We youth at EvC are in Moral Decline

Parasomnium writes:

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After all, one (nondescript) man's moral decline is another woman's / black's / homosexual's / liberal's / etc.'s moral uphill struggle.

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The problem, of course, is the idea that life is a zero-sum game...that if I treat you equally and with full respect to your ability to live your life the way you see fit, that somehow means that I will be less able to live my life the way I see fit.Now, indeed, there are many such instances in life. The Tragedy of the Commons is a definitive problem. However, when one looks at things like allowing marriage to people of differing race or of the same sex, this does not in any way restrict those who want to marry within the same race or opposite sex.Too many people worry about what other people are doing.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw writes:

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Because the 55 year old baby boomers were beginning their teen years at the beginning of the hippy sixties when the moral, family and spiritual disintegration noticeably emerged and crime began to noticeably increase.

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Strange...during those horrible, evil "Clinton" years, crime dropped to the lowest levels since they started keeping statistics, according to the US Department of Justice: Looking at the graph, the violent crime rates were pretty flat during the 70s, declined during early Reagan, increased to previous levels during late Reagan and Bush Sr., then declined dramatically during Clinton, from about 50 victims per 1000 to less than 25.So it would seem that the country does better under "liberal" leadership. We've known this about the financial health of the country (going back to WWII, there have been 5 Democratic presidents and 6 Republicans...the country has always done better under the Democrats than the Republicans...yes, Carter did better than Reagan, whereas as Carter inherited a collapsed economy from Nixon/Ford (or am I the only one that remembers the gas crisis from the early 70s?), Reagan took an economy in recovery and ran it into the ground, handing it off to Bush who created the biggest recession the country had seen, second only to the Great Depression.)"Moral" disintegration? You mean like letting people of different races get married? Removal of homosexuality from the DSM? Admitting that rape can happen inside a marriage? Those things?"Family" disintegration? You mean like kicking gay people out of the house for being gay? You mean like preventing people who love each other from getting married? I fail to see how kicking people out or stopping the creation of families is an example of being for "family values."You still haven't shown any hard evidence as to what this "decline" is. Could you please give a concrete example?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw writes:

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1. Single parenhood. (Factual that by and large, children do better with a natural father and mother.)

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So we should get rid of adoption all together?And why the attempt to prevent same-sex couples from having children?

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2. Unwanted babies and supposed need to kill the unborn.

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You really think abortion was invented in 1973?By the way...abortion rates are declining. They're at the lowest levels since 1974. They declined during those evil, "liberal" Clinton years.Oh, and European countries with much more "liberal" values have a much lower abortion rate than the United States. It seems if you want to lower the abortion rate, you have to drop the obsessive attitude against sex. That means getting over the idea that education about birth control causes teens to have sex. In fact, the "liberal" European countries have lower rates of teen sex, let alone teen pregnancy.

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3. Divorce, legal hassles clooging up the legal system etc.

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"Clogging up the legal system"? Oh, please! Does the term "no fault" mean anything to you? It used to be that the only way to get a divorce was to sue for one. It is only when divorce laws became liberalized that it became unnecessary to go to a court to get a divorce.

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4. Rise of need for social welfare resulting in higher taxes.

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"Rise of need"? Oh please! The need has always been there. It is only because we responded to it that the welfare system came into being. And note, it has been the single most effective thing at reducing poverty in the country. In the 60s, poverty had been cut in half. It was the collapse of the economy under Nixon in 1973 that caused the poverty rate to become the largest in the industrialized world.And let's not forget that for the 20 years between 1975 and 1995, the value of the money given out in Aid to Families with Dependent Children declined by 40%.Oh, and while we're at it, let's connect this point to a previous one: States with lower welfare benefits have higher out-of-wedlock birthrates. A 1994 Urban Institute study found: This finding was repeated by the University of Wisconsin as well as UCBerkeley in 1994.

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5. Decline in discipline and behaviour of children.

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Subjective. Please give a concrete example that isn't anecdote.

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6. Sexual disease, the worse being aids. Again more tax dollars and social problems.

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HIV is a heterosexual disease. Three-quarters of all cases of HIV infection worldwide was through heterosexual sex, according to WHO. It is only in the West that it was primarily through homosexual sex and today, it appears that it's only in the Americas that such is the case (Europe just switched over to primarily heterosexual transmission, joining Africa and Asia.)That said, STD transmission rates declined during the evil, "liberal" Clinton years...about the same time that people's attitudes regarding sex in general and gay sex in particular became more liberalised. Note that AIDS came to the US under Reagan's watch and that he ignored it for half a decade since it was primarily seen in gay men.And think about it: If our culture had not been so obsessed with declaring gay people sick but rather treated them as everybody else, encouraging them to get married, etc., do you really think HIV would have stood a chance?

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7. Incidence of drugs, crime and all the ramifications of these.

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All declined to their lowest levels during the evil, "liberal" Clinton years.

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8. Need for more prisons, policemen and other enforcement personel.

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Most of that is due to the crackdown on drug offenses. What was previously a non-jailable offense (non-violent drug possession) became one that led to incarceration.If we were to liberalize our drug laws, we'd reduce the prison population.

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9. Rise in incidence of suicide.

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Incorrect. Actually, the suicide rate has been fairly flat for the past 40 years. The big increase happened in 1968 (strange...wasn't that the time Nixon got elected?) It fell a bit during early Reagan but climbed back to previous levels in late Reagan and Bush and the started to decline again during Clinton.

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10. Increase in corporate, government and social corruption leading to all kinds of problems and causing financial ruin to many.

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But all of that happened under "conservative" leadership. Remember, Clinton tried to get the Republican Congress to separate the advisory functions from the auditing companies in order to prevent just the sort of conflicts of interest that resulted in things like WorldCom and Enron.In fact, if you look at the history of the last 60 years, you find that the economy has always done better under a Democratic administration than under a Republican one.So in the end, every single one of your examples actually shows you that what we need is to liberalize societal attitudes, not go back to conservative ones. Every time the country swings back to a conservative leadership, the country goes into decline by most measures. Every time it swings liberal, things get better.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover responds to me:

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I'm not sure where Rrhain got his statistics

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Regarding crime in the US, the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Key Crime & Justice Facts at a GlanceIt contains graphs indicating rates of violent crime from 1973 to the present. You will see that crime rates were fairly flat during the 70s spiked in early Reagan, declined during his term, spiked against during Bush, then dropped like a stone during Clinton.

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To this day I still cannot comprehend the people who suggest that dangerous crime has not increased dramatically since the 50's.

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That's because the emotional phrase "dramatically" hides the complexity of the causes. In the 50s, there were a hundred million fewer people in the US. The definitions of crime have shifted greatly.To try and say that there is some "moral degradation" going on which is the reason why there is more per capita crime is to completely ignore everything else that has happened.For example, in the 50s and 60s, a person could feed a family of four on minimal-wage jobs. That hasn't been possible for years. What do you think might happen to the crime rate as the poor become poorer?

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If the standard is Judeo-Christian

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No such thing. Jewish tradition and Christian tradition are not the same. "Judeo-Christian" was a term coined by the Eisenhower administration to try and mitigate anti-Semitism, not because of any real connection between Judaism and Christianity.

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Now, Judeo-Christian morals are not even approved of (as much), much less followed.

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And it couldn't possibly be that the "Judeo-Christian" morality of sticking your nose into other people's business, forcing them to your personal religious opinion, when their behaviour has absolutely no effect upon yours, is actually a destructive social policy.

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In the early 70's, I was taught--in public school--that Rome's fall had much to do with the loose morals

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And you were taught horrendously wrong. Go read Gibbon. His Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is still considered a definitive work.

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I can't imagine that being taught now

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Good.Because it isn't true. You don't think we should teach something that isn't true, do you?

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but I agree wholeheartedly with Buz that the overall "moral decline" has not been good for this nation.

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But you can't provide any concrete evidence of it.Again, when the country swings right, crime rates, teen pregnancy rates, drug use rates, etc. go up. When the country swings left, those things go down. So if you're going to complain about the "moral decline" of this country, then why aren't you blaming the conservative leaders who are at the helm?

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Our kids sit in front of electronic screens

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How is that a "moral" problem?

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way too many kids are raised in broken homes, and no matter what your opinion of divorce, it hurts kids.

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And how does encouraging gay people to get married cause divorce, exactly? Obviously, if gay people can't get married, they can't get divorced, but don't you think that making marriage something that is attainable by more people would be actually encouraging marriage rather than the opposite?

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And, in my opinion, we also have grown some pretty stupid ideas about the rights of criminals

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Yeah...that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing is so overrated.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover responds to me:

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I'd also like to know where Rrhain got his suicide rate statistics.

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The CDC and the National Institute of Mental Health.

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I've been poking around the internet for a few minutes and doing terrible at finding anything.

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Go to Google and search for "suicide rates us." The first link is the CDC. The second is the NIMH.The fifth (Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences is an interesting one since it compiles suicide statistics for nearly the past 100 years, 1900 to 1994. It includes tables for international rates of suicide, too.Suicide rates have been fairly flat for the past few decades. They've been decreasing of late. is an interesting one since it compiles suicide statistics for nearly the past 100 years, 1900 to 1994. It includes tables for international rates of suicide, too.Suicide rates have been fairly flat for the past few decades. They've been decreasing of late.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM![This message has been edited by Rrhain, 08-05-2003]

doctrbill writes:

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You may recall that at least one poor loser jumped from a window on wall street when the market crashed in 1929.

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Incorrect.They even make mention of this in the movie, Seabiscuit. Contrary to the urban myth, nobody jumped out of a window because of the stock market crash.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover writes:

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OTOH, destruction of the nuclear family

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This is another one of those myths the Right has managed to palm off on people.The "nuclear family" is a recent invention. The concept of parents-and-children living independently of all other relations is a product of the Industrial Revolution for that is the time that the population shifted from rural to urban areas.The "traditional nuclear family" has never been a tradition. The traditional family in the US was a family living with their extended relations in a loose community. You were just as likely to have your aunts and uncles looking out for you as your own parents.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw responds to me:

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All declined to their lowest levels during the evil, "liberal" Clinton years.

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The president does not run the country.

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The president does, however, set policy. Remember the funding for the policemen that Clinton pushed to get in place? Don't you think that might have some effect on crime rates?And what do you think will happen with Bush's cutting of those programs?

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George Bush of Texas leading the charge with his tough on crime state of Texas.

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Yes, putting to death more people than all other states at a time when we were coming to realize that the system was putting many innocent people to death. And then Bush came along and lied saying that he carefully studied every single death penalty case when examination of his schedule found that he could only have spent four minutes per case (and now we find that his advisor on those cases wasn't exactly forthcoming on the details of the cases presented to Bush.) Bush refused to examine the problem, claiming that there is no possibility of error in Texas regarding the death penalty.

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Btw, I too would like to know where you got your data. Take your time. We'll wait.

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Didn't you read my post. I stated where I got it: The US Department of Justice: What is it about my posts that people don't read them? This is really getting ridiculous.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover writes:

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I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that owning a home in America is out of the reach of anyone who does a good job for an employer.

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Ah, yes...the poor are poor because they're lazy bums.And people claim the Left is the one engaging in class warfare....------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

doctrbill responds to me:

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What is it about my posts that people don't read them? This is really getting ridiculous.

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Considering the source of the message, to which you were responding, there is little cause for alarm.

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Yes, but truthlover seemed to miss it, too. I specifically mentioned that I was getting my crime statistics from the US DoJ and two people missed it.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover responds to me:

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1. What the heck does conservative leadership have to do with anything I said?

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That things were better in the "old days" before all of these "liberal" attitudes came into vogue.

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We're talking moral decline over the last 40 years, not the benefits of left or right wing leadership.

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But the leadership is part of that decline, is it not? A good leader would do what he could to prevent such decline, yes? Look at the reaction Dr. Koop got concerning his statements regarding HIV-prevention. People were calling for his head. How dare he not insist that abstinence outside of marriage is the only way to go! Never mind that he directly stated that abstinence is the most effective method of preventing HIV transmission...he used the dreaded C-word and for that, he must pay! And to this day, the Bush administration has decided to go with the abstinence-only method of sex education despite all the evidence showing that such education doesn't help and actually results in a higher teen sex rate than a comprehensive education that includes methods of birth control and disease prevention.That is how the leadership of this country affects the country's morality.

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I used Judeo-Christian in a pretty normal sense that I'm sure everyone else understood. I made absolutely no arguments in defense of it.

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You used it, period. I'm well aware that many people use the term and I even understand what you mean by it. I am simply pointing out that it is a loaded word that doesn't mean what is meant by it. There is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian." If you really think that the Jewish and Christian traditions are anything alike, then you really need to do some more thinking.For example, most sects of Christianity think that being gay is a sin and many of them are organizing to repress the rights of gays. Only Orthodox Judaism agrees...Reformed and Conservative Judaism actually seek equal rights.

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Your links don't even address suicide rates over the last 40 years, at least the ones you mention first.

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So why did you ignore the third link I mentioned? The third link stopped at 1994. The previous two deal with more recent developments. Did it not occur to you to put them all together and see how things are going?

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Suicide rates have more than doubled since forty years ago according to the links I gave.

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Mine say they're about the same. The early 60s had a rate of about 10-11 per 100,000. The early 90s had a rate of about 12. It's gone down since then. According to the NIMH, the 2000 rate was 10.6. That appears to be back to 1960s rates.So no, suicide rates have not doubled since forty years ago.

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I also don't know what my comments about broken families have to do with the gay issue you brought up.

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Have you not been paying attention to the debate going on the US? The claim is that gay people break families. Look at the attempt to create a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Why? Because "traditional marraige" needs to be saved. To allow people of the same sex to get married will destroy marriage.For crying out loud...you were the one that brought up the fall of the Roman Empire due to "loose morals." You do know what that means, right? "Homosexuality." That's right, gays are blamed for the fall of Rome.

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Divorce hurts kids, and it has increased "dramatically" since the 50's.

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Indeed.But the question is, what is causing it? And we find that the people who are pounding the "morality" drum are often railing against things that have absolutely nothing to do with what they claim they are fighting for. They rail against gay marriage as if it will have some effect on straight marriage.

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I would never support a gay couple adopting a kid, but that's a totally different topic.

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Indeed, but why? Are you saying that a child is better off in the foster care system than in a loving home? Considering that there is absolutely no evidence that being raised by gay parents has any effect on outcome, why on earth would anybody stop a child from being adopted into a loving home? And considering that many of these children were born to gay women, what on earth is the rationale for preventing her female partner from adopting her children the same way a straight woman's male partner would?

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Anyway, this gay issue is obviously a big thing to you,

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Only because it's a big issue at the moment. Haven't you been paying attention? Canada legalized gay marriage, the SCOTUS struck down sodomy laws, and Massachussetts is about to legalize gay marriage. Members of Congress are trying to get the Constitution amended to prohibit same-sex marriage.And the justification for all of this? That it will "destroy traditional marriage."But as I pointed out in a later post, the concept of the "traditional nuclear family" is a myth. The "nuclear family" has never been traditional. It was an artificial construct that became an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution and the exodus to the suburbs after WWII. Before that, families tended to live together in large groups. You can only have Mom, Dad, and the kids living alone in a house when those people can afford their own home. That didn't happen until recently.Add into that the revolution in treatment of women since the 50s and it becomes clear that it is inappropriate to look at divorce rates in the 50s as some sort of standard which we should try to live up to again. When a woman couldn't own property outside of her husband, when a woman could only rarely earn a decent wage, what do you think that would do to the divorce rate? In this day and age, divorce is usually brought on by the wife (which shows another lie about men not wanting to get married...men are the ones who propose while women are the ones who divorce.) That's because she doesn't need a husband in order to keep herself out of poverty. That wasn't the case back in the 50s.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw responds to me:

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Didn't you read my post. I stated where I got it: The US Department of Justice:

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Got a link? I'm not finding it.

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Didn't you read my post? It was in my response to truthlover. #29. Message 30 includes a link to an analysis of suicide for 1900 to 1994.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover responds to me:

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I can't just take your word that women initiate most divorces.

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Then do some research. Not only do women more often initiate divorce, they do so at twice the rate of men. Plus, men are more likely to oppose the divorce than women.The New York Times wrote an article about it in 2000. Here's a link (though you will have to register to see it): New Look at Realities of DivorceThe biggest reason for filing for divorce they found? Custody of the children. More than adultery, more than battery, more than "trading your 40 in for two 20s," the big reason is that the person wants custody of the children. The person who thinks he'll get custody is the one who usually files for divorce and that is usually the woman.

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If I keep going, it looks to me like about 2/3 of the divorces I know about are initiated by the wife.

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You nailed it. The statistics shows that about two-thirds of all divorces that aren't mutual are initiated by the wife.

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I think it's bad that divorce rates are up

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Actually, they're down. They're higher than where they were, but there has been a steady decline in divorce.Since 1990:
1991, 0.47%
1992, 0.48%
1993, 0.46%
1994, 0.46%
1995, 0.46%
1995, 0.43%
1997, 0.43%,
1998, 0.42%,
1999, 0.41%,
2000, 0.41%,
2001, 0.40%,
(Mostly from NCHS, some from Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the U.S., which often differs from NCHS by 0.01%)------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

truthlover writes:

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I think crime is up

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You think wrong. Crime is down to its lowest levels since they started keeping statistics.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw writes:

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Just about anyone with enough ambition and will, with enough sense to pinch the pennies and keep debt free otherwise can get into some kind of a self owned home.

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Yeah...all them poor, homeless people are just lazy bums who want a handout.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!