Cal Thomas on the Cultural Decline in American Society

Thomas suggested confronting our cultural decline rather than merely managing the symptoms. He correctly observes that self-indulgence has eclipsed self-discipline.

But self-discipline needs a moral and ethical optimism, a hope that is utterly absent from Thomas’ world view.

Thomas and many others seek to define prurience and licentiousness, cultural decline as the products of a human nature “which always flows downward, never upward.” The view is the old misogynistic notion of original sin. It is also the frightened pessimism that anticipates and thus insures chaos through repression rather than fostering positive growth through real learning.

The foundation of our culture is the Protestant optimism that we can possibly build a shining city upon a hill. Throughout our nation’s history grass-roots religion has reinforced an ethical population. Yet currently revivalist and fundamentalist sects often promote materialism and sectarian bigotry to the point of devaluing the work ethic that built our nation. Heretical, but our cultural decline, in part, rises from that poisoned root, a hypocritical foundation whose greed and barbarity is sanctified at worst, and, at best, valued more highly than a hard wage.

Permissiveness did not create our frailties; it offers the light of forgiveness. Now we must challenge ourselves to learn.

KIRK DOWNEY

Pasadena