect the football program and the reputation of the coach with the longest stretch of wins in football history. This is so wrong on so many levels it is almost as if I am writing about a never ending nightmare. Have you ever tried to make sense after waking up from a nightmare and the small details will not come back to your mind? The nightmare scenes stay with you all day, and you try to figure out why you would have dreamed as you did. How far down this slippery slope of moral depravity has this nation gone when the concern is to protect the reputation of a coach, rather than concern for the innocent victims of what has to be the most awful violation that could ever be forced upon any one? With calls from many parts of the country to remove the statue of the successful football coach, the trustees of Penn State have concluded, according to media reports that the statue will stay up. They have said the decision allowing the statue to remain or be removed will be made once the emotion and passion of the moment passes. Oh really? Passion and emotion of the moment wins out over the harm that can never be reversed to the victims of sexual abuse, in the minds of the adult trustees of Penn State. How can this happen? How is it that our nation is so in love with football, or any other sport, that the reputation of the coach is more important than anything else? Awards, trophies, buildings named in honor, money granted to young players with a dream of playing for a legend, and winning games trumps the lifetime of horror that will linger in the memory of untold numbers of victims of sexual abuse. Once the first person saw or even thought he was witnessing sexual abuse, the alarm should have been sounded. At the first sign that one of the coaches in the football legend’s squad was suspected of over-attention to young children, immediate action should have been taken to assure that the coach would not be in any way in touch with minors. But the football program was the thing to be protected no matter what it took to do so. Are we to believe that protection of a sports program and fear that money would not be sent from the alumni (to keep the sports program at the highest level) caused the people making the decision to make insane decisions? It is possible that the decision was already made that no matter what crime was committed all must be done to protect the program and the winning coach from public harm. Are our children safe anywhere? As sports camps are being conducted across the country at large and small colleges this summer are there other deviants lurking near the showers to catch a glimpse of the young innocent children? Will we now look at every sports program with a careful eye to be sure that what happened at Penn State would never be repeated? Will the college presidents and coaches assure the parents of the young and innocent would-be future college sports stars that the only interest they have in them is to develop their athletic ability? Will the full disclosure of what happened at Penn State when the priorities got turned on their head be enough to demand that all colleges put forward assurances and programs protecting the innocent lives of the student athletes? Are there stories from other colleges and coaches that have not yet been exposed? We have more questions than answers at this time. Some people reading this column might suggest this is an overreaction, I do not think so. The time is now that we must rethink the entire craze in our nation with sports.

Not a path to freedom

On this celebration of our nation’s Declaration of Independent from the oppression of the King of England, we have reached another major watershed mark. Will our nation continue to enjoy a free market economy? Will we continue to enjoy the free market system that has allowed our nation to be the number one most sought after nation on earth? Will the blood, shed by military and civilian citizens to purchase our freedoms, be looked on in our future as a waste of time and life? What is the future for our nation? The path we are currently on is not a path to freedom but to enslavement. We are being led into a place where the government is larger and government control is paramount to everything else. Personal freedoms are fast being thrown away. Many people have tried to find a silver lining in the 5 to 4 ruling of the Supreme Court last week. I am of the opinion there are few, if any, positives to be found in their affirmation allowing big government to take over even the smallest decisions we have been making. Personal decisions and personal responsibility have been thrown away by that 5 to 4 ruling. Using trick words and government-political-vocabulary, we have been sold out by some who were reported to have been conservative in their thinking. By the leftists’ vocabulary use of the word penalty not being a tax is nothing more than shameful as if we have no more awareness than to know we have been tricked. One of the tricks of the left is to redefine words and have enough people say the words until finally the citizens give in to admit that a penalty is not a tax. Saying a government imposed penalty that is required to be paid to the IRS is not a tax is like the current bait-and-switch wording of those who are pushing so hard to expand gambling in our state and exchange the word gambling to the word gaming. The predatory practices of the big government crowd never change. Their intent is to control, through government, all that we do in life. We will no longer have personal accountability or personal responsibility because that big government bunch is sure they know better how to run our life than we do. At this point in our history, we have only a small window of opportunity left to us to change the trajectory of our country. The only resource we have, at this time, is to be registered to vote, and to vote in every election. We must never choose not to vote in any election and let the government control crowd continue to win at the ballot box. No matter how sincere or how super educated the left want to paint their intention, there is no doubt they are determined to take over this country throwing our hard fought freedoms in the trash bin of history. Each year at this time I read the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Communist Manifesto. Last weekend, I took time to read those three documents again. Each year upon reading the documents of our history and the document outlining the desire by communists to enslave all people everywhere, yet promising freedom, I have a greater fear we are closer to loosing all of our freedoms than ever. In this week when we celebrate our freedoms with family and friends, let us all engage others in the conversation where we will express our beliefs in that which has made and kept our country great. Let us determine to make sure those men and women who receive our vote in the next election will always vote our values that will continue to assure we will remain a free nation. Unless we rally the citizens of our country to stand up, speak up, and refuse to be silent until we turn back this nation to less government and more personal responsibility, we will continue on the path where we are headed and when we arrive we will discover it is not a path to freedom, but enslavement to the government. With too many of our citizens now depending on the government for support and their livelihood, it is possible we will continue down this road to enslavement. We must no longer remain silent, but be wiling to stand and be counted as those who stand for freedom from government tyranny.