The Only Way

As nearly aspect of American life continues to tumble into the abyss, I've tried to make use of this blog to suggest root causes and point out the only way out. That only way out of course is a return to Christian principles by the plurality of the country, but I realize that I can't make that argument without preaching to the choir. So instead, I must try to make the point from a practical, commen sense approach to make the point to the current plurality of Americans who can be classified as only marginally Christian or non-Christian.

The lessons I was taught as a child came from my parents, grandparents, and sunday school teachers. It's difficult to find people who still teach or even marginally acknowledge these lessons. That's why we're all spiraling into Hell together here on America's earth.

As children, we were taught to aspire to being faithful, hard-working, caring, strong, honest, and responsible. Our careers were important, but only as the means to provide for our families. Life's priorities were clearly defined: God first and foremost, then family, then neighbors, and down ths list until we got the end of the list, where sits self. The definition of a good man is simple and easy to understand, yet anathema to today's American sensibilities.

The lesson that is now called "hate speech" is that the family is the foundation of a good society, the man is the head of the family, and the extended family gathering together in the Church forms the most important and effective institution for peace and happiness.

A man finds a woman with whom he wants to partner to create a family. They participate together in the sacrament of marriage, where each makes a series of solemn promises to each other, to their extended families and friends, and to God Himself that are binding on both for life.

I've never been to a wedding ceremony where caveats were added to the vows of "better or worse, sickness and health, till death do us part". Nobody has ever said,

"Unless she nags too much"
"Unless he is a slob who leaves his underwear and socks all over the floor"
"Unless somebody cuter and sexier comes along"
"Unless she keeps maxing out the credit card on clothes and shoes"
"Unless he starts neglecting me to hang out with his buddies every night"

or the one that seems to be the favorite these days,

"Unless we just fall out of love".

A man of character takes his promises seriously and doesn't invent rationalizations to get him off the hook if he wearies of his wife.

But today it's even worse than the appalling divorce rate and tragic level of broken and single-parent families. Today men don't even feel a sense of responsibility to care for their own children. Young men pursue the self-centered lifestyle with multiple partners and convince their girlfriends to cohabitate without a marital commitment, then seem to have no compunction over moving onto the next shack-up while leaving his children to be cared for by the State.

Likewise, young women have taken the feminist message to heart that they "can have it all". Who needs a man other than as a sperm donor. Women now who never married live with their four children by four different sperm donors in a State-subsidized home, eating meals bought with food stamps, and getting free taxi rides to the free medical care for her children. Meanwhile the sperm donors are gone and forgotten, and don't know or care about their illegitimate offspring.

Even those in the older generations still living who taught me these principles have succumbed to the culture of "me first". Ask any senior about Social Security and Medicare going bankrupt, and you're likely to get an angry response something like this:

"I worked my whole life and paid into those programs. Now that I'm retired, I've earned my share."

The attitude can at least partly be attributed to the dishonesty of government when they sold those programs originally, gulling our "greatest generation" into beleiving they were contributing to their own retirement with that lifetime of payroll taxes, when in reality their money was simply being siphoned off to pay other benefits and whatever other government programs needed funding at the time.

But it's not just the abandonment of family values at fault. Business and professional leaders have redefined ethics to be how far they can go without getting punished by the government, rather than what's right or wrong. Profit is king, and if destroying the lives of hundreds or thousands of your employees by moving their jobs overseas can contibute another 10 percent to the bottom line, then get it done today!

Our elected representatives in government increasingly seem to be representing those who fund their expensive campaigns with money they use for advertisements designed to fool enough voters with false promises to buy enough votes to keep them in Washington another term. Many high-level elected officials have demonstrated that they would open the gates to barbarian horde invaders if it benefits them personally to do so, yet they somehow manage to mislead enough folks to hang onto their office the next election cycle.

So today we have passed the tipping point, where government dependents have outstripped private wage earners. Those dependents vote, and they vote for the candidates who make the empty promise to keep and increase their gravy train. So men can continue to impregnate as many women as will have them and let the State raise the children, women can get a life of leisure courtesy of the State, and the shrinking population of faithful and responsible families are called evil by the President of the United States as rich, greedy, and uncaring about the poor, only because they oppose massive tax hikes and continued government excess.

There is no politician who can save us, and no man for that matter. There is no solution to our problems short of a major old-fashioned Christian Revival that shakes everyone up and opens their eyes to the truth. Only when men become real men of faith and character again will we begin to solve our problems.

When accepting charity becomes a stigma, not a "right" to get free stuff just because you're poor. When those who accept charity do so with humility and a determination to use it to become independent and someday pay it back or "pay it forward".
When illegitimate children are scandalous, not a feminist ideal.
When charity returns to communities and churches and is designed to help people get on their feet rather than perpetuate dependency.
When the nuclear family once again becomes the rule, not the exception.
When love and sex are no longer confused as meaning the same thing.
When business leaders treat their employees as people to be treated fairly and with respect.
When employees dedicate themselves to providing a fair day's hard work for a fair day's pay.
When medical professionals put healing first and personal profits last.
When patients act on their responsibility to remit fair compensation for their medical treatments.
When legal professionals dedicate themselves to justice, not trolling for deep pockets to sue.

When men put themselves last instead of first.

Cynical Manipulation

So far the ongoing arguments over federal budgeting and debt ceilings have drawn little interest from me. With Dems in control of the presidency and senate and GOP the house, neither can get their way. So both sides instead are choosing to play the issues for votes.

The GOP likes to talk a lot about a balanced budget amendment as the main thing they want to get in return for agreeing to extend the debt ceiling. Not that such a constitutional amendment wouldn't be desirable - of course it would. But there's no way it will happen. From my perspective it's like negotiating with a mugger, saying "you can have my wallet now if you promise never to rob me again". Completely meaningless.

On the other hand, the outrageous rhetoric from the Democrats is led by none other than the President himself, who never seemed to get the memo that American presidents are supposed to be above such extreme partisan demagoguery as threatening to withhold Social Security checks if he doesn't get is way.

Which reportedly led to seniors flooding the phone lines of congressional republicans, scaring the digested and undigested waste from their bowels by demanding they don't let Obama's threat become a reality.

It seems pretty clear at this stage that those ideas popular on the right will simply not happen in this divided government. There won't be a balanced budget amendment, which can only pass the house. Spending won't be cut to levels that allow the debt limit to be held at current levels. Obamacare won't be repealed to help cut its trillion or two from spending projections. Paul Ryan's proposals won't see the light of day in the senate.

All the GOP can hope to accomplish is a modest package of spending cuts with some so-called "tax reform" that closes some loopholes but doesn't increase anybody's rates. And nothing substantial will take place to fix the underlying problem.

The Democrats on the other hand won't get their tax increases on the evil "rich". They can't lean on their favored dishonest definition of spending cuts, which to them is defined as deciding not to increase expenditures quite as much as they hoped.

Something will get done that will turn out to be mostly meaningless. Then the campaign season will kick off in earnest, with each side's message already set:

Democrats will campaign by saying that if you elect the Republican, seniors will lose their social security and medicare, kids won't be able to pay back their student loans, children will starve and catch terrible diseases because the republicans won't let them see a doctor.

Republicans will campaign on the 9.2% unemployment rate, the horrible Obama economy, oppressive government regulation, and a free-spending Democrat party machine that will bankrupt the country and drive us into anarchy while exposing us to a terrorist invasion.

Whether or not the problem is actually solved and the average American's life has a chance to improve instead of decline in the rest of the decade depends on whether there are enough voters who cut through the bull excrement and vote in the person more likely to help solve the problem instead of make it worse.

Which for me means anybody who is not Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Durbin, or their partisan friends. The recent special election in New York, where the false characterization of Ryan's Medicare proposals actually worked to elect the Democrat doesn't seem to bode well.