The early success of the United States can be traced back to its strong moral and ethical foundation rooted in Christian values and history. When we think about our parents, or grandparents, or great grandparents, those are usually memories of generations that were honest, hard-working, humble, and morally grounded. The ‘good old days’ we can appreciate and long for nostalgically. It was only a couple of generations ago that parents raised an eyebrow when Elvis shook his hips on national TV, or Ray Charles was prohibited from playing in Georgia because of the influence of his music on the youth, or Michael Jackson’s mother troubled because she felt that the lyrics to Don’t stop ‘til We Get Enough might be sexually ‘suggestive’.
We look back today on what was innocent and naïve compared to today’s standard. Of course, in today’s society there is no standard. Anything goes in musical lyrics and graphical content, which is intentionally as sick, explicit and vulgar as possible. Most conservatives are not prudes, or racists, homophobes, xenophobes or any of the other labels that have been used to successfully squash opposition and allow this behavior to flourish; conservatives just understand that moral standards are the foundation of a strong social structure. On the bell curve they are the normal distribution of what should be considered acceptable. Sometimes they turn a blind eye when art or entertainment gets into the fringes, but they know society can thrive because they are able to come back to a sense of normal that binds us to decency and a socially acceptable moral compass.
We are witnessing the moral decay of the US social fabric from within. ‘Where to draw the line’ is an important question and it turns out those parents from past generations were on to something.
Many Americans do not know the history of the ‘liberal’ movement and what it stands for. Liberalism started in a positive connotation, being defined as ‘representing liberty and human individuality’. Like the democratic party its origins had good intentions. It was to offset government control and ensure power was represented with the individual, and not government authority. Sounds great right? What happened?
There is a sneaky little known political strategy advocated by social activists, such as Leon Trotsky, called Entryism. Entryism is a small, unestablished group scaling and institutionalizing a radical political position by infiltrating an established political party or ideology. Socialist and communists in the West who tend to work on the outskirts of the political norm know this technique well and have used it successfully, primarily by infecting and hijacking the Democratic Party and liberal movement. Even if they don’t come out and say it, most everyday American liberals are reasonable people who followed a liberal ideology because they believed it stood for something meaningful. Most would agree that a biological man shouldn’t be able to break the jaw of a female competing in an MMA competition, or crush the dreams of college girls trying to win swimming competitions, or believe in the Sharia law practice of cutting out female genitalia on young girls, or that skinny, white ANTIFA fascist mercenaries should burn down African-American neighborhoods in the name of ‘anti-fascism’. Unfortunately, well intentioned liberals are now trapped by the Frankenstein monster these radicals have transformed to represent their movement. It has gone beyond absurd to the point of being unrecognizable. This is because of these fringe groups infecting the movement and using it to install their own radical views.
‘Infecting’ might seem like a strong word to critics but that is exactly what happens. In a social (or biological) ecosystem there are sets of ‘checks and balances’ that keep the system healthy. In the political health realm conservative ideals are like the immune system. They are the fundamental apparatus used to keep infections from overcoming and destroying the system. In the 50s and 60s, the US had a strong moral and ethical immune system based on family structure centered on Christian conservative values. When parents questioned Elvis having the audacity to ‘shake his hips’ so blatantly onstage, it was a conservative foundation flushing out potential infection of moral deprecation. Liberals were able to thrive and push the envelope because conservatives drew the line and didn’t let those ideologies become foundationally relevant to our social construct. They were the fringe minority.
Rebellion, along with drug and alcohol use, were ingrained in music and culture going back to the early days of Hank Williams and blues and jazz players in the 40’s and 50’s, but were not socially acceptable and considered ‘shunned’ behavior by the mainstream, even with liberals. The 60’s and 70’s saw the beginnings of explicit sexual behavior and drug use becoming more commercialized and commonly accepted within the ‘liberal’ mainstream, although most of mainstream did not approve and still shunned this behavior as ‘fringe’. The 60’s and 70’s brought about a more militant liberal movement with the rise of communist sympathizers and organized groups like the Black Panthers. This is when many communist, socialist and radical groups realized they could steer political and popular culture by influencing liberalism to their advantage. Many of these agitators came from communist countries, like Cuba or Russia, who understood entryism and were intentional ‘plants’ to fuel fires of local discontent and drive the narrative away from original liberal origins into new radical directions. In the 80’s we saw the start of the impact when the Rajneeshee Cult, enabled by pacific west liberalized acceptance of far left groups, attempted to install their own radical candidates into government office by poisoning hundreds of people after spraying salmonella bacteria into salad bars at local restaurants in order to intentionally make people sick so they couldn’t come out and vote.
Fast forward to today’s society, and the fringes have now become the masses. Radicals have used entryism to allow a demented, and almost psychotic, level of moral deprecation into our society. Unfortunately, because of the timing with technology, they were able to scale this into every household through social media platforms. When conservatives pushed back, they were labeled racist, or homophobic or any other label that made them weary to question their intentions. It was very effective. We no longer have a line in the sand when it comes to defining what we will, or will not, accept to influence our children and corrupt our society. If you don’t believe it, just pull up the lyrics to the number one songs on the Billboard Top 100. They are so graphically despicable it’s hard to imagine that is influencing our 13-15 year old children. Try printing them out and putting on your refrigerator. When all youth hear is explicit lyrics about sex and drugs it becomes normalized. It is like a cancer that spreads unchecked until it metastasizes into every organ. As with any late-stage cancer there is no easy cure. Parents just put their heads in the sand and choose to pretend it isn’t happening for fear of being labeled so the problem continues to get worse.
Conservatives can win a few governor seats, and talk about the ‘red wave’ and winning back some semblance of power in November, but if we don’t fix our social and moral decay we can’t stand as a country because what are we saving? Do we want to be known as the country that spreads filth around the World? Is this how we define ourselves? The only option is some sort of social chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy is like napalming the whole system and hoping that it kills out all the bad while preserving enough of the good to make the system healthy again. In the progression of cancer, sugar is the source that feeds the tumor. In economic terms it is money. As long as we financially reward bad behavior the cancer will continue to spread. We have to start treatment even though it will be painful. We can expect the disease will fight back and potentially get worse, like often happens with cancers, before we are able to heal. The longer we wait the worse it will get. If the country falls, we all fall with it. Liberal or conservative. Democrat or Republican. Many want the country destroyed or permanently changed to their radical ideology. We’re in a struggle for the soul of the country and what sort of future we will leave for our children.
Parents will have to step up and take responsibility for what their children are being exposed to. Cancel Disney+ or Netflix if it goes against your values. If we work together collectively, we have a strong voice that can be influential to drive change. If we do not stand together, they’ll continue to pick us apart as consumers and normalize violence, vulgarity and obscenity. They are the vultures circling on the ground, waiting to see if we’ve given up the fight. Our constraint is their expansion, their constraint is our resolution.
In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states clearly ‘it is not correct to say that a human being has a duty of self-esteem, it must rather be said that the law within him unavoidably forces from him respect for his own being, and this feeling is the basis of certain duties, that is, of certain actions that are consistent with his duty to himself.’ We have lost the sacred virtue that defines decency and social acceptability. Because of inaction we’ve given up the self-respect that defines and ensures we are morally conscious. It won’t get better until we reestablish the boundaries and draw a new line in the sand. This is what gave us a social foundation to build from in the first place.