There is a lot of judgement about morality in the headlines lately. The 24/7 cable news cycle is obsessed with it. Surprisingly, many of the self-appointed morality police are from the left of the political spectrum this election cycle. This is unusual because hasn’t the position of the progressives been that judging morality is somehow immoral?
Well, it seems, that was their position when the political opposition was preaching morality. Now that they are not, the progressives simply shift their position to the opposite of what it had been. Does that sound confusing. Yes. It is meant to confuse. That is a tactic progressives use to march forward. The ends justify the means.
Those of us that are concerned about what ends we are being marched towards must not be distracted. We must stop looking at the shiny objects held before us that are meant to blur our focus on the larger picture.
What is the larger picture our gaze is being pulled from? The same picture that social planners have been painting for millennia. A picture that you have no input into the design; a picture that you are placed in.
No motive of the social planners will be assigned here. Some have benevolent intentions, some do not. The warning, for those who value individualism and liberty, is that the direction the planners are pushing our society towards is collective in nature. The planners wish to steer lives and plot the course that must be followed.
Some planners want immediate results, while other are patient. The planners that want to accomplish their goal with the least resistance will seek to nudge individuals. A method used to nudge is to change people’s feelings about things.
That is where morality comes into play. What we as a society expect individual behavior to be is essential to how a society functions. If people have a similar judgement of what is right and wrong, society will operate smoother than if there are different judgements about what is right and wrong.
In Chapter One of “LYING AS A WAY OF LIFE: Corruption and Collectivism Come of Age in America”, by Alexandra York, the concept of morality is addressed and the important role it plays in a society. The chapter begins with the definitions from Random House American Dictionary.
Morality: conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct. Also: the Doctrine or system of morals; ethics; duties.
Immorality: immoral quality, character, or conduct; wickedness; vice.
Amorality: neither moral nor immoral. The Oxford English Dictionary is more specific on this definition. Amoral: not within the sphere of moral sense; not to be characterized as either good or bad; nonmoral.
Of the three, amorality poses the greatest danger to America, because if lying cannot be judged right or wrong it can easily be used as it has been by oppressive totalitarian countries, past and present.
Alexis de Tocqueville concluded this about America when he visited to study the new society across the pond, “America is great because she is good, and if America will cease to be good, America will cease to be great.”
We, Americans, must understand that to be good we must have a definition of good. An amoral code where nothing is good and nothing is bad poses the largest risk to our liberty as individuals.
Alexandra York’s book goes into deeper discussion about how our society is being transformed from within and the last chapter offers some possible cures to the cultural ills she has diagnosed. Some she suggests are, stand firm in your moral beliefs, and influence others, not with your passion, but with objective facts and reasoning. Another is, teach your children to be independent in their value system and refuse to cave into others’ persuasions or threats to conform. Some of these remedies sound simple enough, but they must be followed through on to work.
Other actions she suggests are geared more towards political engagement, not only at the national level, but even more importantly at the local level. There are social planners grabbing power at all levels of our government and bureaucracies are growing. There must be checks placed on them.
The book also points to the group-think that has permeated our education system, the arts and entertainment. It provides a brief history of how Marxists infiltrated academia via The Frankfurt School in the 1930s and how its attitudes are present on campuses and embedded in our culture today. Cultural influences have a great impact on societies. We must be aware of that and make contributions to the culture that reflect our values if we want to perpetuate individualism, integrity, honor, personal responsibility, liberty and other values we hold dear.
Don’t give in to hopelessness. Hopelessness is exactly what those who wish to nudge us in their direction wish for. If we do nothing to push back against those who wish to take our liberty, we will certainly lose it. And once liberty is lost, it is not easily won back.
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”.
Tremendous information to help many to understand how much the influence of amorality has permeated today’s America. The threat is there and the cure through Christian teaching is available.
It was the wickedness of mankind in the antediluvian world that brought on the flood as a natural consequence, just
as fears, hatreds, jealousies, and greed of mankind over many years have brought on war.
Author and spiritual leader, Emmet fox
It remains true to this day.
In Art. IV, section 4 of the Constitution, the United States guarantees to every State a Republican Form of Government (a representative soverignity, not pure democracy).
The 10th Amendment says that the powers not delegated to the U. S. government, nor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States or to the people.
Those two provisions alone solidified the concept of “community standards.” When coupled with local elections for local leaders with the democratic process of election of State Reps and National House members, this specified where democracy was to be used to choose leadership.
Throughout the 1940s and 50s, the concept of “juvenile delinquents” branded the bad (amoral/immoral) kids. Standards used in judgement then, were they applied today, might judge all juveniles as delinquent. Standards have been intentionally muddied such that judgement becomes impossible. As our information highway has devolved into a binary of 1s and 0s, we have lost the contrasting binary of good/evil, right/wrong such that the progressive concept of situational ethics reigns supreme whether something should or should not be done, thought, acted upon or otherwise is answered by the instant disclaimer of “it depends.” What it depends upon must be pure whim, since there are no longer standards, neither community nor otherwise.
Binary terms that result in standards and should be retained include: up/down, over/under, good/evil, boy/girl, man/woman,right wrong. About all they have left us is: us/them. right/left, win/lose. We need all of them, and a Republican form of government. Otherwise, all will be lost: no more liberty; no more reason for life. State, town, community and neighborhood standards need be restored. Without standards all resolves into chaos. That’s where this nation–this world is headed unsess we return to our foundation and thereupon begin to rebuild.
Everyone on this website is over 50 and we all know about the Moral Compass called the Bible. Our country was founded on it.
We choose to live either a good or evil in life and that decision was chosen/decided on in our early adulthood.
That decision sets the course of our life until an intervention occurs which a course correction is needed with our conscience. Jesus has given us a free agent status. At the end of your life you, will have to answer for your decision.
During the walk of life we will have opportunities to make it right…or chose death. It’s that simple. It’s done everyday throughout the world.
And all this other stuff called life…gets in the way with good/bad decisions, lying, cheating, and other sinful ways happen for us to decide what to do everyday.
H. Clinton has had 30 years to make her legacy either great/bad or in-between…it’s apparent what path she has chosen. Many who are fooled about her professional life, call it the truth…are blinded.
Hilary knows actually what she has done with calcuation who will eventually pay for it at the end or (sooner.)
Now we as Americans, have a crucial decision to make on NOV 8th and make the change…or stay the course and live out Hilary’s life on the stage of corrupted government. Changes that will affect generations to come and they will ask, ” how did that previous generation make such a bad decision of who should have been in the white house in 2017?
“Amoral: not within the sphere of moral sense”. Means no conscience. Democrats, the ones who want Communism/Socialism in this country and the ones who go along with them, believe the end justifies the means and THAT is amoral in my opinion. Having a conscience is extremely important in us all. Hillary, Bill, Pelosi, Reid & Obama lead the pack. George Soros is pulling the strings and they & the Democrat party dance to his tune. We can not survive another 4 to 8 years under a Democrat administration. VOTE for Trump on Nov 8th.
Well said.
Oh yes indeed, Ham.
Sorry to be late in commending you for your well stated reasoning. It’s so refreshing to know that integrity is not completly dead.
Right and wrong are often not absolutes. For instance, it is always wrong to go and shoot someone for no reason. Is it wrong to shoot them if they are waiving a knife around and telling you they are going to stab you to death? I think not. White lies are generally considered to be OK if the cause is just: IE a very homely person asks if he or she looks good in a certain outfit. Only a real jerk would say something like, “sorry, you’re too ugly to look good in anything”. Even things always legally wrong have some fluidity in the bad-good, wrong-right spectrum. A person stealing a TV while looting is always 100% wrong. A young mother shoplifting food (say after being turned down by agencies a few times) for her child is legally 100% wrong, but perhaps only half wrong ethically. While not every case fits in, situational ethics does play a part in many decisions in humans. While the left is filled with hypocrites about morality, the right is not much better – howling about the evils of others because it does not fit with their interpretation of what is right. They often forget that their bible states, “judge not”.
My Mother once added a layer of conditions to help me decide whether what I wanted or needed was good or bad by asking is it loving or not? To use your own example, a man kills indiscriminately with a gun or knife. Easily appears both wrong and not loving. A man kills the man who has abused his daughter. Not nearly as wrong, though some in America believe that justice will prevail in our courts, and this should be the avenue taken. Loving is the protection of those we love. Good addition to a valid discussion of right-wrong, good-bad.
Your thin veil was lifted exposing your real self in the sentence where you said “their bible…”
Well Diana, it looks like the AMAC censors didn’t like my reply to you, so it was flagged with “Awaiting moderation”. Amazing since I not only agreed with you, but expanded on your views with a number of specific points that laid out how and why certain things are being done. Oh well, so much for free speech at AMAC.
Try again, PaulE. Your take on things is always informational.
Now, to read Diana’s…
Hi Ivan,
Please read my reply to HAM above. Why should I or you or anyone else for that have to repeat themselves when the problem is in the apparent arbitrary way AMAC seems to apply their screening protocols. I could understand if there was cursing or use of offensive language being employed, but neither was the case. It seems the free flow of ideas and information is limited to what is deemed AMAC approved. Whatever that is. I would love to see what the criteria is that they use for designating one’s comments “awaiting moderation”. At least then we would all know what the official criteria is on the subject.
I read it, PaulE. Well stated.
So far as knowing what AMAC expects as to proper content, it’s doubtful that even they know for sure since there seems to be no rhyme nor reason for their “moderation.” It seems to be a more or less ramdom application of “that don’t sound quite right,” or maybe a subtle bias against a certain select few.
Yeah, that is what I think too. The views expressed are either not to their liking or they are randomly flagging comments from a select few.
I see AMAC decided to restore my censored comment now that the weekend is over and no one will read it. Wonderful huh?
Hi PAULE. I think AMAC’s moderating is originally done by a computer looking for certain key words and actual people review it afterwards. We had one where we work monitoring our emails. I had emailed my sons school and the computer held it up! I talked to IT and it was released.
Hi HAM,
I’m sure AMAC has their censoring software setup to “flag” what they consider unacceptable words or phrasing. However, I have to question what words and phrasing they are choosing to plug into their screening algorithm. I used no curse words. I used no offensive language that could be construed as being unacceptable. All I did was compliment Diana on her excellent article and then proceeded to outline some examples of how the left is using this practice of distraction to divert the public’s attention from the larger policy and regulatory issues they are putting in place to achieve their desired goals. That’s it.
So if merely congratulating someone on their very well written article and outlining how Socialists are leveraging the tactic of amorality to distract the general public, while they further undermine the nation’s governmental and societal norms is somehow deemed worthy of censorship, then just what is considered acceptable to AMAC? What is the censoring criteria being employed? Are they simply looking for blind acceptance of whatever AMAC is promoting and nothing more? In that case, even Diana’s own article would be potentially eligible for the dreaded “awaiting moderation” flag, because she outlines how the left uses the policies and politics of amorality as a distraction mechanism to keep the public’s attention away from areas the Socialists are actively transforming as we speak..
Some of us here realize that this sort of intentional distraction of the public, via the shiny ball of amorality and other means, has been an ongoing tactic of the left for decades. However for many here, as you well know, I would imagine they have never connected any of these dots until reading such an article like Diana’s. So I would have thought a bit of further education and clarification on the subject would have been beneficial. I guess not.
Your guess is as good as mine about what words the program is looking for. I too have had comments moderated which had no curse words or any other bad wording. However, I did disagree with AMAC’s article in my comment. Go figure.
I see AMAC has decided to restore my censored comment now that the weekend is over and no one is likely to read it. If you have a chance, please read it and let me know what was so bad it needed to be flagged. Thanks
Where in the H… did that neg vote down entry come from? Looks like someone other than Moderator may have personal animus. Noticed it before on some of our posts, but finally decided to mention it since, unlike some websites, this does not identify whose votes are what. It’s for that reason that I rarely check off one except to sometimes omit a neg vote from some reasonable entry. Know what I mean?
God willing, see y’all next week.
Another excellent article Diana. Yes, the Socialists in the current election cycle are changing their tactics ever so slightly to try and create a distraction away from the numerous illegal and unethical activities of their candidate running for President and their larger, more dangerous plans for moving this country towards the final steps to ensuring we become a socialist nation. We must NOT be distracted.
The Socialists in this country, the so-called Progressives, have always been playing the long game. Leveraging morality or the lack thereof has always been one of the tools employed to undermine the cohesiveness of society and make us more willing, as a country, to accept other more transformative policies leading to their ultimate goal of a Socialist Utopia. Steady, incremental changes to society and the government to push the country further and further left over time. As you know this has been going on for well over a 100 years in this country now. The United States is finally at the point where, with a few more key changes, the Socialists will have achieved their ultimate goal. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. A Hillary victory accompanied by both the Supreme Court and all the federal appeals courts being turned into virtual socialist rubber stamps for the final series of changes needed to complete the process. So they are going to pulling out all the stops in a bid to distract the public from the final few steps needed to achieve their goal.
We have to be smart enough to see past the series of obvious shiny distractions being dangled in front of us, if our country is avoid this well-planned fate. That means this Tuesday is either the start of a long, hard fight to turn the country away from the Socialist (Progressive) course it is on or it marks the day the American people gave up their last chance to do so. If Hillary wins, the vast majority of the American people will be left awe struck by how rapidly the final changes towards socialism are enacted.
I see it as immorality, we make choices every day, they are moral or immoral, let’s go to the Bible and let it be our guide, check out the 10 commandments they won’t lead you astray! We have become a nation that God can’t bless because of immorality plain and simple.turn around people or is it too late for this in God we trust nation?
It’s bad enough that so few of us appreciate values and have good standards, but the Nation that actively turns its back on God can expect the same from Him.
Our current situation couldn’t be described any better. A lot more will be decided this Tuesday than which candidate “wins the election”.
I dare say that the survival of the States in cohesion is at stake. Texas is making a big push for secession, as we no longer have faith in the government to address the people’s concerns. From what I hear, there are 6 more states looking to secede as well.
Courtney, I certainly agree with you. Texas is the only state that legally can leave the union. If our federal government is not willing to follow our constitution then each state should have the right to leave. We can no longer permit what is taking place and the amount of debt this country has. It will only get worse if nothing is done and we will no longer have a country.