The culture wars: America is losing

I confess to being a concerned, even angry citizen of this, the greatest nation on Earth.

My anger stems from the insidious and continuous degradation of our faith-based, family-oriented traditional values.

There is a contentious, even vicious culture war going on now in this country with the adversaries being the shameless, hard-left liberal Democrats

vs. the milquetoast, spineless not-so-conservative Republicans.

The liberals are winning, because they relish playing &8220;hard ball&8221; on both political and social issues.

The so-called conservatives are losing, because they do not have the inclination nor the energy to fight back.

Thankfully, there are a few exceptions on the right side of the aisle, namely, talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

And, on Fox News, the only half-way conservative TV news channel, commentators Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly are mildly conservative, but these reporters are very careful to include liberals on their shows, so that they can be &8220;fair and balanced.&8221;

Trouble is, the liberal competition has no interest in being fair and balanced.

However, to his credit, Bill O’Reilly has come out with a very good book, entitled &8220;Cultural Warrior.&8221; In this book, O’Reilly takes dead aim at the enemy within, the American Civil Liberties Union.

This group, referred to by O’Reilly as the &8220;shock troops,&8221; have blitzed the legal system, supporting armies of secularism, promoting liberal causes and trying to banish traditional ones.

O’Reilly refers to these adversaries as secular progressives, a sugar-coated label for anti-God, anti-Christ and anti-American liberals.

Other groups, who have been ripping away the very fiber of America’s faith-based, traditional family and national values culture, include the mainstream

news media (video and print), the hard-left members of Congress, the over 90 percent level of liberal biased professors in our colleges and universities and the left-leaning leadership in labor and teachers’ unions.

Also, the garbage available to be seen on television and the Internet has played a very significant role in the negative attitude and behavior exhibited by an alarming percentage of our youth.

Much of this problem is attributed to the high incidence of one-parent families and the diminished quality of public school teachers and administrators in some, but certainly not all, areas.

The great football coach Vince Lombardi saw the culture problem developing in the 1960s, coinciding with the Viet Nam War and the hippie movement.

In the Lombardi biography published in 1999 and written by David Maraniss, the coach is quoted in a 1967 speech as saying &8220;Perhaps we have too much freedom with the authority of the family being ridiculed, lack of discipline in education, poor personal conduct and no respect for the law.&8221;

Former federal judge Robert Bork called the culture degradation a decadent decay, and said &8220;the rot is spreading&8221;.

Bork blamed the courts for &8220;threatening our liberty&8221; in that the courts are trying to legislate as well as judge.

Bork, in his 1996 book &8220;Slouching Towards Gomorrah&8221; names his villain as &8220;modern liberalism,&8221; and he points to Bill Clinton, a child of the 1960s, as the person who best exemplifies modern liberalism.

The most secular villain, of course, is the ACLU.

A heavy majority (84%) of Americans profess to be Christian, but with mainstream church congregations shrinking, one has to wonder how serious many are about their declared faith.

I believe it is fair to say that the ACLU is at war with our traditional values.

The Citizens United Foundation has called the ACLU out with a video, exposing this dangerous organization’s agenda, i.e., to take &8220;under God&8221; out of the Pledge of Allegiance, remove &8220;in God we trust&8221; from our currency; and overturn &8220;Megan’s Law,&8221; the law that protects our children from sexual predators, among other things.

What can those of us who care do about all this?

As I see it, we need to support those politicians running for office who support a return to old fashioned, faith-based traditional values.

But first, we need to pray to God often and ask for his divine intervention.

And, don’t forget Benjamin Franklin’s admonition, &8220;God helps those who help themselves.&8221;

Byrd Looper is a regular columnist for The Times-Journal.