Moral Degeneration Has Consequences - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Moral Degeneration Has Consequences
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If you feel like you’ve seen this movie before, it’s because you have.

Mass shooting followed by partisan finger pointing followed by mass shooting followed by more partisan finger pointing … it’s as if we are stuck in the worst possible Groundhog Day.

The killing of 22 in El Paso, Texas by a racist lunatic and the taking of nine lives in Dayton, Ohio, by a far-left psychopath this past weekend did nothing to buck the trend; perhaps the only thing as predictable as another mass shooting is the petty political bickering that inevitably follows.

From guns to rhetoric to video games, the pundit class has produced a hodgepodge of scapegoats for these acts of cowardice, none of which seem particularly valid or convincing.

After all, crazy knows no singular skin color or political ideology, and the lack of common denominators among mass shooters suggests a more complex diagnosis. It’s a disease rooted, like so many of America’s ills, in the cultural revolution that engulfed the country in the second half of the 20th century.

As the counterculture blossomed and America abandoned many of its conservative ideals, secular philosophies such as mysticism and humanism crept closer to the mainstream. The Abrahamic codes of conduct that once governed society were tossed aside as relics of a bygone, shameful era. If such modes of thinking could justify centuries of slavery and pointless foreign wars, went the thinking, what good were they?

The introduction of different cultural perspectives certainly wasn’t a negative on its face; after all, America’s success is in many ways due to its melting-pot foundation. But an unforeseen side effect would soon surface in the form of moral relativism, or the belief that absolute right and wrong are wholly dependent on one’s cultural perspective. The line between virtue and vice grew blurry, and over time became indiscernible in places.

America’s youth quickly discovered there was a whole ’nother world out there. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll served as the primary instruments of rebellion against a dying conservative class.

This phenomenon, which began primarily on college campuses, slowly worked its way into nearly every facet of American society: social work, the legal system, psychology, you name it, absolutes were for zealots. Shades of gray were the new rage, and soon the notion of individual responsibility seemed as antiquated as church on Sunday.

Murderers, rapists, and every other imaginable criminal were suddenly not guilty of anything. Rather it was society, which thrust upon the accused the plagues of imperfect childhoods, addiction, and mental illness, that bore the blame for every legal and ethical transgression.

In a matter of years America would morph from a nation defined by individualism to one in which an individual was merely the product of his or her surroundings.

Leniency in the justice system was followed by domestic leniency. Spanking, particularly in schools, became taboo (while no one really knows, I doubt very seriously if any of these mass shooters were regularly disciplined in any way).

And as technology infiltrated every aspect of our existence, it grossly consumed the lives of many of America’s children. The net effect has been a massive failure of socialization; youth sports participation and teen employment are both in decline.

Young people have instead chosen to retreat online, where they encounter the most radical ideologies at the most vulnerable ages. A failure to socialize inevitably leads to a failure to empathize.

Political correctness, a nasty and potent byproduct of moral relativism, has made it difficult, even criminal, for kids to express themselves. Meanwhile they are indoctrinated to believe that the different cultures and norms of the world are equal, when they can plainly see otherwise, and are told that masculinity is inherently evil.

This is a confused and coddled generation with no direction, no purpose, no ethical or philosophical lighthouse, just a wasteland of online radicalism where they must fend for themselves.

And we wonder why some choose to act out in the most violent way possible? We have stripped them of their moral path and sown in them the absurd and dangerous idea that they are not responsible for their own actions. Where there are no absolute truths, there are no absolute wrongdoings, either.

Our recent chaos isn’t about rhetoric, or white supremacy, or any of that. It’s about secular society removing the moral compass from the lives of children.

While we must remain adamant that the only person to blame for a mass shooting is the person pulling the trigger, the Left’s defense that society is at least somewhat to blame may have finally found solid footing. What a hopeless existence, in which there are no correct answers and you are falsely led to believe you have little, if any, control over your own actions.

So I ask those of you who led, or enabled, this societal transformation: Just what in the hell did you think would happen?

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