How true that political decline mirrors the individual and social erosion of a people. It begins as men draw away from the traditions, icons, and virtues that symbolically set a people in motion. Since unaided Human Reason cannot account for the superiority of one value over another, that which is reverenced by the City succumbs to the eventual unraveling of its moral tapestry. Culture and the newly emancipated and unencumbered soul then begin their symbiotic dance: reflecting inflamed passion and desire for the new and uncharted regions of Being--morphing and mutating in a downward spiral of chaotic expression and viral incubation.  After the first generation has thrown off the insufferable shackles of moral constraint, each succeeding cohort diminishes into luxury and barbarism like a copy of a copy--growing more blurred and faint. It is here that the descent into voluptuousness and the Spirit of Narcissism proves corrosive to self-sustenance. The upending of the old regime...(Read Full Post)