'What's happened to America?' The ultimate answer
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Posted: June 1, 1999
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Reb Bradley
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
What is wrong with American society? Thirteen people died and 16 were wounded at Columbine High School, because two teenagers were in the mood for some killing. Then, a month later, in Conyers, Ga., a student came to school one morning and shot six of his fellow students before being subdued. Both of these incidents occurred a little more than a year following the incident at a West Paducah, Ky., school, when a student arrived at campus and opened fire on a student prayer group. What's happened to America?
Some say these senseless killings are a result of too much violent TV and music. Others say that weak gun laws are responsible. Still others think it is the absence of after-school programs. Societal trends, however, suggest that these gruesome crimes are merely symptomatic of an already escalating crime rate.
The crime rate is at an all-time high. According to a crime study from the Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, in the last 30 years the murder rate has increased more than 100 percent; violent crimes have risen 332 percent; and illegal drug use among youths age 12 to 25 has risen more than 400 percent. What's happened to America?
While crime is increasing, stability of family relationships is on a downward spiral. On a national average, marriages are now dissolving at nearly a 50 percent rate of divorce. The "generation gap" identified in the '60s has continued to widen. Now adolescents are not only alienated from their parents, but they sue them for "emancipation." And in one well-known case, a man who had been born with a birth defect, sued his parents for not aborting him. What's worse, the American masses are not shocked by such social disintegration, but their love for sleaze talk-shows reveals that they find it entertaining. What's happened to America?
Students are killing their classmates, crime is up, families are falling apart, and academically, student success is at an all-time low. Since 1963 SAT scores have been dropping steadily, from an average score of "980" in 1963 down to a score of "901" more recently. In public schools, where teachers a generation ago reported the greatest challenges to be "talking in class" and "chewing gum," now violence, drugs, and sexual assault top the list. The disciplined, orderly classroom, providing the optimum learning environment, is a thing of the past. Students no longer typically regard teachers with respect or honor, nor take as seriously the education teachers try to give. What's happened to America?
Sexually, we have become a nation ruled by its passions. In the last few decades premarital and extra-marital sexual activity has increased markedly. Graphic pornography, once available only on the black market, and popular only with the "lower elements of society," can now be found in corner video stores and reputable hotels, and is enjoyed as entertainment by the masses. In just the last generation, the number of teenage girls that have become sexually active has increased from 12 percent in 1955 to 70 percent now. This increase in premarital and extramarital sexual activity has produced a significant increase in STDs, including the spread of the deadly AIDS virus. And our nation's premier role model for children, our president, although exposed for his brazen lechery and deceit, still receives a high approval rating from the American people. What we once considered outrageous or perverse is now "normal" and even admirable. What's happened to America?
What is the cause of our society's condition? Are we in severe moral decline because of poverty? If so, will society be cured if everyone has money? Is it education? If so, will morality return if our schools do a better job? Is the problem entertainment? If so, will we reduce violence if we limit everyone's access to violent TV, videos, and music? Is it a lack of after-school programs, which, if funded, will restore order to our world?
A society is not an entity in itself with a collective mind -- it is simply a reflection of the individuals which comprise it. Societies, therefore, do not fall -- the individuals in them do. Consequently, the problem and its cure go back to the individuals in a society. To solve a society's moral problems, the individuals who comprise it must be cured.
The simple truth is that the individuals who contribute to America's present moral decadence are lacking a specific virtue. They are deficit a certain character quality necessary to maintain a civilized society. What is wrong with individuals in America is they are deficit the key ingredient of maturity: self-control. Any society which is out of control is obviously comprised of individuals who lack self-control. We as a nation have moral problems today, because our individual members do not have the ability to adequately restrain themselves.
Can it be that simple? Yes. In modern America most individuals are ruled by their passions -- they lack self-restraint -- they cannot say "no" to themselves. If they had the virtue of self-control, they and the society they comprise, would not be so "out of control."
When they are angry, they give vent to their anger and lash out in violent actions or words. When they lust, they gobble up pornography like candy and pursue those they lust after, with no thought to wedding vows or little thought to risk. When they covet, they steal to obtain or they cheat to achieve. When they need an escape from stress they drink, inhale, or pop a pill to numb the pain. When it's to their advantage, they have little regard for integrity, but lie, mislead, or break a promise. The addiction to personal gratification rules the individuals who comprise America. The land of the "free" has become inhabited by slaves.
A few decades ago people were just as human as we are in this decade. Like us, they were angry, they lusted, they coveted, and they drowned their grief by one means or another. But in one important way, they were obviously different from us -- they had greater self-control. Because they were more self-restraining, they didn't allow themselves to be ruled by their anger, hence the murder rate was markedly less. They lusted, but they had greater sexual self-restraint, so had sexual contact with fewer people, and contracted fewer STDs. They coveted other people's money and possessions, but they had the ability to not act on their covetousness, hence fewer were compelled to steal. In the last 40 years we have lost the virtue of self-control. No longer is our society dominated by individuals who can govern themselves.
Interestingly enough, our founding fathers told us that America's success would require that its members be self-governing. Samuel Adams, on Oct. 4, 1790, said that without "the art of self-government ... they never can act a wise part in the government of societies." When a society is comprised of individuals with self-control, fewer laws and regulations are needed, police have less to do, doors need not be locked, and lost items are routinely returned to the owners. In that society, a man's word is his bond and a handshake solemnizes a promise. A society whose people are temperate is one which can remain free, but one in which the people lack temperance is one which requires more laws and greater governmental controls.
The question is not -- how did we as a society lose self-control, but rather, how did we as individuals fail to gain what our predecessors obviously had? Self-control is not learned in school. It is not a byproduct of getting older. It is certainly not learned from childhood peers.
Self-control is a deep-rooted character trait trained into us by our parents in the first few years of life.
The true cause of America's decline is that most modern parents were not raised to value self-control as a virtue -- so few have trained their children to have it. They may have trained their children to respect the rain forest or to use condoms when their sex drive rules them, but they have not given them the virtue they need most of all -- that society needs most of all.
If society is to be turned around, it is to be done not by government programs, not by gun legislation, and not by better-funded public schools. If society is to be turned around, it is parents who must do it -- they must teach their children to have self-restraint.
A child who learns self-control does not habitually hit his brothers and sisters when he wants his way, and does not grow up to lie, cheat, steal, murder, or violate his wedding vows. He may feel like sassing his parents, his teachers, or his boss, but he is able to control himself and speak with respect. He may feel like making an obscene gesture at the driver who cut him off, but he is able to restrain himself and not escalate a conflict. He may feel like shooting his classmates, but he is able to not do it. He has passions and all natural drives, but he isn't ruled by them. Because his passions are not calling the shots in his life, he has discretion and is free to make wise decisions. Because his craving for pleasure does not rule him, he is faithful and reliable in duties. Because he is not a slave to self-gratification, he has little to cover up with lies.
As parents we have our children at home during the most influential years of their lives, and we are the ones with the opportunity to do the training. We must stop elevating "self-expression" and "self-actualization" and seek to teach our children self-denial. Life does not give us everything we want, so we must teach our children early that they cannot have everything they want. One day their boss won't view them as the center of the universe, so we must be careful now of accidentally sending them the message that the world revolves around them. Our country may be a democracy, but few employers will offer them a vote, therefore we must teach them to submit to authority while they are young.
Self-control is learned in small children by having to say "no" to themselves and "yes" to their parents. We therefore, must offer our children strong leadership for the first few years of their life, giving them little say in the decisions we make for them. They must not be included as a part of the parental leadership team, not only because they must learn the self-denial which comes from following parental leadership, but because psychologically, their small shoulders can't handle the stress of running the home. Children, once relieved of such duties may be angry at first, but soon become secure and happy.
Those children who are raised to think they should have a say in all decisions which affect them, grow up self-centered, demanding, impatient, and ungrateful. They are so absorbed with what is best for them and not others that they are often discontent, critical, and prone to complaining and bickering. And as a side effect of treating children like peers and asserting weak authority, modern American parents lack the respect received by parents of prior generations. In fact, our children grow up despising the ones best suited to train them. And these children are generally not happy, often making those around them miserable along the way. The pursuit of their own personal happiness becomes a stress-producing obsession.
The bottom line is that children gain inner controls by having to submit to outer controls. If parents establish firm behavioral boundaries for their toddlers, never offer a reason why they should obey, and limit their personal choices, by the time these children are 4 years old they will have learned self-denial and be well on the path to self-control. A self-governed 4-year-old has accepted his parents' authority to be parents, and is in the optimum mindset to begin hearing the wise reasons behind Mommy and Daddy's directives. If we offer our children reasons to obey before they have learned to obey without them, they will not learn the self-denial, which is the foundation for self-control. A child who has learned self-denial is one who knows he can survive quite well without getting his way. He has learned that his happiness need not depend on having his way in life.
The problem for most American parents is that our children intimidate us, so we are afraid to establish the outer control necessary to train them. We are unlike parents in past generations who did not need their kids to like them. They knew that life was hard, and in an effort to prepare their children for life, didn't tolerate whining or complaining. Somehow, America has raised a crop of insecure parents who fear their children's rejection. We are afraid to let our kids cry. We fear making them mad. And we dread the thought that they will hate us. We therefore do all we can to make them happy, whether that means buying them all the toys we can afford, letting them complain ungratefully about what we have given them for dinner, or never requiring them to wait patiently for our attention. Perhaps it even means we cut the bread crusts from their sandwiches -- to be sure, they will have to face the bread crusts in life eventually.
When we fear their anger and base our decisions on what makes them happy, they grow to have an exalted view of their own importance in the home and come to believe that it is their right to have their way in or out of the home. When we make decisions based on their unhappiness or anger, we reward them for their insubordination and reinforce their self-centeredness. We accidentally send them the message that we are the servant and they are the master. And when a servant occasionally attempts to assert authority over the master, is it any wonder that the master responds with indignance at such audacity?
Effectively, it is children, not the parents who run the homes in America. The Duke of Windsor described it well. When asked what impressed him most in America, he said, "the way American parents obey their children."
What happens to self-absorbed, undisciplined children when they are sent off to school? They do not learn well. Is it any shock that they fail to rise to the academic level of students a generation ago? Academic learning is a discipline which requires a measure of self-discipline in the student. Should we expect teachers to succeed in teaching when the children we send them lack the self-discipline necessary for learning? For many teachers today, the struggle to maintain classroom order is as great as their struggle to teach. Even worse, many teachers become like intimidated parents and fear upsetting or alienating their students, so they lower classroom standards according to the reactions or mood of the students. Poorly trained children today run their homes, then their schools, and ultimately their country.
Until parents get the vision for teaching their children to be self-controlled, America will continue its downward slide into the moral cesspool. What is particularly frightening about America's path isn't just that the land will be more and more dangerous to live in, but that the loss of moral fiber is historically symptomatic of a society which is nearing its end.
As discovered by the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin, famous for his study of world civilizations, the society which becomes ruled by its passions loses the moral fiber necessary to maintain civility. Studying the decline and fall of nearly 100 world empires, Unwin found that it was the loss of self-restraint, culminating in unlimited sexual expression, which precipitated each nation's demise. Either the individuals in those societies became personally ruled by their passions, resulting in lawlessness and social chaos, or in their self-absorption they lost the moral fiber necessary to successfully protect themselves militarily. America on both fronts has great reason for concern.
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Reb Bradley, father of six, is a pastor, writer, and conference speaker, addressing issues related to parenting, marriage, and family life. He is best known for his book, "Child Training Tips: What I Wish I Knew When My Children Were Young," available at select bookstores, through his web site, or by calling 800-545-1729.
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