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The enemy is hidden within. Operating in cells
throughout the country they hit without warning, striking alarm and
dismay in the hearts of the public. They seem impossible to fight;
crush one head and another takes its place.
It is no secret that the jihad on values that sustain
American families began long before anyone heard of al Qaida. If
one could add the toll from drugs, sexually transmitted diseases,
broken families, and other charms of 21st century life,
I’d wager it has also caused a great deal more harm.
“A
Lot Easier Said Than Done,” a study by the
nonprofit research organization Public Agenda, found that nearly
half of American parents rate “negative societal influences” as
their biggest challenge. Parents rank these pressures, including
amoral media messages, anti-social peer groups, drugs, and alcohol,
almost as high as family finances and having enough time to spend
with their children – combined.
According to Deborah Wadsworth, Public Agenda’s
president, parents in years past “felt there were allies,
institutional allies, and the real world reinforced the values that
we wanted to teach our kids. My sense from this study, and it’s
really painful, is that parents just feel absolutely abandoned.
They feel as if they are being sabotaged at every turn.”
No kidding. Think the schools will back you up? The
curriculum of many public schools is an instrument for
indoctrination as much as education, promoting everything from open
sexuality to “alternative lifestyles.” This is done in the name of
tolerance and free speech while voluntary religious expression is
squashed with the same justification.
How about youth organizations? The Boy Scouts stand
almost alone in requiring some semblance of traditional standards
and suffer no small abuse for it. Free association may be
guaranteed, but some folks make it their mission to badger
once-principled organizations into submission. Many have caved,
especially when funding is threatened.
How about the simple and necessary act of buying
clothes? Modest clothing for teenage girls has become so hard to
find that there are signs of backlash by kids themselves.
Phoenix teenagers, for
instance, have presented a department store chain with petitions
containing over 1,500 signatures requesting clothing “that covers
the midriff, bust, shoulder, back, legs to the knee and any clothing
that shows respect for the body.”
Decent popular music and movies are practically
nonexistent, but surely your home is safe, isn’t it? It can be if
you’re diligent, but the language on family hour television would
have had me blowing soap bubbles as a kid. Even the occasional
bleeps take out so little that the average 3-year-old knows can dope
out the words. TV honchos either think we’re stupid, know they can
get away with it, or just don’t give a hoot. More likely all three
if there’s a buck in it.
And that is the crux of the matter. There are certainly
cheerleaders for moral decay who simply don’t like civilized
constraints, but they are tools for the entertainment, fashion, and
other industries that stand to pile up cash.
We’ve all heard that money is the root of evil, but the
full quote from
1 Timothy is a little
more specific: “People who want to get rich fall into
temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that
plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a
root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have
wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
They don’t mind piercing the rest of us, either.
I’m not sure I have the answer, but the teens in Phoenix
may be on to something. Parents still control a family’s money;
turn that off and perhaps we can turn the culture as well. |
