Yeah, and they said the system of governance that they were establishing would only work as long as the people maintained high standards of morality. Which too many do not these days.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Amen to this ^...

In the worst days of the Great Depression, when many Americans were living in desperate poverty, our cities were largely free from the out-of-control crime and wanton violence that is so common today.

There are Zip Codes in Baltimore that have more homicides in a year than some states have in a decade...but because the press and local elected officials dare not discuss the elephant in the room that is the root cause of that (fatherless homes and a culture that tolerates lawlessness) they blame it on the nebulous term "gun violence" instead. As it somebody bent on killing someone else wouldn't do it if he had to use a tool other than a firearm...

I recall a front page Sunday news analysis I saw in the New York Times from the Fall of 1993 which, in addressing the crime problem, stated that a far greater factor than the easy availability of guns was "the high rate of illegitimacy."

Over the past seven decades -- starting in the early 1960s -- our society has removed the stigma from illegitimacy, and this has destroyed the nuclear family among many socio-economic groups in our society. The effects have been devastating.

Males who procreate recklessly, with no emotional commitment to the women who bear their children, are not committed to the rearing of those children, and the results are what we see on the evenings news.

Children need guidance, loving discipline, and righteous role models, in order to become decent, law abiding citizens. Yes, sometimes kids turn out badly despite having been brought up properly, and yes, sometimes they turn out well despite a lousy upbringing...but the absence of good parenting is never an advantage.

Unfortunately, when you bring this up and tie it into our crime problem, you are immediately attacked as being motivated by hatred, or you stand accused of trying to foist your ancient notions of morality off on others. So politicians and pundits talk about guns instead...

Yup, remember the flap over someone daring to say that the TV character Murphy Brown was setting the wrong example for young girls by choosing to get pregnant and have a child out of wedlock? Attacked is a pretty mild description of what happened to the person who dared say such a thing in public. Vilified would be a better description of the treatment they received.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

I have not given a like to any of the postings in this thread as I wish to acknowledge that I like all of them. All have done well.

I'm interested in this thread for many reasons but perhaps the most important is how many of us were raised by "good parents". My parents divorced when I was 8 or so. If we misbehaved in public we were corrected in public too. My father was seldom around after the divorce and mom worked her azz off to make thing better for us. None of us has spent time in jail though it was said by my aunt that likely I'd end up in the state hospital it didn't happen. Two things I absolutely despise are drunks/alcoholics and druggies. Lucky for me neither of my parents were drinkers or drug users, but I saw enough of it in the military to make me damn glad they weren't. Once my division chief was standing formation and he pissed his pants, and worse, he was so drunk he didn't even know he'd done it. Naturally I'd lost all respect for him long before that happened after seeing him come back from lunch and he was staggering into his office.

One thing I have noticed in reading all of this, we are, so it seems, all professionals in industries which respect "law and order" over chaos, which is only natural given our shared interest.


...Speak to us of Children.
...You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
THE PROPHET
KAHLIL GIBRAN

This takes some thought but once you have read it through a time or two you will get the message.

Americans as a whole have let all this stuff get out of hand. Somebody has got to have the guts to say Enough. Why should Society at large pay for your poor choices? We have guys who father 20kids with 7 women and we pay the tab.Housing, Medical, food & clothing- where does it stop. A lot of animals have more regard for their offspring.
There comes a point where nature will step in. Things are pretty much the same in all western countries. I think it is topping out and the grasshoppers are going to be forced to take responsibility for their own actions.

There was a story in the Baltimore Sun several years ago about a guy who'd been convicted of burglary, and at his sentencing he asked the judge for leniency because he was going to become a father twice in the next couple of weeks...

You can't make this stuff up...

Go into a Wally World or a Family Dollar sometime. Or even the Houston Galleria mall....

Any of those places will convince you that the Los Eisley cantina scene in the first Star Wars is a real place!

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The Last Standing Knight