America’s Moral Whiteout

It has become an up-side down world. Arguments are being made, and heard, that a generation ago would have been considered absurd. Groups espousing homosexuality get favorable press while the Boy Scouts are excoriated. Marriage is mocked, honesty is considered naive and lying is “smart.” Cultural “leaders” teach that abstinence is “prudish” and promiscuity is “normal.”

America is in trouble.

If you have ever driven in a blizzard, you may have experienced a “whiteout.” It is a situation where you can see nothing but the blowing snow in all directions. Imagine flying a plane in such a situation and you understand how a pilot could become disoriented, lose his bearings and crash.

There is a parallel in the moral realm. It occurs when people reject objective standards of right and wrong, question long held principles and lose their bearings. They become confused regarding cultural mores that may have existed for centuries. If a winter “whiteout” is dangerous for a pilot, a moral “whiteout” is the death knell of a culture and civilization.

America is in the midst of such a whiteout at this moment due to a constant barrage of propaganda from the cultural left over the last fifty years. While many of our social problems have existed for a long time, i.e. poverty, teen pregnancies, crime, failed inner cities, high suicide rates, and abortion; their dramatic increase over the last four decades can be traced directly to the confusion that has been created by discarding the principles which were once foundational to American culture.

It seems the Left has used two primary arguments for throwing away these principles, but neither holds up under scrutiny. First, they declare that there is no such thing as “absolute truth.” Their statement, however, is self-contradictory, being an absolute itself! While they may wish for such an existence, in the real world there are absolutes, and we all know it. Elementary common sense would suggest that we accept the existence of absolutes and live accordingly. America, from its founding, accepted Judeo-Christian principles as its foundational absolutes. All of our laws and liberties spring from them, and to eliminate those absolutes from the general understanding of the public undermines all laws and liberties.

The second argument liberals make is that judeo-Christian principles have worked very badly for America and the world. They attempt to prove this, however, by a badly revised telling of our history. Take their word for it and you will believe that America has been a nation of thugs who have exploited and destroyed all that we have touched. Besides the fact that such a telling of American history is both false and deeply offensive to the many Americans whose contributions to the world are legion, it leaves many young Americans demoralized and uncertain.

It is appropriate to acknowledge that America has one too many occasions failed its principles. The failure is not due to poor principles but rather to the common weaknesses of human beings. And while America’s failures are to be regretted and have tainted our history, this nation’s contributions to mankind are remarkable.

But, liberalism’s relativism has created a moral whiteout in America. As a result, children are not safe in the womb, their neighborhoods or schools. We are not sure whether homosexual behavior is “normal” or not, marriage is more to be mocked than appreciated, and sexual activity is recreational. Clothing is becoming optional, and far too many people are taking justice into their own hands. These are not the marks of a stable culture but of chaos. After all, if each of us must determine what is right for ourselves, show me how the bully, anarchist or terrorist isn’t doing just that! In a nutshell, it could be argued that the picture being painted by the leaders of the cultural Left is something like this: Christianity is bad, anything anti-Christian is good. Hard work is not to be rewarded, “victim-hood” is legitimate. Businessmen and profit are bad, wealth must be redistributed “equitably.” Liberty is bad, government control is good. (Underlying the last two is the incredible assumption that people who work in government are somehow immune from the failures that characterize the rest of us!)

Behavior that our grandparents would not have tolerated for a moment is now commonplace. With the confusion created by the Left, in discarding the common principles which we have shared for over two hundred years, it is not surprising that instability prevails.

If we are to continue down this path, we will have to discard the Constitution, its protections and liberties because it was written for a people who agreed on certain fundamental truths. When enough Americans reject the foundation, the building will collapse. Are you ready for that?