Thinking about my concerns about childcare got me thinking more about our society’s lack of a concrete and cohesive value system. I got to wondering how it came to be. I mean, I have always said that I am proud to be an American and that America is the best there is. At the same time, how come I am also disgusted with our society. How can I be so proud of America while still being disheartened by our very society?
What aspects am I proud of and what am I disheartened by?
I am extremely proud of what the American dream is. I’m proud of the ideals of our Great Nation. To be more explicit... America is about freedom and opportunity. It’s about being able to come here and no matter where you came from, no matter what your sex, religion or race is, you have the same rights as anyone else. Yes, I’m well aware that this was not always practiced in American history, but it was always the ideal and that is the beauty of it. We may fall short of the ideal, but if we still hold it as our guiding light, we will always have something to be proud of.
What I’m disheartened by is the perversion of this dream and by our society’s lack of pride in being American and taking part in the ideals. Once I defined that, I began to wonder why our society has lost its pride. We used to be a nation so full of pride and self respect. We used to know that we were great regardless of what any other country said about us. What happened?
I think I figured it out. Our nation is great because we recognize equal rights for everyone no matter what culture they come from, just as long as individuals they in turn respect everyone elses rights. However, this ideal of respect for every individual no matter where they came from has been perverted and transformed into a belief that we need to respect every culture and way of life equally. Do you see the difference? The original ideal treated each individual with respect vs the more inclusive current expectation that we respect all religions and ways of life. It’s not enough to love the baby, we also have to love the bath water. It’s not enough to respect each individual’s rights, we are also expected to respect their heritage. The change in focus has been subtle but VERY damaging to our society.
Why has this been so damaging? Well, not only is it that all people have been created equal but now the prevailing theory is that all cultures and ways of life are equal. When we accept this ideology there is no room to take pride in being who we are. There is no room to hold on to the ideals that I am so proud of and the ideals that I love. There’s no room to say that the rugged individualism of America and the self-dependency of our identity is now any better than the socialism of other nations. There’s no room to say that our respect for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is better than the customs of the Middle Eastern countries that are the polar opposite of what our nation is supposed to be. One may read this and say that I’m exaggerating. But this is not an exaggeration in the least. I can prove it.
I can give a solid example of the result of this new multiculturalistic ideology. We have an extremely popular presidential candidate whose preacher has been spouting just this very sort of Anti-American garbage. You may say, just has he has declared, that Obama does not share these views. Obama has come out and condemned what his preacher has said, but I do not for one instant buy the sincerity of the condemnation. Why do I not buy his condemnation? For the simple reason that his wife said very clearly after Obama won a primary election that this is the first time in her adult life that she has been proud of her country. Clearly his wife has been identifying with this preacher.
Now you may also make a weak arguement that his wife’s beliefs do not reflect his own, and sometimes that is true. However, as a married couple you would expect that they would be discussing these contravercial ideas, especially since they’ve come from their preacher’s mouth. I know that Ray and I discuss things that we hear all the time. Sometimes we disagree, but we talk about them. Now if Obama had told his wife that he finds the preacher’s statements to be Anti-American, do you think that his wife would publicly represent those ideas right after winning a champain? How could an American, especially one such as she who has achieved so much in the USA not have felt pride in being an American before now? The only way is if she accepts this preacher’s teachings.
Another piece of evidence that I am not exaggerating is our nation’s trend towards socialism. That is not what America is about. Our original ideals says that that the government is there to protect our rights. That is, protect our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our country is supposed to protect our right to make a living and to freely use fruit of our labor, but that doesn’t mean that our government is supposed to put fruit on your table. You’re supposed to make it for yourself.
Surely we are a compassionate society and would not want to see someone going without the essentials, so as individuals, we may bond together to help those that may need assistance. That’s why as individuals we form charities, we come together to help those that need a helping hand. It’s not the government, however that should take the fruit of one person’s labor to put it on another’s table. It’s up to the person who made the fruit to give it up if they are so inclined. History has told us time and again what happens when the government does that. Those that nurture and harvest their fruit trees for someone else to forcibly take the fruit from them, will decide that it’s not worth the effort and will cease to grow the fruit. Then no one will have anything. This has been shown time and again. Why do we insist on trying it again?
