Beyond the Slippery Slope

I am saddened so many have done such a miserable job in understanding our society, fostering positive changes to it, and imparting an understanding of its core values to the younger generations.  Anyone who has been paying attention over the past 30 or so years has watched as step by step we have moved from a cooperative government to one where vilifying the opposition is far more important than achieving the foundational concepts of the Constitution that created our nation.

On July 4^th, 1776 representatives from the 13 colonies released the Declaration of Independence, formalizing our split from King George and forever altering our fortune.  With the uncertainty of success far greater than the knowledge of the outcome, we set out on the path to becoming our own nation.

After a shaky start with a confederation, representatives of the 13 states came together again in 1787 to create our Constitution.  It has served us so well for almost 230 years but is now under attack from those who’ve given little thought to anything other than their own desires.  We have created a non-communication stream where opinion has replaced information, where emotion has replaced reason, and where the population is forced to pick a side and suffer the consequences – as those in opposition to that side have now moved from ad hominin attacks to physical intimidation.

As I settle into this new community I’ve had several conversations with residents and in the course of one of them the issue of “self-discipline,” or the lack thereof, of the young came up.  It got me to thinking.  Where does the idea that a child should have self-discipline come from?  It seems to me it is hard to expect a child to understand the need to restrain their actions if the parents and teachers don’t impart the idea of consequences to personal choice as part of their training?  I grant that for every gross generalization there will be exceptions, but on the whole, if we don’t train our children in the rules of a society the collapse of that society would seem inevitable.

I wonder, is that failure on our part to train our children to understand that words and actions have consequences become a root cause of our problems?

We have reached a point in our society where we have politicians calling for their supporters to engage in violence, and there is no condemnation from their political allies.  We see celebrities call for the killing of political opponents and there is no outrage from their fans.  We have private citizens now assaulting other citizens simply because they don’t agree with their political statements, and we see businesses publicly humiliate patrons because they don’t like the President.  Each of these events, if taken in isolation, is bad enough but taken together it really causes me to wonder.  Have we reached a nexus, where society will begin to return to a civil approach or will we sink into anarchy as the two-party system collapses and the extreme elements are left to pick up the scraps?