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I think a lot of people are in denial of how morality changes and how government/the general public has to keep up with the times. The times, they are a-changin.'
It's interesting that 90+ percent of the people (polled) think that cheating while married is a bad thing.
Then you look at the statistics for how many Americans cheat while married and LOL>
Here's a recent Miss America winner; Yeah, she's 17 in that photo. She's in a bikini, too. Dunno if this is safe for work, since it's a 17 year old girl in a bikini. But if it' safe for PRIME TIME TV, why wouldn't it be safe for WORK? http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Bx0L3n3uA...sascanlan2.jpg
America cracks me up. Do as I say, not as I do. Seriously, if you told someone, "I watched a 17 year old girl pose on stage in a bikini last night." what do you think their reaction would be?
Since when has America not had "do as I say, not as I do"? Please consider, there has been some sort of moral discrepancy in this nation for a long time. The old West, where prostitution took place in many places. People, especially men, have been unfaithful in their marriages since who knows when. Cheating existed in the 1950s, and it exists now. Difference is this. One thing is that women of those days weren't as likely to challenge it. Nowadays it makes up a big part of why the Maury Show exists. Difference between moral discrepancies back then and now is that it is on public display today.
So, you are more comfortable if the baby is murdered in a nice clean clinic? Perhaps you miss the point that many people would not kill their babies if it was not so easy.
I told you I'm not a fan of it. I've never been in the situation, and nor will I be, as I'm married, have been for several years and since we do not plan to have anymore kids, won't have to face that situation. And unfortunately, like drug use, people who are going to get abortions legal or not, are going to do it anyway. It's a tough subject, and one I struggle with, because I really do feel that all life is precious. But I don't want to see us return to barbaric ways where they're performed underground either. I certainly don't think it should be as an excuse for birth control, when there are other options for birth control that exist in the first place. But it is what it is, and I doubt that Roe v Wade will ever be overturned. And if republicans run on issues like this and other social issues, instead of focusing on fiscal responsibility, and reducing the size and spending of the federal government they will not have control for very long, and will not sniff the White House. Do you really want us to swing further left?
We've got veterans living on the streets, committing suicide because of untreated PTSD and VA hospitals telling vets they have to wait for treatment of traumatic brain injuries.
THAT'S moral decay, OP. We send 'em off to war, then don't deal with the aftermath of what we've done.
You're worried about girls in bathing suits? Really?
Moral decay is a complicated topic. I think there are areas we're making significant improvement upon and areas where we aren't. In some cases, they are getting worse while in others they are stagnant.
The ethics of government is getting worse (or at least they're getting caught more) but the attention span of the public (which is decaying much faster than the public's morals) is far more concerned with what Kim Kardashian is doing that what the government is doing to them. Which is unfortunate, but not exactly new. In fact, I'd say that's been around for quite a while. Generally, only small groups care. They might get the word out and gain overall support, but political change happens with a few, never the many. This is not what we're told happens, but I feel most of us are at least partially aware of that reality.
As a whole, I think the moral decay is happening with the state, not the people. However, the people are too easily distracted to fight it. Is that a moral issue? Arguably yes. We care more about ourselves than we do about basically everything else. Far too many place value in material things rather than people or ideals.
However, socially, it's a mix. We're more classist now than we were in the past, but sexism and racism have evolved.
Not sure about moral decline, but I'd definitely vote for a serious intellect decline. I'd like to thank the government, the unionized education establishment, and the growth of the welfare state for that.
We may or may not have gotten more wicked, but we have gotten orders of magnitude less intelligent.
All it takes is to read some of these posts to realize just how far the intellect has declined in the US today.
The public school system is a joke. The government creates ignorant wage slaves and consumers who will do mindless redundant tasks for slave wages and behave or believe whatever their TV tells them.
Of course it helps when the people evolved are of such low moral character they are willing to sell their human dignity and self respect for whatever they can get for free.
There is plenty of moral rot in any age. There were plenty of horrid things in our society in 1924 (that they had 17-year-olds rather than 18-year-olds in bathing suit contests is not one of them.) There are plenty of horrid things now. We're probably not better or worse, we're better in some ways and worse in others.
It's fashionable among some people to point out that respect for parents is much lower than it used to be; I used to gripe about this myself. Then it occurred to me how much villainy and ignorance was being taught by parents back then, and my dissatisfaction with our times lessened.
There's always something to complain about in any society in any era.
Rome had it's orges. That was never the reason for its decline. Might be a nice theme for a fund raising event. We really need to bring back the toga. It might not advance morals but it could boost morale. One mans virtue is another mans vice.
How many married plantation owners had relations with the female and male humans, they owned, their slaves. How many female slaves gave birth to mixed race children? Pillars of the community, eh.
I am far more concerned about the imunity to violence than I am about a goofy 17 year old in a bikini.
Look, that sort of behavior was even more frowned upon in that time. The "puritans" hated slavery with a passion. They felt the institution itself created huge amounts of immorality(for the reasons you mention). Which is why slavery never existed in New England.
Furthermore, slavery only existed because a few elites in Britain thought it would help develop the southern economy for the "British mercantilism" system. Even at slavery's peak, only 6% of the population in the south ever owned a slave. If you include the entire US population, that means only 1.4% of whites owned slaves. Of that 1.4% of Americans who owned slaves, the vast majority were "decent people". All you really have to do is read Uncle Tom's Cabin, or even 12 years a slave, and you'll see countless examples of "good slave-owners", mixed in with all the bad ones that we imagine when we think of slavery.
When we are talking about the percentage of Americans who were effectively the "immoral and evil slave-owners" that you imagine. You are really talking about a tiny fraction of 1%. And the people in America hated those kinds of people.
If you think society in the 1700's and 1800's thought it was moral to be running around raping slaves, or even just having consensual relationships with your slaves, you're just crazy. Society was incredibly opposed to that kind of behavior. And every church denounced it as completely deplorable. Which is why there were so many laws against it.
Thomas Jefferson hid away Sally Hemings and denied repeated allegations of their affair. Such an act would have shamed him completely out of public life. And Sally Hemings wasn't really even "black" like many imagine her. She could have basically passed for a white woman, and supposedly she and her children did pass for white people when they left Monticello.
If you do a google search for Sally Hemings, you'll see a lot of women who look effectively black with curly hair. If we look at the actual records for Sally Hemings, she was near white, and with long straight black hair.
The best point of reference for how easily Sally Hemings cold have passed for white. Look at Vin Diesel, most people think he is Italian. He isn't Italian at all, and he is about as black genetically as Sally Hemings. He doesn't even have that straight of hair(of course, he shaves it off so you don't really notice).
You should really read this article. It really helps to put slavery in a historical context.
Regardless, by and large the people of the past were far more selfless than the people today. What we consider to be "morality", is really a set of behavioral standards which are there to protect people from doing harm to others and doing harm to themselves(which indirectly does harm to others).
The reason why "sex" has always been such an issue from a moral perspective. Has to do with the fact that most people understand that sex is inevitably tied to the structure of society itself. Promiscuous activity can lead to children being born "without a father". For that matter, promiscuous activity can lead fathers away from their families.
To create a stable society without jealousy, violence, and insecurity. You would want a world where one man was with only one woman for their rest of their lives. To "lock them in" to such an arrangement that they would never even contemplate wanting out. And further, you would want to remove most of the temptations which could lead them away.
In a sort of irony, the white Christians who brought slaves to America. Usually justified slavery and colonialism by arguing that "they were bringing morality to these people". They saw the American natives and Africans as being from a culture which was "immoral and violent". That effectively, white Christians would save these people from themselves by converting them to Christians and changing their culture to be more "civilized"(IE British/American).
It isn't significantly different than George Bush invading Iraq to bring them "Democracy". It is the exact same mentality.
Of course the question becomes, is it immoral to invade a totalitarian dictatorship to free the people and bring them democracy? Or is it immoral to leave those people in their own form of slavery, under people like Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un, Josef Stalin, etc?
Regardless, I insist that the people of the past were by and large far more moral than we are. To look at the past, for the most all you need to do is look at the Amish. They are a people "frozen in time". Are the Amish not more moral than us? Why?
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