What’s good for the individual is good for society and what’s good for society is good for the individual. It’s an intuitive logic that most of us accept, at least implicitly. It’s how the world is supposed to work. When individuals do the “right thing” society flourishes and flourishing societies create the conditions necessary to nurture its members. The formula is as old as civilization itself. For instance, presidents and parents advise the young to stay in school and work hard to succeed. In the aggregate, well-schooled individuals comprise a superior work force that competes favorably in the international worlds of commerce and science.
So, in theory, at least, individuals and their society constitute a mutually-reinforcing, self-sustaining system that is “good.”
In the first half of the twentieth century, opinion makers and media tended to support ideals that seemed healthful both for individual citizens and for the nation as a whole. Television “propagandized” morality in the guise of I Remember Momma, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Lone Ranger-like programs. Everyone knew who the “good guys” were. And the good guys not only came out on top, but taught lessons in the process.
Some considered the shows a bit corny, but virtually everyone admitted that the virtual morality plays reinforced ideals and behaviors that the family and state championed. On television, no guys or gals said the “f word” or grabbed their crotches. The stars invariable were the good guys and girls. Parents could trust the media to support, or at least not to undermine, child-rearing scripts that they, their religious organizations, and their government regarded as good for individuals and for communities. Children knew who both their parents were, where their parents were, and what their parents stood for. Children did not see crotch-holding, expletive- spewing, bling-ladened Neanderthals reaping lush adulation and financial remuneration for their miscreant behaviors. Society-wide messages about proper behavior — marriage, parenting, education, constructive work habits —were so consistent then that, at best, most people were reluctant to act in a blatantly unlawful or immoral manner, or, at worst, they attempted to hide their infractions, since there was no benefit and plenty of risk in doing otherwise.
Over the decades, the good media-good child rearing practices synergy began to erode. Like the proverbial snowball accelerating down a ravine, the pace has quickened so that today’s parents search mostly in vain for family-friendly media. Critically, this is much more than a matter of mere entertainment; it will determine how long our nation can continue its preeminence.
My point is not that America faces serious social challenges. Our nation has managed to overcome past potentially debilitating crises—prejudice, war, recessions, and natural disasters, to name a few. The current crisis is different, however. Heretofore, citizens understood the enemy and united against it. Today, on the other hand, there are determined subgroups advocating and advertising all types of culturally self-destructive social practices. The advocates, of course, do not see the practices as corrosive. Rather, they view them through the prism of their vested self-interests; they have a stake in promoting the very practices that our parents and grandparents would have immediately, soundly and widely condemned. In fact, the promoters of American disintegration try to make us believe that democracy requires us not only to tolerate but to celebrate morally offensive behavior. To their ways of thinking, for instance, there is nothing inherently “bad” with racist, misogynistic rap music or with serially-impregnating and absconding males. Rather, those behaviors are freely chosen ‘lifestyles” and no one should attempt to “dictate” lifestyle to anyone; it’s a matter of “personal freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.” In fact, since those “choices” tend to be more greatly associated with inner city, low-income persons, speaking out against them is a form of insensitive, reactionary bias against “poor folks.” Only racists, Nazis, or racist Nazis could speak out against freedom to enjoy hate-filled rap music or unbridled sexual liberty.
We find in our country today, then, a perverse discrepancy between what is “good” for individuals and good for society. An army of elitist intelligentsia led by Barack Hussein Obama-like generals are on the offensive, fighting to advance personal freedoms contrary to the moral and social traditions that made America America. The elitists believe that by championing their self-defined individual “human” rights, they will create a new, more tolerant 21st Century America.
To my way of thinking, however, President Obama and his legions are undermining the most essential element in the machinery of our country: the synergy between what is good for us as individuals and what is good for the nation as a whole. Barack Obama seeks to decouple what is good for each of us from what is good for us collectively, individual character divorced from national character If he succeeds, we will lose the very self-correcting self-reinforcing, I Remember Momma, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Lone Ranger-like engine that has driven our progress to date. Obama’s assault on America’s legacy culture is not limited to one or two issues. It is not just a matter of requiring all citizens to subscribe to Obama’s version of universal healthcare. Obama and his band want to immediately disassemble the very mechanisms that created and sustained America. They, however, will accept a steady, sustained corrosion of our ideals because they see that method as most likely to achieve their ultimate ends. We need to be alert in order to detect and counter elements of the corrosive process that they already have set in motion.
No comments:
Post a Comment