Moral Decay of today’s Marxist educated America

Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally

Article by Dennis Prager, from Tuesday, September 20, 2011

 

“Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks’ summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.”)

“Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing …

“When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all …

“Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner …

“The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste …

“As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong …

“Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.”

Ever since I attended college, I have been convinced that either “studies” confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented with study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.

This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left believe this only when a writer at a major liberal newspaper cites an “eminent sociologist.”

What is disconcerting about Brooks’ piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend — namely, secularism.

The intellectual class and the left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”

With the death of Judeo-Christian-God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide.

And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.

Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.

They followed their feelings.

Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?”

Dictatorship of the Marxist Judges Calling Prop 8 Unconstitutional

ONE  LEFTIST GAY JUDGE, VAUGHN WALKER,  SABOTAGED  THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA WHO DEFINED  MARRIAGE AS BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE.    

Following the above Gay Annoucement, Judge Vaughn Walker admitted that he was gay and announced his retirement from the bench.    Wikipedia reports: 

“On September 29, 2010, Walker announced he would retire at the end of 2010 and return to private practice.^[4] He retired at the end of February 2011. On April 6, 2011, Walker told reporters that he is gay and has been in a relationship with a male doctor for about ten years.^[5] He was the first known gay person to serve as a United States federal judge,^[6] though he did not publicly confirm his sexual orientation until after retiring from the federal bench.^[7]“

 

U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals Bigotry against the American Family

“Shaky Grounds for Prop. 8 Ruling”

By Debra Saunders    at the San Francisco Chronicle:

Two of three judges on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. Judge Stephen Reinhardt stipulated that the ruling skirted the larger issue of whether same-sex couples have a right to marry. That’s a shame, because at least an equal-right-to-marry claim makes for a clean argument.

Reinhardt praised himself for overturning Prop. 8 on “the narrowest ground.” It is also on the shakiest ground. The narrow ruling is based on the fiction that Prop. 8 eliminated a right without a legitimate reason. Prop. 8 was born of “animosity toward the class of persons affected,” he wrote.

The worst part is that if it were not for political shenanigans and judicial activism, Reinhardt would not be able to reason as he wrote.

A quick history lesson: In 2000, 61 percent of Californians voted for Proposition 22, which prohibited same-sex marriage.

In 2004, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom decide to ignore state law and opened San Francisco City Hall to same-sex marriages. Later, the state Supreme Court ordered Newsom to stop the illicit nuptials and invalidated Newsom-issued marriage licenses. Some gay newlyweds appealed.

In 2008, in a 4-3 decision, the California Supreme Court found that marriage is a fundamental right for all. Some 18,000 same-sex couples tied the knot. And they are still married.

Meanwhile, that same year, opponents of same-sex marriage fought back by placing on the ballot a constitutional amendment to ban it. Some 52 percent of California voters approved the measure.

In 2009, the state Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 and the right of the people to write their own state constitution, in a 6-1 decision.

“Prop. 8 didn’t take away any right that the state constitution ever really conferred,” noted Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an advocacy group. “By adopting Prop. 8, the people of California exercised their sovereign power to correct the state Supreme Court’s misreading of the constitution.”

Enter the federal court in 2010. Now-retired U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop. 8. On Tuesday, Reinhardt upheld Walker’s outcome.

Because Newsom had flouted state law, there was a hiatus between the decision that allowed same-sex marriage and the decision that banned it. That allowed the judges to maintain their construct that Prop. 8 took away something that only existed because Newsom had gamed the system.

Dissenting Judge N. Randy Smith was not impressed. As he pointed out, unless given no other option, federal courts should defer to state law.

Reinhardt and Judge Michael Hawkins did make two smart findings: They ruled that Walker did not have to vacate his anti-Prop. 8 ruling because of his being gay. (Who would be the next target, Catholic judges?)

They determined that because state officials (i.e., Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown) refused to represent the voters in court, Prop. 8 proponents had a right to argue for the measure. As a result, the Prop. 8 case should reach the U.S. Supreme Court sooner rather than later.

“It’s simply one step along the way,” opined Jesse Choper, a University of California, Berkeley law professor.

When the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, Newsom stood on the steps of City Hall crowing, “It’s going to happen — whether you like it or not.” Newsom didn’t bother trying to win Californians over to his cause. He figured the courts would impose same-sex marriage on them. And then voters don’t have to like it.”

Comment:   To accentuate the Leftwing bigotry against the ancient human sacred event of marriage,  the Marxist Judge, Stephen Reinhardt is quoted in a Wall Street Journal article on the decision yesterday:

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who was appointed to the court by former President Jimmy Carter.”

Marxist judges can get by with making prejudicial and inflamatory statements  primarily because the American voter knows  nearly nothing about the LAW OF THE LAND, which is the  FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 

Every American should be required to read the Constitution to find out where…WHERE ….ANYWHERE IN THIS DOCUMENT SUPPORTS JUDGE REINHARDT’S BIGOTTED DECISION?   

It is a simple document in its verbage and structure.   In a lawful, open  society Judge Reinhardt would be removed from office for violating the LAW OF THE LAND.    Today’s America is not longer based on rational problem solving.   It has been thoroughly feminized by its major institutions, religious, educational, communications….all of them to abandon knowledge, facts, and reality….all that is rational for FEELINGS….EMOTIONS.

The only American I know besides this humble loner fromt the streets of suburban Minneapolis who sees the EVIL of the tyranny is Dennis Prager.

FEMINIZED SOCIETIES ARE DOOMED SOCIETIES.   Nearly all of our insitutions have become corrupt because of their abandonment of the real, the rational, facts, reason, problem solving and the willingness and drive to defend ones  family, both personal and national…….the  reason d’etre of the human male……other males as well.  

We learn our feminism stupidities at our corner institutions of learning and communicating from the Atlantic to the Pacific……taught by Marxist bigots interested of Government Forced Equality.

American Marxists, whether president Barack Hussein Obama or Judge Stephen Reinhardt, cannot advance their tyranny of Forced Equality in the light of day.   They cannot advance tyranny in a democratic society by debate, ONLY by stealth.   

Tuesday’s decision is likely just a way station en route to the Supreme Court, although Proposition 8′s backers could first ask an expanded 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit to re-hear the case.

The two judges behind the ruling sidestepped the broader issue of whether there was a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry. By focusing instead on specifics of how same-sex marriages were first allowed and then forbidden in California, Judge Reinhardt’s opinion seemed more likely to survive any eventual Supreme Court scrutiny, said legal analysts.

The narrow ruling is “clearly meant to try, as best they can, to insulate the decision from future review,” said David Masci, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

While  appeals are pending there aren’t likely to be any same-sex marriages performed immediately in California, as the court’s rules allow two weeks for the finding to take effect.

Andy Pugno, general counsel for the ProtectMarriage.com coalition, the official proponents of Proposition 8, said he would “immediately” appeal the ruling, though he didn’t say to which court. That likely would cause the verdict to be stayed further.

“Ever since the beginning of this case, we’ve known that the battle to preserve traditional marriage will ultimately be won or lost not here but rather in the U.S. Supreme Court,” Mr. Pugno said. “We are confident that the rights of California voters will finally win out.”

 

John Stossel: Government Doesn’t Deliver Happiness……Americans Pursue It

GOVERNMENT CAN’T MAKE US HAPPY

 

By John Stossel      at realclearpolitics

“In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn’t think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive.

Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth.

 Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the right to pursue happiness has been perverted into a government-backed entitlement to happiness.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says, “There’s more to life than money. … It’s time we focus not just on GDP, but GWB — general well-being.”

Well-being sounds good. But is that something that government programs promote?

Philip Booth, an economist with London’s Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of “… And the Pursuit of Happiness,” says no. I spoke recently with Booth and economist Christopher Coyne of George Mason University, who contributed to that volume.

Since the country of Bhutan got all kinds of publicity by using a measure it calls “gross national happiness” instead of gross national product, and The New York Times says it’s a “new measure of well-being from a happy little kingdom,” I asked them if there is anything to it.

“It’s not a model that most Western societies would want to copy,” Booth said.

I didn’t think so. In Bhutan, people can get locked up for criticizing the government. Yet one study ranked the United States 23rd in the list of happy places. Bhutan was higher on the list.

That’s nonsense, said Coyne. It makes more sense to judge a country’s ability to make its citizens happy by whether foreigners want to move there. Clearly, more people want to move to America than to Bhutan. “The way to think about this,” Coyne said, “is the fact that so many people want to come to the United States indicates that they at least perceive there is the opportunity to pursue what makes them happy.”

What does make people happy? People fantasize about leisure and luxury, but the best data show that such things don’t create lasting happiness. What does make for happiness is obtaining work that allows you to move toward goals that you find meaningful. In other words, what’s important is not just employment, but purposeful work. So is having control over your workplace. Chrysler found that if workers have more control on the assembly line, they are happier. The freedom to decide your own goals is crucial.

Other things that make people happy are religion, having family and friends you care about, giving to others (face to face or via charity) and money.

Actually, money makes you happier if you’re miserably poor. But once you have a certain amount — maybe enough that you no longer have to worry about your family’s well-being — more money doesn’t make much difference. Lottery winners report that, a year after their windfall, they were no happier than they were before.

That’s counterintuitive. Instinct tells us that wealth brings happiness. It’s a reason why some people envy the rich and why income inequality causes lots of angst today. One left-wing journalist writes, “Every model shows the most unequal societies are the least happy.”

“There’s no evidence that this is true,” Coyne said. “Even the staunchest proponents of government intervention to increase happiness admit that there’s no relationship.”

You wouldn’t know that reading The New York Times.

The mainstream media claim that the way to make people happy is to have government protect them from misfortune and give them stuff. The research doesn’t bear that out, says Booth.

“In fact, the bigger government is, the less happy societies tend to be. There is a direct relationship, stripping everything else out, between the government allowing people more freedom and well-being increasing.”

Yet politicians move in the other direction. The socialist likely to be France’s next president wants to lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 and institute a “maximum-work” law.

When will they learn that you don’t make people happier by taking their options away? ”