The somewhat controversial conservative activist Pamela Geller wrote an essay last year entitled “The Poo Generation.” The thrust of Geller’s essay is that the ‘Poo emoticon’ best “exemplifies the low state of the world, of the culture, and of America itself in the age of the primitive. It signifies America’s rapid decay in the wake of the left’s decades-long war on Americanism, freedom, and individual rights.”
Although the title is a bit off-putting, the essay was thought-provoking in that it compared the post 9/11 and post Obama Administration culture in the U.S., with some unspecified time from our past when “America was happy.” The essay lambasted the Left for bringing us to our current state of misery.
It’s hard to disagree with the overall angst expressed in Geller’s essay, but Geller also said, “The absence of morality – and by morality I mean a code of values – has led to an absence of the good” and that, “A nation built on a morality of reason has all but abandoned its foundational principles.”
Our country was built on a “morality of reason” but it did not come from some unidentified “code of values.” Our country was meant to be a Christian country founded on Natural Law and Judeo-Christian values, as evidenced by the appeal of the Founding Fathers to “the Supreme Judge of the World,” “Divine Providence,” “our Creator,” and “nature’s God” for “protection” and the “rectitude of our intentions.”
Since Geller is an admirer of Ayn Rand, an avowed atheist, Geller may have been channeling Rand in this statement. And while Rand’s defense of a free market and her notions of makers and takers do have merit, her atheism does not really fit with John Adam’s notion that: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But regardless of where Geller thinks our morality of reason comes from, she is not the first person to point out the moral decay that has been taking place in this country. She is, however, the first to suggest the poo emoticon may be a fitting symbol for America today.
Is Our Nation is Morally Crumbling?
On his Facebook page last year, the Reverend Franklin Graham, said our nation is “morally crumbling within” and that we have, “turned our back on God.” His comment was made in response to criticism former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani had taken over his questioning of Barak Obama’s faith. Giuliani was probably only stating what many in this country have thought. And so too, was Reverend Graham.
In 1838, as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, Abraham Lincoln said in a speech in Springfield IL:
”All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
Lincoln was probably warning against the threat of Civil War as the danger that could “spring up amongst us,” but Lincoln’s words have new meaning today because we are once again in a position to become the “author and finisher” of our own destruction. The new war we are engaged in is a war against the removal of God from the public square and ultimately from all of society. And we do seem to be losing the war.
But if, as Geller states, “the culture is ugly” we can’t place all the blame on moral relativism or the secular progressives. Yes, they have certainly “worked hard to make us miserable,” and Hollywood may now be “a force for evil, degradation, and cultural rape, cloaked in self-righteousness,” and much of today’s music may be “ugly, violent, and misogynistic,” and many television programs today may well be “devoid of humanity and morality. Devoid of goodness,” as Geller says. But that is only part of our problem.
Are We Abandoning Our Christian Culture?
Our country’s culture is made up of much more than its art, music, movies, and television programs, not to mention its choice of emoticons. And it is also more than “the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life” as Ayn Rand wrote. Our country’s culture is first and foremost our belief system and the set of values that we live by.
Our Founding Fathers did not coin the term ‘Judeo-Christian Values’ but only someone determined to rewrite history and further the secular progressive cause would try to argue that God, The Bible, Natural Law, and religion were not important to these men. And this is exactly what Jeff Schweitzer tried to do in an article in the Huffington Post entitled “Founding Fathers: We Are Not a Christian Nation,” which leads with a quotation from 1797 Treaty of Tripoli:
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
The words in the treaty were simply an attempt to assure the Muslims that we held no enmity against them, but Schweitzer, in his zeal to advance secularism attributed the quote directly to John Adams since as President of the United States Adams signed the treaty. Even though it’s highly unlikely Adams had much of a hand in authoring the treaty, HuffPo let the attribution stand.
What HuffPo, secular progressives, and atheists do not want to recognize is that our Judeo-Christian values come from a strong belief in the God of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the 10 Commandments, the moral laws of the Bible, Natural Law, and in Jesus Christ the Son of God and His teachings. Central to this value system are the beliefs that our rights come from God, that strong religious beliefs are central to a just society, that human life is sacred, that marriage is between a man and woman, and that the family is the basis of society. However, there is no question that society today seems to be abandoning these values.
Vote to Fix America
According to a 2014 Pew Poll, nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now think religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010. This is the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. Most people who say religion’s influence is waning agree that this is a bad thing.
But is the Left solely responsible for this or is the GOP equally responsible because they seemingly let the Left have their way? Or are those conservatives who don’t bother voting because the GOP candidate is not conservative enough to suit them somewhat to blame as well?
Only 58% of eligible voters went to the polls in 2012. A better conservative turnout might have meant an end to the reign of the guy currently living in the White House. Romney may not have been best candidate imaginable or ‘conservative enough’ to suit some, but he would certainly have been better than Barack Hussein Obama. As I have said before, a sad but true fact is that all too often voting means choosing the lesser of two evils.
Worse still, in 2014 only 36.4% of the eligible voters in this country took the time to go to the polls – the lowest percentage of voter turnout since WWII. Something is wrong. The word apathetic comes to mind.
Like it or not, for the foreseeable future ours is a two party system. Third party candidates only have shot at local and maybe some state offices. Until this changes and a third party emerges that actually stands a chance in federal elections, the answer to Brian C. Joondeph’s question, “Why Vote Republican?” is simple: Our only choice is the lesser of two evils. Not voting or voting for a third party candidate is not an option.
(Tomorrow: Part II)
10 thoughts on “Has America Turned Its Back on God? Part I”
Join the Novena for Our Nation, pray the Rosary every day for the healing of America. (Check out the website for details.)
Hard to argue with the words of George Washington
“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
According to Gallup, in 1948 91% of Americans identified as Christian. In 2014 it was down to 71%.Even within Christianity we are seeing denominations fall away from traditional teachings. At one point all Christians would speak out against contraception or gay-marriage. Now we have denominations sanctioning those behaviors. I don’t think it is a coincidence that polarization has increased over this time. We are losing a shared sense of what is right and what is wrong.
And . . . .right before the eyes of each signer of the Constitution . . .all patriotic men who had put their lives on the line, . . . .whose many words were debated and amended and changed over the course of months . . .right there as they signed they saw the words that one can still read, and which have not been expunged by any progressive, democrat, atheist, liberal or anyone spouting that their morality of amorality should be enforced instead of Jesus’s morality . . .
“in this year of Our Lord” and
and this was not according to the Hebrew Calendar, the Mohammedan Calendar , or any “Common Era” dating system. Not one of them asked or demanded that these words be removed, not one refused to sign til these words were deleted. Many of them were the same ones who put their lives on the line signing the Declaration that established for all of us for all time that rights come from God, not from government, not from a democrat ruler.
This is “our Lord” is ours, the Lord of us all, not “my” Lord, but the Lord God almighty, Jesus the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Creator of all things visible and invisible, Son of the Father, Son of Mary, who died on the Cross for all of us and also for us all of His own power rose from the dead. Guy McClung, San Antonio, Texas
Well, golly gee wiz, A.D. was a common white European chronological convention….it was no endorsement of God….a common convention of time that people used without giving it a second thought. The single governing document of the U.S. is the Constitution, applicable to every citizen in every state….The Constitution never once mentions God …. not once, excepting the chronological convention A.D. It does mention religion in the first amendment …. ALL religions and not one in particular.
As an educator you should know that the Constitution is one of many governing documents in use in the “United States.” The states that make up our Republic have a broad range of powers while the powers that were granted to the federal government were limited. Take a look at the preambles of the state constitutions. Here are just 3 picked at random —
“WE THE PEOPLE of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.”
“We, the People of the State of Illinois – grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty which He has permitted us to enjoy and seeking His blessing upon our endeavors . . .”
“We, the people of the State of Florida, being grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, in order to secure its benefits, perfect our government, insure domestic tranquility, maintain public order . . . “
I think it is also important that when we look at the Constitution we view it from the point of view of the founders in 1787. The modern notion of Secularism which some want to apply to the Constitution would have been a foreign concept to the founders. There was a general understanding that there was a God and it was from God that our rights originated. The Constitution was setup not to create a secular society but to avoid the creation of a theocracy. It was never the intent to stamp out religion from the public square. Rather, as can be seen from by quote from the founders religion was the basis for morality and the founders clearly believed that democracy would not survive an immoral socioty. Don’t take my word for it – look to the founders!
Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence said. “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be aid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”
James Wilson, Signer of the Constitution; U. S. Supreme Court Justice, “Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine. . . . Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”
George Washington, General of the Revolutionary Army, president of the Constitutional Convention, First President of the United States of America, Father of our nation, ” Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.”
Robert Winthrop, Speaker of the U. S. House, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”
say what you will – each signer was aware of the reference to Jesus, no one demanded it be deleted-so easy to simply say “in this year of” and delete “Our Lord; nor can you deny that the “Our Lord” is Jesus Christ. They could have – but did not – say “Yahweh” or “Allah”.
We will both be dead and gone and Jesus will still be mentioned in our Constitution.
As an educator you should know that the Constitution is one of many governing documents in use in the “United States.” The states that make up our Republic, have a broad range of powers while the powers that were granted to the federal government were limited. Take a look at some of the state constitutions. Here are some preambles from just 3 state constitutions —
“WE THE PEOPLE of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.”
“We, the People of the State of Illinois – grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty which He has permitted us to enjoy and seeking His blessing upon our endeavors . . .”
“We, the people of the State of Florida, being grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, in order to secure its benefits, perfect our government, insure domestic tranquility, maintain public order . . . “
You go Gus! But I hate to say it: the Constitution is almost totally a meanignless document because now it can be changed, denied, amended, and ignored since all you need is 5 “justices” ( did you ever think that name would be the height of irony?) to legislate as they see fit. Nowhere does the Constitution say that a majority of “justices” can create new rights from whole imaginary cloth; or that they can by a simple majority override the will of the people.
You would be very remiss if the major financial scandals with the Vatican bank and decades long
sexual abuse and cover ups wasn’t included as a powerful reason for the ‘abandonment of Christian ‘
values and culture.