As conservatives, we base our principles on the Constitution, the writings of our Founders, of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. These writers and others expound the theories that our nation has placed into practice as our Constitution.
From these principles, we create our values: individual liberty, self-reliance, personal responsibility and growth through personal effort and work. These values give meaning to our lives, our families and our children. Together, our principles and values, have created a culture that is foreign to many. Particularly, the left, whose principles and values differ radically.
Today’s topic, however, is not about those differences. It is about motivations—what drives us towards our goal of reclaiming our state and federal governments, of reinstituting those cherished values into government and reclaiming our individual liberties and self-worth.
At the root, while creating a personal framework, neither principles nor values truly drive our motivation. It is the imposition of contrary principles and values that motivate us. I found an article by John Hawkins on PJ media (H/T to Dinah H) that enumerates the issues that motivate us as we move toward the elections in thirty days. John writes of five issues…agendas, perhaps, that has been adopted by the left. These agendas, as they have been and continue to be implemented on a national scale creates conflicts with our established, conservative culture, principles and values. Those differences, ours from our values and the left’s from the agendas below, creates and supports our motivation.
5 Revolting Facets Of American Culture
The black mold in the walls of American culture.
1) An elevation of victimhood
In a weird reversal of how the world has worked since man was raised up out of the dust, it has become good to be a victim in America. In fact, many of the people held up as “victims” in our country are loving every second of their “victimhood.”
The best recent example of that phenomenon is Sandra Fluke. Here’s an unaccomplished 30 year old student who went to Congress and demanded that other people be forced to pay thousands of dollars a year to subsidize her birth control. It’s like the set-up of a stand-up comedian’s joke, except that when people responded with the natural punch lines which featured lots of “She’s a slut” jokes, Sandra Fluke was treated like a victim. Next thing you know, she’s on TV, she’s treated like a heroine, she gets a speaking slot at the Democratic Convention. For a 5th rate mediocrity like Sandra Fluke, her supposed “victimhood” was the best thing that ever happened to her.
…
2) A fascination with freaks, failures, and deviants
For many Americans, the easiest way to get your name in the papers, get people talking about you, and make money isn’t to be great at something, it’s to be a dirtbag. Make a sex tape, flash your vagina getting out of a car, or just behave like a jackass and everyone will be saying your name. If you don’t think that’s true, then why do you know who Snooki is?
…
When you reward bad behavior with money and fame, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more bad behavior. Snooki may be a skanky loser, but how many young girls are thinking, “A skanky ‘loser’ with money, fame, and a TV show sounds pretty good to me!”
3) Infantilization
America is a country that was born in revolution and peopled by some of the most independent human beings ever to walk the earth. Our ancestors explored, conquered, and settled this nation under some of the harshest conditions imaginable, even in many places where “government” was more of a theoretical concept than a functioning entity. Now, the government educates your kids, gives you money and food if you don’t have a job, picks which toilets and light bulbs you’re allowed to buy, runs your health care, and takes care of you when you get old.
…
We’ve become a society where adults are encouraged to behave like children and as Mark Steyn has said, “A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.”
4) Hyper-sexualization:
Sex is a healthy, normal, and good part of life. For that matter, so is water. But just as you can drown in a flood, our society is drowning in sex. It saturates our magazine ads, TV, and the Internet to such an extent that gyrating women in bikinis trying to sell us beer or teenagers having sex on TV barely even catches our attention.
…
Hyper-sexualized Halloween costumes, nudity on the Internet and in film, and musicians wearing outfits that would have been considered risque for prostitutes fifty years ago have become the norm. Worse yet, we don’t know how to stop ourselves. Any time someone suggests that we turn the dial down a notch or two from acting like a society full of pimps and whores, you’d think it was a suggestion that we put everyone in formless robes and chastity belts. There should be some setting between Leave it to Beaver and a strip club that we can embrace as a country. (RELATED CONTENT: What Father Would Permit His Young Daughter to Wear a Bikini? and The Difference Between Sexy Bikinis and Slutty Thongs — And Why Little Girls Should Wear Neither)
5) Indifference towards societal disintegration
Thomas Sowell had it right when he said, “Civilization has been aptly called a ‘thin crust over a volcano.’ The anointed are constantly picking at that crust.”
We seem to start out with an assumption that our culture is healthy, vibrant, and can’t be damaged by any of our societal tinkering. It’s hard to understand what would give anyone this impression when roughly a third of the population has been divorced, 73 percent of black children, 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites are born outside marriage, and 1 out of every 32 Americans is in prison or on parole.
Yet, we slur Christianity, encourage gay marriage, talk up single motherhood, push deviancy in TV and movies, mock morality and scoff at codes of honor. Throughout most of history, civilizations haven’t looked at attempts to stave off cultural rot as religious zealotry or prudishness; they’ve considered it to be simple common sense.
Truly, we are in a culture war. A war between those of us who cherish our traditions, our Christian values and the principles that built this country against those of the dependency class, those who have neither values based on religion or on self-improvement but of personal aggrandizement—a transitory display of self that fades with age and without gaining wisdom.
The next battle in that war comes in a month when we go to the polls to determine which of these two cultural visions will be sustained. The war between these two cultures will not be resolved in a single battle for there is no end as long as greed, sloth and a lust for power exists. This election will not determine the winner of the culture war. If we lose, however, it could be a devastating to our continued survival as a nation of free individuals. The nation is becoming fragile and it could take little for it to be permanently damaged.
When you enter the polling booth next month, think on these motivators and check the box, flip the lever for the conservative candidate…the candidate whose personal ethos supports our common principles and values, the candidate who is motivated, like us, in defense of our nation, our principles, values and culture.