Morals are being replaced by Laws
New laws are slowly replacing the lost morality seen among Americans. In recent generations, we have seen the moral fiber that was so common among our grandparents slowly fading out of our civilization. Kids are killing each other on a massive scale. People are murdering each other. White collar crime has never been more prevalent. Loan officers are swindling uneducated home buyers. Wall Street firms are dreaming up complex financial products to swindle less sophisticated investors. Heck, even the Federal Government is swindling taxpayers out of their money to give it away to failed businesses.
Swindle here, swindle there, gunshot here, raping there, abortion here, divorce over there, gay marriage here, gun control there, etc…..and the list goes on and on.
I believe it was John Adams who gets the credit for pointing out that a democratic republic such as the United States is able to grant liberty to its citizens because they are moral people. He was making a point that our system of government really only works if our civilization remains a moral one. People can only be entrusted with their liberty if they willingly choose to abide by reasonable moral standards. Otherwise, the very liberty that they possess allows them to commit great acts of evil.
This is where all of the laws come in. Over the last 230 or so years that our nation has existed, we have slowly accumulated a massive amount of laws and regulations. Every year there are more than the years before. How many of you even know 1/10th of the laws on the books? It is virtually impossible to know them all. Even lawyers spend countless hours researching exactly what the laws are relevant to their client’s case. Everyone knows the most popular laws, like it being illegal to murder someone else. But, how many of you know about all the other little laws that you happen to break from time to time? Of course you have also heard the saying that ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law. So, remember that the next time you are driving through an unfamiliar town and fail to notice the speed limit sign.
You see, back in the early years of our country, when people used to be bible thumpers, they lived by the Ten Commandments outlined in the bible. They also willingly chose to live in accordance with the other proper and moral suggestions outlined in the good book. They did this either out of fear of god or because they wanted to please god. Whatever the underlying reason, we can all agree that there was a lot less need for the volumes of laws that we have today. People governed on a local level. If a man was caught stealing from his neighbors, a bunch of men would form a posse and make him accountable for his actions.
People lived in smaller communities. People attended church more regularly. A greater percentage of the children attended parochial schools where values and morals were emphasized. Households almost always included both a father and a mother. Parents were much stricter with their children’s behavior. Parents and authority figures were more prone to use a smack on the rear to discipline children. Church pastors and priests were less tolerant of the parishioners’ misdeeds. More kids grew up wanting to become priests and nuns. Divorce was completely unacceptable and almost unheard of. Getting pregnant before you were married was a total public embarrassment to the whole family.
Morals instead of Laws
There weren’t laws to make people live this way. They simply chose to do it. Somewhere along the line, some really smart people figured out that living by a good set of morals was the easiest way for a society to prosper on all levels. People are less envious of their neighbor’s success. They are too proud to accept welfare unless it is a matter of starvation for their children. People tend to take pride and express gratitude for the more important things in life like a loving family and good health. They tend to save as much as possible and live well below their means so they have a rainy day insurance fund.
If people choose to abandon these sacred morals as much of our country has, it is easy to see how things start to grow out of control. Greed starts to become a driving factor in the alpha male. People start ditching their partners because someone new, younger, richer or prettier happens to be available to them. People murder each other to get on television. Girls get pregnant to become the center of attention at school. Kids from the ghetto get arrested so they can be seen as having earned their wings in the hood. Greed and envy grow stronger over the years until men are willing to completely destroy other lives just to attain a level of material wealth.
Naturally, any rational society would want to stop the madness. It would be nice to go back in time and send all of these criminals back to church school so they could learn the error in their ways before they become criminals. That’s not going to happen. As a matter of fact, most people have strayed from religion so far and for so long that even mentioning it to them gets a roll of the eyes and a whatever attitude. The end result is that society is forced to create a new rule called a law that says people are no longer allowed to do something. Now, if somebody is caught doing it, a nice uniformed policeman can handcuff him and lock him up. Depending on the ultimate form of punishment, the convict may or may not learn a valuable lesson about life. Some do and some don’t.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t much care for that system. Wouldn’t you rather live in a society where people willingly choose to respect each other instead of being forced to because of some piece of paper in a book that you never read says it is the law? What if we could just convince every single adult and child in America that this way of life will bring the most happiness into all of our lives? What if we could convince every parent to teach those same morals to every child? Can you imagine how wonderful it could be? We need to re-inject morality into our civilization. We need to do so by educating people about its merits. You simply cannot change people’s minds through legislation. It must be done on a personal level.
New Moral Standards for America
Imagine this. If the anti-religion movement is so concerned about removing every last piece of religious material from courthouses and schools then I have a proposal for them. Let’s take the Ten Commandments and the thirteen virtues of Benjamin Franklin and combine them. Then we can choose to quit referring to its biblical origins. Let’s rename it. We can call it the new moral standard for America. Then we can plaster that list on every municipal building, every court house, every university and every school across America. The more religious people can be happy to see us promoting the Ten Commandments once again. The atheists can be happy because we removed the biblical references and mixed in some common sense ideas about morality form Benjamin Franklin. Can’t we all agree to live amongst each other with some decent basic morality without making it into some kind of religion vs. atheist battle? Use some common sense people.