We youth at EvC are in Moral Decline

I'm not sure where Rrhain got his statistics, but a Google search got me to http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm.There I find that from 1960 to 1990 the violent crime rate more than tripled. It has reduced since then to more than double what it was in 1960. That's per capita, not total crime, so it's a real increase.To this day I still cannot comprehend the people who suggest that dangerous crime has not increased dramatically since the 50's. It's the weirdest thing. You may be happy, as I am, that blacks are less oppressed, that there are more freedoms for women and minorities, etc., but the fact is times have changed since the 50's, and, if you live in America, you are much more likely to need to lock your doors. Drug use has increased and so has crime.If the standard is Judeo-Christian, then morals have declined since the 50's. Shoot, even when I was a teenager, in the 70's, having Judeo-Christian morals was by far the most approved set of morals. Now, Judeo-Christian morals are not even approved of (as much), much less followed.In the early 70's, I was taught--in public school--that Rome's fall had much to do with the loose morals (I don't remember what that meant to the teacher) of the city of Rome. I can't imagine that being taught now, unless the one moral being discussed was laziness (Roman citizens living in Rome didn't have to work; I understand it was a slave-based economy.)Anyway, I see Schraf's point about decline in racism and sexism, which is good, but I agree wholeheartedly with Buz that the overall "moral decline" has not been good for this nation. Our kids sit in front of electronic screens, whether computer or TV; we are way too prone to gratifying our desires instantly (well, that may be simply because we can, not because we're more prone to); way too many kids are raised in broken homes, and no matter what your opinion of divorce, it hurts kids.And, in my opinion, we also have grown some pretty stupid ideas about the rights of criminals, which means we're a little less likely to be punished for a crime we didn't commit, a little less likely to be overpunished for a crime we did commit, and way more likely to be badly harmed by a criminal who should be dead or in jail.

I'd also like to know where Rrhain got his suicide rate statistics. I've been poking around the internet for a few minutes and doing terrible at finding anything.Home Page - Wesley Mission says that suicide rates among 15-24 year olds has tripled in the last forty years. I assume that's Australia, but they don't say. Another teenager type web site said it's increased more than 200% over the last 40 years in America among 15-24 year olds. Another says Austria suicide rate has increased among men in the last 10 years because of a large increase in the 20-39 age group.I'm not finding real statistics to work with, though. Can anyone help me?Oh, and a graph showed that America was somewhere around 30th in the world (it wasn't numbered and I didn't feel like counting), which eastern bloc countries holding all the top 10. Southern European countries like France and Austria and Hungary were ahead of us, but some terrible weather places like the UK and Sweden were behind us. That's off the subject, though.Wait, wait, wait! Here we go!At http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/death-su.html: Ok, so I think suicides are way up. Can you give a source for disagreeing, Rrhain?

Two quick things.I agree that the fall of the Roman Empire was a complicated matter. I wasn't suggesting what I was taught in public school was correct (although I'm sure the change in mentality of the citizenry, complicated as that might be, had to have something to do with it, because that affects everything).Second, you lost me a couple times in your post. The big one was the comment about competing with the "lying, cheating, murdering nation." Do you mean that the rich people are the "lying, cheating, murdering nation" that the poor have to compete with? I'm a little lost.Of course, perhaps the reason is that I don't really agree that people are that "stuck" here in America. I live in what is either the poorest county in America or close to it, and I don't have to take the keys out of the ignition anywhere in this county, so I don't believe that poverty has to produce crime. There's way more to it than that.I've also been on the hiring/interview end of starting jobs, and it's incredibly difficult to find someone who will just show up to work every day, much less work hard and do a good job for you. Experience has not given me much pity for the poor in America. I've seen way too few who are willing to develop good habits in order to change their situation.I'm speaking in general here. I've not only met some who did arouse pity, but I've put them in my house, fed them, given them jobs, etc. Same with the homeless. I've offered them a place to stay, help finding a job, etc., and I've had exactly one take me up on it. He lasted two days. He liked his homeless life better. It was more free. More power to him, if that's how he wants to live. I understand the desire to live that way, as I thought about that lifestyle, at least temporarily, when I was younger. But it's silly to feel sorry for a guy living how he chose to live.

This is what I was disagreeing with in my last post. I still disagree.

Well, maybe I was off topic, because I wasn't addressing that question. I was only disagreeing with your one statement that to be able to afford a marriage, children, and a home was beyond the reach of a lot of Americans.I agreed with almost everything you said in your last couple posts. I think the increase in crime in this nation, as well as a lot of the other changes around us, are based on very, very complicated interactions. How much of it is TV? And by that, I don't mean what's on TV, but the very idea that a person would while away 20 to 40 hours a week watching performances. Before the 60's, no one did that. By the 70's, that was the norm. Now there's computer games, too. The 60's did not just bring the hippy culture, drugs, and abortion.Anyway, I won't blame America's problems on the loss of Judeo-Christian values, although I hold many of them. It's not anywhere as simple as that, in my opinion.OTOH, destruction of the nuclear family as a cause of a lot of American problems...? I think so.

You'll excuse me if I don't put much stock in the AFL-CIO's opinion of who is being paid enough money. I also do not put much stock in the government's opinion of what poverty is.I moved to San Antonio in 1994 with three small children. I bought a 2-room tent to live in there. I got a job through Kelly Services based on my 80 wpm tying speed and familiarity with a few word processing programs. It was $6/hr. I did a good job for the guy, so he offered me a permanent job starting at $8/hr. He didn't want a guy as his secretary, though, so he was going to make me his warehouse supervisor, even though it would be a couple months until he had anything in the warehouse for me to supervise.I had three small children at the time and my wife didn't work. I got a small RV and moved into a $150/mo RV park.I didn't get to find out how far I could progess there, because I got called by the job I left in Sacramento to see if I would open a warehouse in Tennessee for them. They asked how much of a raise I would need to do that for them.I've had to climb that ladder repeatedly, dragging my wife around as I did, because I "felt led" to go here or there. I started at the bottom of the ladder one in Germany, twice in California, and once in Texas. Every time I had to start with minimum or near minimum wage jobs, but never once have I had to stay with them.I'm not a penny pincher. I'm really lousy at saving $5 here or $10 there, but I've met people who disciplined themselves enough to do it, and every one of them could put themselves in a position to own a house in America in a surprisingly fast amount of time. It won't be a $150,000 house in a suburb, but it sure looks to me, from experience, that there's not a state in the union that you can't own an acre with a mobile home on it within a few years by simply making a good effort at job hunting and then working hard at whatever job you do.Owning your own home is the right of hard, thrifty workers, and very, very few of them can't own their own home in America in a pretty decent amount of time if they'll take a few hardships along the way. Everyone else needs to be thank God if they end up owning a house, because they were just plain lucky.Or they could wish for the good ol' days, when people didn't live in houses with electricity, but built grass huts. Although if you could save up $1000, you could buy an acre of land in rural Tennessee or rural Texas and do that now.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. I just don't see it happening anywhere around me, and, like I said, I live in about the poorest county in America.

Rrhain, you're engaged in some other debate than I am is all I can figure.1. What the heck does conservative leadership have to do with anything I said? We're talking moral decline over the last 40 years, not the benefits of left or right wing leadership.2. 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.Ok, that answers most of your post.On the two issues I see that I addressed (maybe you're in a conservative vs. liberal debate with Buz, but I'm really not interested in defending conservative leadership in the US, nor am I terrible surprised that the economy might do well under liberal leadership):1. Your links don't even address suicide rates over the last 40 years, at least the ones you mention first. They may be real applicable to your liberal vs. conservative debate, but I don't know or care much about that debate.2. Suicide rates have more than doubled since forty years ago according to the links I gave.3. Your crime rate statistics also apply pretty well to your conservative/liberal debate, but again, it's off topic to me, and really, now that I think about it, I don't think even Buz has taken you up on that off topic issue.4. I also don't know what my comments about broken families have to do with the gay issue you brought up. Divorce hurts kids, and it has increased "dramatically" since the 50's. Many people like it. I think it hurts kids. I would never support a gay couple adopting a kid, but that's a totally different topic.5. I finally got that link #5 you mentioned to come up. It took a while. It does look like suicide, overall, only went up slightly. It's up over double with young people, but they did mention that leaves the # of young people committing suicide less than those in the 25-39 age group who commit suicide, so I guess I can see why the overall rates might have remained relatively stable.Anyway, this gay issue is obviously a big thing to you, but I brought up divorce, not gay couples nor adoption by single people. The number of children raised by a divorce, single mom or dad is far greater than those children raised by single dads or moms who adopted. Divorce is one issue. Adoption of kids is completely another. In the former, a parent is leaving. In the latter, no parents are leaving.

Still on politics. That's great, I'll work with your definitions. I have grown use to your inability to listen and your demand that I speak with your terminology, while you make no effort whatsoever to understand what's said to you.Forget the term "destruction of the nuclear family." Divorce rates are way up and kids are raised by one parent or no one a lot. I think it has as much to do with the crime rates in this country as anything.Your comments about aunts and uncles in the American past has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I've said.

I don't know about "the Left," but I do know that people who turn facts into racism, classism, or sexism are indeed creating class warfare, race warfare, and sex warfare.I can hit a softball further than 90% of the women in America because I'm a man. Blacks dominate sprint races because, in general, they're faster and jump higher than us white guys, especially ones as slow as me. This nation still provides opportunities that people who put responsibility on themselves, and not others, can take advantage of.I was raised in the military, so I don't know what it feels like to be racist. I've been in mixed-race communities for most of my life. On the other hand, since my dad didn't make E-6 until I was nearly eighteen, and since I've been hopping around the globe myself ever since, I've always been poor. I have to keep myself from being generally prejudiced against the rich, not the poor.

Before I go reading the rest of your posts and whoever else has posted, let me say this up front.I did not say that times are wonderful. I disagreed that people are unable to own a home in this country.You are entirely correct that land and property values are pretty low around here. The idea of owning your own home is not so out of reach here as it might be in the bay area, where the house my parents bought for 75k in 1980 is worth over 300,000 now, even though it is a tiny 2-bedroom.I didn't say that people can buy a home wherever they want in this country. I'm not imagining that I'll be owning a penthouse in New York in my lifetime, even if I wanted one.I did say that a person willing to bear some hardships could still own a home in the US. I believe that's true.Ok, on to reading the rest of the posts.

I'm sorry to hear that, and I have no problem believing that you might have been better off had your parents done something other than what they did, including divorce.I do not think you are in the majority. Divorce has a hard effect on kids. Maybe not as hard an effect as parents with the difficulties yours had.I'm also pretty sure that couples today get to the scream or divorce stage a lot quicker nowadays, because divorce is such a socially easy option. Couples faced with screaming forever or stopping are more likely to find a way to stop than a couple that can simply give up easily. Most people prefer to live in peace, and many will do so just out of care for their kids.I'm sorry your parents didn't.

Yes, a hurt person sees a way out of their hurt as their right. An angry person sees actions that will let them vent their anger in a much more positive light than a non-angry person.Divorce is much easier and much more socially acceptable in this country now than it was forty or fifty years ago. I think that's bad.It's really not as simple as I'm stating it, I know. Every situation is different. But overall, when divorce is such an easy option it is taken much more quickly than it is otherwise.

Yeah, Barna generally settles the case that Christianity as it is practiced in the Western world is a colossal failure.However, your statement puzzles me a little. I found this quote on your link:

quote:

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Ron Barrier, Spokespersonn for American Atheists remarked on these findings with some rather caustic comments against organized religion. He said: "These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years. Since Atheist ethics are of a higher calibre than religious morals, it stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky.

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Ok, so why then are the atheists busting my chops for suggesting that increasing divorce rates are bad? You can't have it both ways. Either it's a good thing ("higher calibre ethics") to avoid divorce or it's great that it's happening so much more nowadays. You can't have both.

I'd be interested to find out the divorce rate among those who abstained until marriage compared to those who didn't. I'd be willing to guess that couple who just live together rarely stay together for a lifetime, and I'd guess they're way more likely to split up before their children are old enough to leave home.I'm one of those awful people who believes that sex ought to be in marriage.

If the AFL-CIO wants to generate statistics for what people make, then that's great. I'll accept them. If they want to generate statistics for what constitutes "enough" money, then they need some different statistics.I've been below the poverty line in this country for most of my adult life, and I have six children. Schraf's right. Sometimes that means you can't live wherever you want. It does not mean that people can't buy houses in the United States anymore.