Are We Creating a Culture of Moral Misfits?

Trying to make sense out of the senseless atrocity in Newtown, CT seems so futile at times. But this is the operative question that seems to come out of all events like this one or some derivative thereof:
"Are we creating a culture or moral misfits?"



from godfatherpolitics.com
Are We Creating a Culture of Moral Misfits?:

Our nation has a deep moral problem brought on by a belligerent secular worldview. And it’s not just religious people who have seen its impact. Yale Law Professor Arthur Allen Leff (1935–1981) put it this way:

“We are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment that there is somewhere to get) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist’s words, there is no one like unto the Lord. . . . The so-called death of God turns out not to have been His funeral; it also seems to have affected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon final authoritative, extrasystemic premises.”

 Put more simply, with God out of the picture, “everything is up for grabs.”[1]

'via Blog this'



This is the best response I could find and it flows out of the lessons we did not learn from Columbine and the testimony of the father of Rachel Scott, one of the students killed at Columbine.

Darrel Scott's speech to Congress:
http://www.americaspartynews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3621

On that day, many students and teachers and administrators found themselves in gross violation of the Law of the Land handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1962 -- one of many atrocities committed by this body -- and that is to remove prayer from the public schools.

I guarantee you on that day in 1999 at Columbine there were many who violated the law and asked for God's help openly and vainly. And I guarantee there were many in Newtown, CT who prayed in vain for help to a God they do not know very well and would not recognize if they met Him. They may as well have been praying to Santa or the Easter Bunny.

We have done of great job of bringing about The Naked Public Square (1984) that then-Lutheran pastor Richard John Niehaus warned us about (Niehaus subsequently became a Catholic priest in 1991).

(as an aside Niehaus was also on the correct side of the abortion (right to life) issue as well, standing in direct contrast to Chicago Cardinal (Chicago Values Suck) Bernadin when he compared the pro-life struggle to the civil rights movement of the 60's.)

It was a mistake to isolate abortion "from other issues of the sacredness of life" and to allow politicians to hide behind the skirt of the "seamless garment" argument provided to Catholic politicians by Bernadin. 

According to writer Joseph Sobran, "the seamless garment has turned out to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical Catholic politicians. If anything", he adds, "it has actually made it easier for them than for non-Catholics to give their effective support to legalized abortion—that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and unprincipled about the very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand consistency and principle".^[11][12]

Regarding the Church's position on the death penalty, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in 2004 that Catholics could have a legitimate diversity of opinions on the matter, but not on abortion or euthanasia.^[13]) 

from wikipedia.org:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Allen_Leff

Arthur Allen Leff (1935–1981) was a professor of law at Yale Law School who is best known for a series of articles examining whether there is such a thing as a normative law or morality. Leff answers this question in the negative and follows the consequences to their logical conclusions.

In these works Leff attempts to directly address whether a normative morality can exist without God. [2] Leff answers the question in the negative. Leff states that absent an ultimate authority figure (i.e. God) handing down moral laws from on-high there is no reason for any person to prefer one set of behavior identified as "moral" to another. Leff terms this "the Grand Sez Who." In particular, it is impossible to resolve the conflict between the rights of the individual and the power of the collective, even though much of the time we can pretend that, for instance, the Constitution tells us where to draw the line. There are bound to be cases where we are left on our own, with no authoritative referee; there is no "brooding omnipresence in the sky", in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., whom Leff quotes approvingly.

 Leff was an agnostic but his writings have been influential on Christian discussions of morality in the modern Era. Phillip E. Johnson has suggested that Leff's work is really a critique of the God is dead argument. [3] Johnson argues that the presence of evil in the world is evidence that there is an absolute morality which requires an absolute authority. Other Christian scholars have also applied Leff's critique to secular arguments for a normative morality. [4]

Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law, 1979 Duke L.J. 1229 (1979)
http://inklingz.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/unspeakable-ethics-unnatural-law-duke-law-journal3.pdf

Leff states as follows in the closing of UE, UL:

All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why any thing should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless:

Napalming babies is bad.

Starving the poor is wicked.

Buying and selling each other is depraved.

Those who stood up and died resisting Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot —and General Custer too— have earned salvation.

Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.

There is in the world such a thing as evil.

[All together now:] Sez who?

God help us.

.

Basically, there seems to be two types of responses around the water cooler to events like this. There are those who respond "I don't understand how this type of thing could happen..." and those who respond "I not only understand why it happens, I'm only glad it doesn't happen more...". On one side are the secular progressives who worship at the shrine of moral relativism. On the other side are the evangelical conservatives and the religious understand moral absolutism even if they don't practice it to perfection in their own lives.

When we live in a country whose laws (morality) do not respect life much at the beginning or late stages, why do we even question why nobody has much respect for the lives (the ultimate human right -- life) of others during the middle or so-called productive stages?

I won't even discuss some of the immoral institutions (most reside in or are glorified by HOLLYWOOD) that totally disrespect the lives and dignity of human beings in the middle stages of life. So we do pretty much of a good job of shitting on the lives and dignity of life throughout all of its stages.

And then we wonder why incidents like Newtown and Columbine are prevalent in our society, in our culture? And we consistently point fingers in all the wrong directions. We are very well practiced at doing the wrong thing and instead of admitting our mistake and changing course -- we just continue down the same lost course, only faster and harder. The Lost Pilot Effect. (“Lost pilot” effect: If the correct strategy is not known or applicable, people will just do “more” of the wrong thing.)

for a more secular explanation of why we are where we are (LOST):
http://teaching.p-design.ch/mdm07/presentations/managerial_decision_making07_13_Retrospection.pdf

C'mon man. We can do better than this. We're smarter than this.

Unfortunately, for now my response to the question "Are we creating a culture of moral misfits?" is an unqualified "Yes!!"

We have become Amoral Nation. That slippery slope is a real SOB!

Free Speech vs Common Sense - SportsLetter

Here goes that slippery slope thing again. And I hear it's such a fallacy (see below), but on the one hand we tolerate the abhorent behavior in the first example demonstrated below and yet the second one is somehow just so intolerable. To a teeny - tiny minoity. Call it the Tyranny of the Minority, the Naked Public Square, the Slippery Slope -- you can call it whatever you want.

What is it going to take to figure out:
--  something is clearly wrong
-- something is just not working out the way we were told
-- we might need to change course before we get really, really lost?

What is it going to take?

from Sports Letter Blog:
Free Speech vs Common Sense - SportsLetter:

"Free Speech vs Common Sense"

A girls high school basketball coach in Matteson, Illinois, resigned as coach after the contents of his "graphic" self-published, self-help book on sex, women and empowerment resulted in him being placed on paid administrative leave from his job as a school guidance counselor pending an investigation.

Some of the "racier" details of Rich Central High School girls varsity basketball coach Bryan Craig's book, "It's Her Fault," were published online Friday by The SouthtownStar.  According to the article, the point of the book "was to give women a 'road map to having the upper hand in a relationship with a man.'"

The SouthtownStar quoted from Craig's book:

“I coach girls basketball, work in an office where I am the only male counselor, and am responsible for roughly 425 high school students a year, about half of whom are females,” Craig wrote. “Suffice it to say, I have spent a considerable amount of time around, and with, the fairer sex.”"

and

“The easiest kill for a man is through the young lady with low self-esteem,” Craig wrote in the book. “Of course some will feel this is taking advantage, and yes it is. The ultimate goal for a man is to do all he can to eventually be able to commit and submit to a woman’s power.”And from the Chicago Sun-Times:

“In some cases, strippers and dancers show the overall dominance a woman can have over a man,” Craig wrote. “Not to say that stripping is what has to be done to truly establish dominance, but these women’s mind set is in the right place in order to meet the true potential of the point of this book.”According to SouthtownStar Rich Township High School District 227 Supt. Donna Simpson had known about the book and its contents for nearly a week but had said that Craig “has his constitutional right to free speech.”

From the Sun-Times:

“Please don’t tell me anymore,” said Rich Township High School District 227 School Board President Betty Owens when told of the book’s racy details by the SouthtownStar ...“It’s distasteful, it’s inappropriate, and it wouldn’t be on my list of things to read,” Owens said.The district now is "investigating" the 44-page book, available on Amazon.  We wonder if the district will buy each board member a copy.

'via Blog this'

Kountze cheerleaders told no Bible verses on signs

from ABC Local:

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/state&id=8817786

On one side is the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison, Wis.-based nonprofit that challenges any religion in public schools.

"I've never heard of this kind of school problem, this kind of a violation at a public school where students would be expected to run through Bible verses to play football," said the foundation's president, Annie Laurie Gaylor. "It's a new and creative way to work religion into our public schools."

On the other side is the Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based nonprofit law firm that says on its website it is dedicated to "restoring religious liberty across America."

"It's an important and fundamental freedom students have to engage in free speech," said Mike Johnson, senior counsel for the institute. "They are not asking anyone to believe in Christianity or accept the faith. They are just well wishes."

But Tanner Hunt, attorney for the Kountze Independent School District, believes a Supreme Court decision in 2000 that barred prayer at the start of a high school football game sets the precedent.

"This is pretty much a white horse case," Hunt said. "The answer was clear: they must cease and desist."

Logical Fallacy: Slippery Slope

 http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html

Form:

If A happens, then by a gradual series of small steps through B, C,…, X, Y, eventually Z will happen, too.
Z should not happen.
Therefore, A should not happen, either.

Example:

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After [a]while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

Source: Clarence Darrow, The Scopes Trial, Day 2

Analysis

This type is based upon the claim that a controversial type of action will lead inevitably to some admittedly bad type of action. It is the slide from A to Z via the intermediate steps B through Y that is the "slope", and the smallness of each step that makes it "slippery".

This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious, but the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z, and directly proportional to the causal strength of the connections between adjacent steps. If there are many intervening steps, and the causal connections between them are weak, or even unknown, then the resulting argument will be very weak, if not downright fallacious.

High school lineman in South Carolina collapses after tackle, dies - ESPNHS

When you see this event and these quotes from last week....

http://slavieboy.blogspot.com/2012/09/50-years-of-prayer-stopped-after-school.html

"The principal of Haralson County High School, Topher Byrnes, had similar sentiments as Frank.

 "From a personal standpoint, I understand the importance of prayer," Byrnes said."From a professional standpoint, I understand the importance of keeping church and state separate."

and then this event and these quotes this week...

High school lineman in South Carolina collapses after tackle, dies - ESPNHS:

"The mayor, who ordered flags be flown at half-mast, urged residents "to take a moment and ask God to be with this family, to help them find peace in this chaos, and to help this team deal with the grief and shock of losing a brother."

'via Blog this'

....you have to wonder what it will take to open the eyes of those who promote a Hobbesian vision of the naked public square versus those who promote a more Burkeian vision of society and how we are to live with each other.

The mayor in the second instance had better hope that the God of the Universe he worships won't stop to ask how come the folks couldn't ask for his presence and help before the game and yet they don't hesitate to come to Him only after tragedy strikes. We wouldn't  think too highly of a friend if they treated us in that manner. But I guess we feel like God will forgive us for treating Him like that. We better hope he does, right?

The Naked Public Square can be a real SOB. Be careful what you wish for.

http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/a-strange-new-regime-the-naked-public-square

Thus does the Court reinforce the Hobbesian idea that we are a society of strangers, perhaps of enemies, and it is the chief business of the state to prevent others from interfering with or obliging the Sovereign Self. The result is the atomistic and potentially totalitarian doctrine that society is composed of only two actors, the state and the solitary individual. This is a "civic" religion in the sense of being sponsored by the state, but it is hardly civic in character and consequence.

It is in fact the undoing of the civitas, of the "civil society" of myriad persons, associations, and communities of moral tradition interacting within the bond of civility and mutual respect. The description of the self, of community, and of ultimate meaning that is espoused by the Court is incompatible with Christian and Jewish teaching and, I am confident, with the belief and experience of most Americans. It is, in effect although not in name, another religion. It is in fact the Supreme Court's definition of the "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." It is, according to the Court, the national creed established by the Constitution.

But if that is the choice people are making, let them understand the ramifications and see the consequences of
the choices, a look into the future so to speak.

Because this is a real slippery slope we traversing, and once we travel down the slope -- slippery slopes being what they are -- it will be very difficult, if not impossible to get back to where we once were.

Campaign 2012: Burke vs. Hobbes?

September 5, 2012

George Weigel

 http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/09/campaign-2012-burke-vs-hobbes

You likely think, gentle reader, that the 2012 presidential race is a contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. That, of course, is true, insofar as the names on our Nov. 6 ballots go. But the 2012 race for the White House is something more, something more profound—something with deeper historical roots in modernity’s wrestling with political power and how that power contributes to the common good. 

This is a contest, to take symbolic reference points, between Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797). 

Both were British subjects. Both had a profound impact on modern political theory. Both knew that religion and politics—Church and state—had been thickly interwoven into the history of the West, although here the deep differences between these two paradigmatic figures begin to sharpen: Hobbes tried to drive religious conviction out of the modern public square, while Burke fashioned a vision of political modernity that drew in part on the rich social pluralism of the Catholic Middle Ages. 

In a Hobbesian world, the only actors of consequence are the state and the individual. In a Burkean world, the institutions of civil society—family, religious congregation, voluntary association, business, trade union and so forth—“mediate” between the individual and the state, and the just state takes care to provide an appropriate legal framework in which those civil-society institutions can flourish. 

In a Hobbesian world, the state—“Leviathan,” in the title of Hobbes’s most famous and influential work—monopolizes power for the sake of protecting individuals from the vicissitudes of a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In a Burkean world, civil society provides a thick layer of mediation—protection, if you will—that cushions the interactions between individuals and life’s challenges. 

A Hobbesian world is a world of contracts and legal relationships, period. A Burkean world is a world in which there are both contracts—the rule of law—and covenants: those more subtly textured human associations (beginning with marriage) by which men and women form bonds of affection, allegiance, and mutual responsibility. 

Catholic political theorists have always had major difficulties with Hobbes, and not simply for his promotion of what we would call, today, the “naked public square”: a public space shorn of religious conviction. Hobbes’s vision of the state is far too cold for the social sensibilities of Catholics, who habitually think of society as organic, not artificial or contrived.

By contrast, Burke’s defense of society’s “small platoons” has numerous affinities with Catholic social doctrine, from Leo XIII through Benedict XVI. John Paul II, for example, was particularly forceful in his defense of the mediating institutions of civil society, describing them in the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus as schools of freedom: those natural human associations, beginning with the family, where beautiful, willful little tyrants (which is a precise description of every 2-year-old ever born) are transformed into the kind of civil, tolerant adult citizens who can participate in public life through their minds, not just their muscles. 

No American presidential candidate is going to run on an explicitly Hobbesian platform. And the complexities of life in a post-modern world are such that a purely Burkean republic is unlikely anytime soon. The issue here is one of tendencies, orientations, visions of possibility. And at that level, 2012 really is shaping up as a contest between “Hobbes” and “Burke.”

Be careful what you wish for. And choose wisely. Sometimes you just cannot un-ring the bell.