What is the single biggest problem with America today?

[Mr.Anderson]

Pornography

Taking things that should be between a man & woman, something private, and plastering it all over.
Magazines in the checkout isle where little kids get see what they think is a woman on the cover and its some G*****n freak.

Or they're going down the highway and see your stupid stick figure stickers on the back of your vehicle in sexual positions.
Or splattered all over billboards and tv.

PG13?? REALLY???
I dont want my 16 yr old watching it. Hell, My wife and I wont even watch that garbage.

Influecing our teenagers to dress like whores or thugs. Ok, thugs isnt sexual and thatsmy no.2 thing. You asked for one.
I think you get my drift. Read my sig line.

[Inkslinger]

Catholic school, by any chance?

Nope. Good old public school. None of it would have happened if I went to catholic school. The church's higher moral compass prevents them from doing bad things to children.

[Dienekes]

Ah, yes--the last acceptable prejudice.

Farming your kids out to public school indoctrination has been such a howling success for the last 150 years or so, too.

[uffdaphil]

The largely successful demonization of the Right by the Left. Debate about whether an proposal is right or wrong has been replaced by defining the proposer as good or evil. No need to argue the merits anymore. Just label your opponents -ist, -phobic, greedy, hater, denier etc. consistantly through the schools and fellow traveler media and low-info mob will grow and shout down your critics.

But is makes for interesting times and we Bible believers never expected this world to improve to improve the human condition without outside intervention. We just do what we can to slow the decay and sell tickets for the love train.

[WickedWillis]

I love how people judge others because somehow their sins are different than yours.

[brickboy240]

Porno is worse that the bloated overgrown govt?

I seriously doubt that.

[Inkslinger]

Ah, yes--the last acceptable prejudice.

Farming your kids out to public school indoctrination has been such a howling success for the last 150 years or so, too.

Apparently the sarcasm in my post is not obvious.

[Belloc]

I love how people judge others because somehow their sins are different than yours.

Are you implying that they are not, or that they cannot be? Because I rather believe that the sins of pedophilia, rape, and murder are, "somehow", different than my sins.

[Dienekes]

Just knocked this out to a friend of mine re current events. Thought I'd throw it out here FWIW.


Dear J,

I had trouble bringing up the article before but got it today. Not quite sure how much I agree with, but I guess it's a matter of how damned awful you happen to think things are. (The curse of knowing some history, I guess.)

But--I do have a fairly dog-eared and marked-up copy of the book mentioned in the article, "After Virtue", by MacIntyre. Toward the end of the book he cautiously observes some parallels between Rome's decline and the present:

"A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead--not often recognizing fully what they were doing--was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. this time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another--doubtless very different--St. Benedict."

A few random, personal observations...As I have mentioned, I spent my high school years plunked down in the middle of a Benedictine monastery in darkest Minnesota--similar in some respects to the "new forms of community" mentioned above, and not entirely dissimilar to them (think MR with a much better class of people!). The crucial difference isn't where it is, but how the people in it think. And what they do.

Interestingly, we have a couple of other developments up here in Wyoming: Wyoming Catholic College (which I was somewhat around for the founding of about 10 years back) and is, to put it mildly, counter cultural--and a very small "starter" monastery up around Cody. Just pebbles in the pond.

I find the combination of character, virtue, and intellectual (and actual) firepower to be an "interesting" notion for the "interesting" times we find ourselves in.

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

[WickedWillis]

Are you implying that they are not, or that they cannot be? Because I rather believe that the sins of pedophilia, rape, and murder are, "somehow", different than my sins.

No, I am implying that "Christians" And boy, do I use that term loosely these days, are so caught up in what others are doing that they don't reflect on their own sins and transgressions against God. Of course the sins you listed are top-tier horrible things, and should be judged by everyone who has not committed them themselves. John 8:7 "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."