Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally
Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.
I just KNOW I will have a problem with this article. "Young Americans" as in ALL "young Americans?" or, far the more likely, as in "Some young Americans."
Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:
Lord help us all if we have to get our analysis of allegedly scientific studies from BOBO - BOOBOO - BOOHOO Brooksie, the twink, the intellectual light weight.
● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”
It will be very interesting to discover just exactly WHAT was asked, by whom, unto whom, where the questions were asked, etc, etc, but, this is the New York Times, and their reporters, expecially their "A list" virtually never even think to ask such questions.
● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all.”
Well, PERHAPS, some of them have been brought up well enough to know HOW TO AVOID confronting a moral dilemma. And perhaps those responses which were not, for whatever reason, deemed to be moral dilemmas (by the powers that be of the study), that does not of necessity make them NOT moral dilemmas. The fighter pilot who bombs civilian populations tends NOT to have a moral dilemma in dropping the bombs; after all, he was only following orders (this defense was deemed not sufficient at the Nurenberg Trials).
● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.”
With each and every one of those interviewed? With a majority? If so, how much of a majority? Were the students polled from junior colleges in typically depressed economic areas, or did they tend to come from more elite colleges and universities?
● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”
Given the a-morality they have been exposed to in video games, TV, etc, this would not seem to be a particularly surprising answer. Recently, President Cheney expressed his dismay at Patrick Fitzgerald's "hounding" of Scooter Libby. Why should a U.S. attorney get all wound up over a government official (probably acting on orders from his superior(s)) to out an NCO CIA agent. Obviously, for Cheney, Fitzgerald lacks the morality. For Fitzgeral, it was Scooter Libby.
● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”
Basically, it sounds as if they are rejecting a "universal morality," and rightly so, for standards of morality have differed at all times, and in all places.
● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” (Emphases mine.)
As in back in the day when the pilot of the Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima - and would do it again today, in a heart beat.
As in, back in the day, when Saint Joe McCarthy was permitted by first democratic and subsequently republican administrations to LIE while making his outlandish charges about communists in hollywood, in the U.S. government, in the U.S. military
As in, back in the day, when Richard M. Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam to try to get their representatives to bend to Nixon's proposals - the art of negotiation by bombing tonnage.
As in, more recently, when DefSec Donald Dumbsfeld told us that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" lie somewhere to the North, the East, the South, the West, the Northwest, etc of Bahgdad.
As in more recently, in the Supreme Court decision which gave corporations the right to lie to their customers about the safety of their products, or, for that matter, anything else.
As in a mere 10 years ago, the elevation of the Enron Corporation to the status of "best run company in the U.S." for several years in succession, all the while the company was cooking its books to show paper profits, and hiding real $ losses.
Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that “studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.
This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.
Or going back a few hundred years to our founding fathers, George Washington's firm moral position on the necessity of killing Native Americans; or the plantation owner's moral certitude as to the correctness of slavery - or the making illegal the teaching of reading and writing to slaves - or of raping female slaves
What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.
FUCKIHNG SEUCLARISM? GOOD GOD IN HEAVEN ABOVE - another fucking ism for us to fear, right along side communism, Islamofascism, etc. Shit for brains, total shit for brains, wether or not he believes one single word her farts .... er types.
The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.
Yes, that is why we have so many television shows about SECULARISM - NCISecularism, The Mentalis(ecularism)t, The David Letterman S(ecularism)how, etc, etc, etc
One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”
The classic straw thing argument. He just breathed life into two quite artificial constructs, mere words - without real meaning - used as short hand to help us map our way through a confusing, harsh world ... SECULARISM is a concept, and as such it can no more do ANYTHING than rot the minds of those who take such words seriously. "MORAL STANDARDS," are another ethereal construct ... there are few (don't shit where you eat, don't get caught stealing; don't get caught lying; don't tax the rich for to do so is to engage in class war upon them - and it is only fair and just that the rich wage class war on us, and that we not even fight them back.
With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.
The death of Judeo-Christian standards? Did I miss a recent headline:
And what does the Lord ask of you, oh man, but that you
Do justice, Love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, and
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as they self.
Such standards are to be seen billions of times daily - just go to the grocery store and see people holding doors open for those with heavy loads, strangers smiling to strangers, old friends talking to each other radiating love of the other, and love of the tradition.
STOP JACKING OFF up there in your high tower or academic haughtiness, and whatever university you went too, have your attorney commence the proceeding to sue them for non-performance in educating you, and malfeasance in fully indoctrinating you.
Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.
They followed their feelings.
So, you gave them a perfectly bogus moral construct, and from THAT your beliefs and opinions are informed? If the fucking dog was drowning, so would be its owner! (Dogs swim pretty damn good too, you fucking retard!)
Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?
Just a bunch of poor people trying to make ends meet, sharing their love and warmth with kindred spirits and family, building up communities, giving unto the poor, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the prisoner, caring for the widows and orphans. Just that; only that and nothing more.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.
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