When a six-year-old brought a gun to school and shot his teacher, the first thought was that it was an accident.  When upon further review it was announced that it was intentional and deliberate, a sort of shock wave went through the population.  This was not just another incident, not just another step along the road to perdition.  Society is no longer slouching toward Gomorrah.  Like the expanding cosmos, the headlong race toward the edge of the cliff is actually accelerating.  This was a quantum leap, an order-of-magnitude increase.

When one observes the breathtaking increase in moral degeneracy, one is reminded of the biblical warning that the beast, knowing that his time is short, is seeking to devour whom he may.

Therein lies the core of the matter.  This is not a political problem, nor a philosophical exercise.  It has become painfully obvious that we are in a spiritual war.

There is no top-down solution for the problems besetting this nation.  The solutions can come only from the bottom of the social and political strata.  They must be based in the moral character of individuals.  Having abandoned the teachings of the Bible, we are reaping the whirlwind.  Having rejected the Creator, we are forfeiting the inalienable rights that are His gift to us.   

Modern liberals are not liberal at all; thus, they have become known by such terms as "woke."  They have a cacophony of aims, some of which are mutually exclusive and almost all of which involve the tearing down of institutions that they arbitrarily view as oppressive.  Chief among these are the nuclear family, law enforcement, churches, and any forms of expression with which they disagree.  In short, the woke are, in their aims and in their methods, dictatorial.  

At the center of much social controversy are traditional norms of sexual behavior.  To that end, the woke have succeeded dramatically in redefining marriage, most notably to include same-sex unions in that definition.  It has not ended there.  How could it?  Once the first barrier is broken down, it will repeatedly be crossed by more and more constituencies, claiming their share of the spoils of victory, under the banners of rights, freedoms, and social justice.  Notably absent is the concept of individual responsibility.  

It was only a matter of time before the definition of sex itself would be disestablished.  The question "What is a woman?" is one that a current member of the U.S. Supreme Court, a woman, claimed to be unable to answer, during a congressional hearing, while under oath.  We are clearly much farther into the sociological Twilight Zone than many of us could ever have imagined.   

There is a sense of unreality to all this.  Society is becoming more and more disoriented, less structured in terms of norms, and, as an inevitable result, more dysfunctional.  Indeed, the definition of what is "normal" has become so vague as to have lost all practical meaning.  If everything is normal, then nothing is.  If everything is a matter of personal opinion, then facts become irrelevant.  If your truth is not my truth, nor mine yours, then there can be no social contract.

Dysfunctional societies must eventually collapse.  Whether from internal strife or external invasion, they cannot survive.

The perplexing question, then, is what should the rules be?  Who gets to set them?  There are answers.  As President Reagan once said, "there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers."  

The simple answer was elucidated by the Founding Fathers.  It was both liberal and conservative, both traditional and revolutionary.  It drew heavily from history, and morally from the Bible.  While the Founders were tragically ambivalent regarding slavery, they were dead certain about the principles that eventually brought an end to that despicable institution.

The Founders knew what to tear down and what to build up.  They chose imperfectly, but correctly, setting the nation upon the right path.  

We have fallen from that path, and the consequences of doing so were never in doubt.  We will recover, but if we do not do so soon, then it may well be from the ashes of our self-destruction.

Image: Don Hankins via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.