I find this a proper discussion for an Easter Weekend. . I am no longer religious, but what better time to speak about the Ten Commandments, and foundational principles. Sad that far too many of us think Charleton Heston when we hear Ten Commandments. Sad that I went out to play golf on Good Friday, mom would not have been pleased. Oh well, as I’ll admit later in this column, I am a failed soul.
We’ve had time to sort things out as people, thousands and thousands of years. We have developed known truths that functioning societies adhere to for survival. That individual people cling to for survival. Even modern man with all our technologies, with all of our advancements, with all knowledge now in the very palm of our hands, literally, inside a smart-phone, cannot escape the basic tenets that dictate the proper existence.
God knows here in the Western World we are trying to destroy and ignore these basic rules for life. But there is no ignoring them.
Thousands of years ago mankind codified these rules and they became known as the Ten Commandments. A simple way to communicate known truths of moral behavior that keep the threads of community, the threads of society wedded.
Now of course humans being human we stray. But that doesn’t mean that even those who stray can’t recognize the superior wellbeing for those that decide to embrace the moral path.
Societies that not only follow sets of rules and principles but hold them as foundational to collective success have been successful through the ages. There are tales told throughout history about societies who stray collectively, who lose their moral compass, and decline and ruin follows. Stories of Roman debauchery toward the end of the empire which led to the fall are well documented.
Now I am not necessarily advocating we all need to become Salt Lake City, some religion dominated populace that is homogenous and vapid.
I am saying that successful societies base their existence on foundational principles that are moral, righteous, and that lead to a better existence.
The great divide we have in our society today is that we have those on the Right that want to adhere, or at least aspire to adhere to a set of foundational moral principles, and one on the Left that wants to scrap the antiquated notions found in the Ten Commandments and to create an entire new paradigm, based on a new set of beliefs and principles.
The problem is the replacement “principles” are not based in a sound reality, they are shifting sands not meant for foundation. And this is why we are seeing abject failure take hold.
Take one of the foundational principles the Left believes today.
“Diversity is our Strength”.
The Left has enacted rules and regulations across the board in Federal Government, State Government, and across our entire society to fuel and fulfill this promise that “Diversity is our Strength”. In all hiring diversity must be the first consideration, inclusion of all must be the first metric.
But is diversity our strength?
I’d argue the opposite, what separates you from me does not strengthen our bond, it divides us. The less we become a “melting pot” where we blend the more we separate. The more we don’t get along. I can respect your traditions and differences, but in that I will have my own engrained cultural norms that differ from yours these will keep us apart.
Since as humans we will certainly have some degree of shared experiences and behaviors these will become the points of connection. What we have in common is our strength, not what we have as differences.
Just as two strangers meet and begin to engage in their mutual love of the local baseball team, their passion for golf, their love of seafood, or a shared favorite vacation location, so do people of different cultures come together in the “shared”. They do not come together in the “different”. They do not come together in the diverse. While it is certainly true that we can admire and wish to adopt certain behaviors from other cultures that appeal, those that are different and unappealing will keep us apart.
A society that begins to order themselves based on the foundational principle of “diversity is our strength” is bound to fail. What made America succeed throughout its history was that immigrants blended. Of course each new ethnic culture saw rejection at first, but as they adopted the new blended cultures and left the old world behind, they began to meld cultures together. “Irish need not apply” yielded to an annual celebration of everyone being Irish for a day.
While we did, and still do have a “Little Italy” in some major cities across America, or a “Chinatown” in San Francisco, DC and New York, both cultures have melted into the fabric of American society. Become a part of our blended nation.
To hold too strong to our diversity is to create a Balkanization. A nation of “Little Italy’s” a nation of “Chinatowns”. And that does not create a working society but small enclaves that begin to resent “other”. Who no longer see our shared experience but only the differences. A society of just that, separate but equal, is no longer a society it is nothing more than a collection.
Our government knew early, if states see only their “own”, interests as best served and work only toward their own individual state interest, the nation will fall. E Pluribus Unum, from many one. If we do not stand together we fall separately. Which is why they founded us as The United States, not the Diverse States.
Right now the Left wants to replace what they see as an outmoded set of principles in the Ten Commandments, tied far too strongly to religion for their secular tastes, with an entire new set of guiding principles. Abortion not as murder of the unborn but as a women’s bodily autonomy. Equity, the equal outcome of success as the goal over merit for real and actual achievement. Marriage not as a sacred institution bonding a man and women but as any union that people wish to create, even a throuple. The nuclear family is under full attack from the Left.
Time honored institutions are under attack because the actual Ten Commandments stands in the way of their new world order. They wish to ignore the Ten Commandments completely which brings shame into the equation, so shame itself must be abandoned. Women must now go onto Tik Tok and declare their pride in having had an abortion, in their new paradigm if shame is allowed to exist it will give lie to their premise. So shame must be gone. Only fans is not a poor moral choice for earning a living, get out of here with all that old world “shame”, it is merely an alternative lifestyle choice for a career, no different than being a CPA. Prostitution is becoming legal, or at least is no longer prosecuted in places such as San Francisco. In our new Liberal world order there is no shame in selling your body for cash money.
This is why the first attack on the Left is the Far Religious Right. And I want to emphasize here that I am not a Bible-belter, or a Fundamentalist Christian. I am not some far religious Right person, I haven’t been in a church in some forty years. I am a non-practicing Catholic. I’ve read about the horrors of that particular organized religion, so I’ll take their basic tenets and leave their hypocrisy and fatal flaws behind.
The Christian Right in this country makes the Left feel the shame in their actions. And people do not like to feel shame, especially those who are living a non-moral existence. So the first attack must always be against the religious who adhere to principles.
I didn’t make up the rules of monogamy but adhering to monogamy eliminates STD’s, pares down jealousies, and tends to promote the stabilized family unit that is best for a functioning society. Nature made up the rules. Religion codified them as rules based on these common sense principles. The same holds true for non-natural sex practices.
The Left doesn’t want to hear it but heterosexual monogamy didn’t create Aids. Nature tends to frown upon practices that fall outside of the Ten Commandments, and Biblical teachings. Which makes sense because the Ten Commandments and Biblical teachings are founded on the natural order.
As for myself I claim no moral high ground. I am as failed a human as exists. I will freely admit to my failures. I am lazy beyond measure, embrace vices at times with vigor, and fail to live up to the foundational set of principles as they are universally understood. I am no moral beacon, but I am smart enough to understand. Smart enough to realize that early humans were forced to codify basic best behavior for the good and survival of the species and their societies.
But I will tell you even as I am failing what the foundational principles are, and how they contribute to a better path for humanity collectively.
Right now in the US we aren’t just straying, we are doing a one-eighty. We have a Left that is Hell bent on removing morality from our society completely so they can go freely about their lifestyle choices absent consequence. And they can create a new set of guidelines and rules and regulations that will allow them to thrive under the new system they create, one that now rewards themselves with all spoils.
They are at war with gender, they are emasculating our male youth, they are embracing alternative lifestyles, and attempting to elevate this newfound freedom to the highest and best pursuit.
Ignore a seventy percent unwed birth rate, marriage as it has always been known no longer exists, the traditional family unit is dead, all new forms of union are now superior to the old. Celebrate the rainbow, celebrate single parent families, our new future is here.
The Left doesn’t want to listen but history teaches us that they aren’t just wrong, but one hundred eighty degrees wrong. But they aren’t listening.
Foundational principles are the baby being thrown out with the religion bathwater.
And no society can survive living absent very real, time honored foundational principles.
Correct
The Ten Commandments!! There was one of them that should have given us a clue that this 'god' was NOT the Creator of All!! ;-) Why worry about competition if there WERE no other 'gods'??? The word 'elohim' is plural & should have been translated "gods".....plural!!