One looks at the political, social, and moral climate and no matter what end of the political spectrum you fall into, I think we can all say that our society is in shambles. Now a lot of that can be attributed to a variety of sorts, and the two ones i want to talk about today are the fall of organized religion and the attack on freedom of speech.
Our country was founded on that very principle of freedom of belief and expression, and those rights were backed up the latter which is organized religion, whether you are Jewish, Catholic, Methodist, Orthodox Christian, or even atheist. I think we all know that we owe to some degree the cultural advancements of Western civilization to the Catholic Church and Christianity, by extension. The problems with how we socialize with one another is i believe a reflection of the turmoil within our own souls, and we would do well to understand that until we come back to our country's roots in the idea that God created man, rather than that man created God. This course of those assaulting people for saying something that they disagree with will continue.
The bigger argument of free speech has had it's peak on America's College and University Campuses, for example UC Berkeley has been in the news recently, and it's come under fire for refusing to let conservative speakers like Milo Yiannopolous, and Ben Shapiro on it's campuses, which is sad as Berkeley used to be a University known for staunchly defending the 1st amendment almost to the extreme.
Now the complete opposite has happened and we have seen this round of anarchists fire bombing the university just to shut down free speech- and that is not fair to both those who agree or disagree with the speaker in questions political views, as colleges are supposed to challenge and open those pupils up to lines of thought foreign to them and broaden their intellectual horizon. From what i can tell, most of those who have no problem with and don't cry when they hear a differing view have some acknowledgment of their creator, to at least the degree that religion has touched them in some way, the more religious people are the more grounded they are and by extension don't don't shriek like a banshee when you tell them that God says abortion is wrong for example.
The foundation of our society is indeed founded on that deep theological and philosophical heritage that we have lost in the soul of our nation's people.
How one would fix the problems in the nation would take a lot of self restraint for those on both sides, whether agreeing that to disagree, refraining from name calling and even respecting those whose worldview is backed up by their faith, the lack of respect for those with deeply held religious beliefs, by calling those who profess Christ a bigot, this or that, whatever. The religious element also extends to a much larger discussion regarding how a family should look like, and as a proud and practicing Roman Catholic, that family should consist of a mother, father and child, who should, and must, have a moral backbone to it if it hopes to have any success in the real world. The attack on Christ and on freedom of speech, that will be for many who profess the Holy Name of Jesus, is a nightmare that could be coming true.
My end point is that if we as a nation don't come back to realization that when a nation separates itself from the idea and beliefs which it was founded on, then that nation will be like a tree being separated from its roots and will timber to the ground. Only when we as people come to relearn these deep complex realities of who we are as a nation, then we may have some hope of getting back which was lost. if we don't our great nation will resemble something like that of France in 1789, or Russia in 1917, we have a chance to look inward at ourselves and make our lives a little better so by extension we have something to give back to a fallen world to make it better.
