The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22,, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

 

WesternFront America

By Selwyn Duke

When writing about Barack Obama’s religious orientation recently, I pointed out that while I do believe he favors Muslim over Western culture, bowing before another — even God — is above his humility grade. I further mentioned that in keeping with this self-centeredness, Obama is (like all leftists) someone who denies moral reality.

Ironically, after penning my piece, I became aware of an interview Obama once gave — one quite relevant to the topic at hand. It was conducted in 2004 by Chicago Sun Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani while Obama was running for the U.S. Senate, and it offers great insight into the nature of Obama’s “faith.” I think you’ll be interested to hear what he had to say.

The whole interview is infused with typical leftist philoso-babble. Obama says he’s “a big believer in tolerance” and thus looks askance at “certainty” and believes in the necessity “doubt” (an attitude mysteriously absent when pushing health care), bringing to mind G.K. Chesterton’s observation, “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” Yet Obama also told Falsani that he had “deep faith.” This might cause some to wonder “In what?” And this brings us to the part of the interview in which he was asked “What is sin?” Here was his answer:

“Being out of alignment with my values.”

Perhaps this question was also above Obama’s pay grade, or maybe he studied divinity with Al Gore. Whatever the case, this is not the definition of sin. Rather, sin is when you violate God’s laws, or, to put it in more modernistic terms, it’s being out of alignment with God’s values (which are the Truth). So it was an interesting answer. Some might conclude that if you define sin as being out of alignment with your values, you believe you are God.

An even stranger answer came earlier in the interview. In response to Falsani’s query about whether he prayed often, Obama said, “Uh, yeah, I guess I do. It’s not formal, me getting on my knees. I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I think throughout the day, I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why am I doing it [emphasis mine].”

Did everyone catch that? If I pray to God, I may ask Him questions. I won’t say that I have “an ongoing conversation with God” and then reflexively follow up with “I’m constantly asking myself questions . . . .”

That is, unless I believe I am God.

Now, do I say that Obama thinks he is a supreme being who created the Universe? Unless it’s a universe of programs, laws, regulations and debt, no. But I am certain (if it’s still legal to be so) that Obama is a typical leftist: self-centered and solipsistic. He has deified himself, in the sense that he believes he is above everyone else. This is why he, showing no doubt whatsoever, feels so sure about reshaping our world in his own image.

His comments also vindicate my assessment of him as a moral relativist. Whenever you hear “my values,” know that it’s the language of relativism. It’s the belief that, hey, you have your values, I have mine — you say “potato” and I say “potahto” — and it’s all just a matter of perspective. This is contrary to any absolutist faith, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. They teach that God has determined right and wrong and that it is something eternal and unchanging, encapsulated in a word leftists avoid: Truth.

Understand that “values” itself is a term of relativism. Mother Teresa had values, but so did Adolf Hitler; values aren’t good by definition — virtues are. This is why the latter term is hardly uttered in today’s if-it-feels-good-do-it culture; instead, people may boast about how they have values, which is much like a street pusher defending his trade by saying that he provides drugs (which can cure or kill). A value can be sinful as well as sublime.

But in the leftists’ universe there is no sin. After all, they believe as ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras did that “Man is the measure of all things.” However, if this is so, what is what we call right and wrong? It then can be nothing but opinion. But think about the implications of this: If that unchanging and eternal thing called Truth didn’t exist, “morality” couldn’t have any basis in reality. And this would mean that right and wrong doesn’t exist at all. Ergo, no sin.

Unfortunately for Obama’s opponents, however, this insight into his un-faith won’t lose him many votes. This is because he has a lot of company, as moral relativism is the characteristic spiritual disease of our time. And this is why I will use this opportunity as, to quote our relativist-in-chief, a “teachable” moment.

A poll in recent years found that, strikingly, 62 percent of those identifying as Christians didn’t believe in Absolute Truth. I’ll also note that we have seen a great number of articles lately about how Christian youth leave the Church as they move through college. These two factors are not unrelated.

On a simple level, if there’s no Truth — if virtues are just values and values are just opinion — why pick up your cross and carry it? Why embrace a faith that places moral constraints upon you (especially the sexual variety, which interferes with moderns’ favorite recreation)? “If it feels good, do it” then makes more sense.

Delving a bit deeper, relativism strikes at the foundational act of Christianity: the sacrifice at Calvary. After all, if right and wrong are just opinion and there is thus no sin, there was no reason for Jesus to die on the cross, was there? (But He never said that His blood would be shed for you and for all so that opinions may be forgiven.) So if you haven’t instilled your children with a belief in Truth, don’t be surprised when they leave the Church. If they don’t believe in sin, they cannot believe in a savior.

But this doesn’t mean they won’t desire salvation — that is, at least the worldly variety. And this is one reason why millions of Americans, especially the ever-more-relativistic young, voted for The One. A people who believed in Truth would never cast such a vote — and those who do believe in it generally didn’t — but when man doesn’t believe in God, he makes man God. As to why, I explored the reasons in The New American magazine in 2009, writing:

Among other things, people find a belief in God comforting. It involves the ideas that God, or good, will always triumph in the end; that someone is watching over them, cares for them, will help them, and will be there for them in the end. Now, since this human need doesn’t disappear along with faith, it follows that people will replace God with something else when they lose faith in Him. Thus did millions of Germans cheer Hitler believing he represented security, triumph, economic resurrection, hope, and change. And it isn’t surprising that he rose during the desperate days of the Weimar Republic, with its hyper-inflation and hypo-industriousness. It is when people are desperate that they search for a savior; when they are brought to their lowest, they have nowhere to look but up. It is then that they find either the Deity or a demagogue. And when you mistake the latter for the former, the danger is profound. For you don’t disobey a god, you don’t question him; a god is infallible. A prostrate people will follow a messianic leader to the ends of the Earth even if it takes them to the edges of Hell.
. . . Someone who would accept any degree of deification is not only unfit to be worshipped as a god, he is unfit to be followed as a leader. As G.K. Chesterton said in his classic work The Everlasting Man, “A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it…. Nobody can imagine Aristotle claiming to be the father of gods and men, come down from the sky; though we might imagine some insane Roman Emperor like Caligula claiming it for him, or more probably for himself.” It is also correct to say that truly great people know that their leaders aren’t God, and the greater they are, the better they know it.
So, ultimately, the warning here isn’t about Barack Obama. It is about us. Our tendency to make man into God will always be directly proportional to our tendency to make God into myth.

Thank God, the myth of Obama has finally been punctured in the minds of many. As with the Daniel Dravot character (played by Sean Connery) in “The Man Who Would be King,” the natives have now seen Obama bleed, and they’re not happy. He is bleeding America, and he won’t stop until somebody (hopefully the Republicans starting January) stops him. After all, why would he listen to the people or compromise with anyone? Despite his extolling of uncertainty, when he has his “ongoing conversation with God” and is asking himself questions, I tend to think he views the answers as most infallible, indeed.

Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a regular guest on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative and he writes regularly for The New American and Christian Music Perspective.  He is a regular contributor to Ether Zone.
Selwyn Duke can be reached at: SelwynDuke@optonline.net

“Published originally at EtherZone.com

 

WesternFront America

By Larry Miller

There are some who live in a fantasy world that believe moral values are not necessary to maintaining a solid conservative government. They reject the idea that it takes a firm set of convictions to stop government waste and intrusion. They call themselves “fiscal conservatives” and want us to believe that the only qualification to be worthy of our support is to be in favor of a smaller government that minimizes its interference in their lives and lowers our taxes. Many of them do this in the guise of promoting what they call a “big tent” party.

They are ones who want to believe that killing unborn children is all right, but they still want lower taxes. While this specious goal may be theoretically attainable, in practice, it has never worked out. We are told that the death of innocent children and acceptance of aberrant lifestyles is something we should overlook so we can reduce the roll of government in our lives. To some extent it is possible to accept the premise that the national government has no business regulating these practices… if its hands are tied so it does not prevent the states from doing to.

The reality is that when the chips are down and the bare knuckle brawl begins, it is generally only the hard core fiscal AND social conservatives that are standing strong against higher taxes and beltway intrusion. So many of those who would have us believe their “fiscal conservatism” alone would save us have fallen by the wayside as they cave to the pressures of the progressives who have no such moral dilemmas or sell their allegiance to the highest bidder. These progressives and their corporate cronies know they want power, and power comes from bigger and bigger government operations.

Why is it Senators like Jim DeMint and Rick Santorum stood firm while many who talked a good game fell prey to the schemes of their godless opposition? Why is it that Congressmen and women like Michelle Bachmann, Mike Pence and Randy Forbes take courageous stands against the pressures of even their own party organizations? It is because they have a moral compass that helps them understand the difference between right and wrong.

Before we go too far down the road of canonizing any… even the best of our elected representatives, we have to grasp the fact that the last perfect person walked on water, healed the sick and was hung on a cross. Having the right values does not negate a person’s fallible humanity. I’m sure it is possible to point to some event in each life where they missed the mark, so let’s not fall into the trap of holding these people to a higher standard than we apply to ourselves… a standard based more on intentions than results.

It has been said the courage is the one virtue that insures all others. The thing that most “fiscal conservatives” don’t seem to grasp is that values are nice, and I could agree with many of their values, yet unless one has the courage and stamina to see the battle through to the end, the values themselves mean nothing. Unless they have the courage of Rachel Scott as she faced the deranged gunman at Columbine High School, they will not stand up to the tremendous pressures and temptations of the most powerful deliberative body in the world.

We hear speeches about picking battles, how people expect results or how something, anything, must be done. Unfortunately what is not done is the job at hand. In the end, what we get from most “fiscal conservatives” are promises, excuses and stories of things we just don’t understand the complexities of the issues or that things are just done a particular way in the house or senate. And the result is that they sound almost like Democrats.

Originally posted at Political Christian © Larry Miller

 

WesternFront America