We are often inclined to think the problems we face today are modern in origin.  We believe that, within the last five to ten years, something drastic began to change.  In many ways, that's indeed true, for it's evident that many aspects of American culture and traditional Western culture have begun to erode ever more rapidly in recent years.  However, many of the social issues we are facing today have been rising incrementally for decades.

Over two decades ago, in February 1999, the then-president of the National Rifle Association, famed actor Charlton Heston, gave a speech at the Harvard Law School Forum.  His speech focused on the culture war within America and the entirety of the Western world.

(As a personal side note, when Heston gave his speech, I was an 8th-grader at Southside Middle School in St. Pete, Florida.  Two months later, two evil students engaged in the Columbine High School massacre.  Since then, we seem to hear about senseless shootings occurring on a regular basis, with society becoming increasingly desensitized.  Is this not a reflection of greater amoral degradation?)

What is most interesting is how accurate and, indeed, prophetic Heston was as he spoke of America's amoral slide.  He addressed issues that still have currency: attacks on the traditional family, the promotion of homosexual rights, the birth of the transgender movement, the challenges to the Second Amendment, the war on the police, pop culture's degradation, and the political left's constant attack on the foundations of the American system of governance.

Heston noted that the continued transformation of America into a land with no moral foundations, unless reversed, would eventually lead to a complete loss of the individual freedom that has been a cornerstone of the American experiment for over two centuries.

Image: Charlton Heston at the 1963 Civil Rights march by Roland Scherman (cropped).  Public domain.

As expected, the mainstream media in 1999 dismissed Heston's speech as the confused and delusional ramblings of an old man.  In fact, at the time, Heston was two years younger than the current occupant of the Oval Office.  Heston, however, was clearly mentally sound in thought and speech.

Today, in the 2020s, the American system of governance, which has always held the individual as sovereign, with rights derived from God Almighty, is being eroded into an authoritarian/totalitarian system in which ruling elites and technocrats control the masses and representative government is increasingly nonexistent.

This is happening now.  Present day.  Faster than ever.

Do not think for one second that the next party that controls the House of Politics, whether it's Republicans or someone else, will reverse this trend.  The civilizational moral dilemmas we are facing are much, much deeper than the divide in the political aisles of every state Legislature and Washington, D.C.

The core of our cultural decline today is, in many ways, is an issue of every human heart, which must decide to return to and preserve the nuclear family structure that is the core of any prosperous and enlightened civilization, and to rid our land of oppressive and despotic governance at all levels of government.  This can be accomplished only through massive peaceful dissent, beginning at the ballot box.

Do Americans have the will to recognize and stop these threats to their livelihoods and liberties?  Or will the complacent, reservist, and apathetic mindsets that have led us to this current low point in the culture war since Charlton Heston's speech continue?

Assuredly, the will of the people will decide — for ourselves, our children, and future generations.

If you don't have time to watch, you can read Heston's speech here.

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