<<It might surprise you, but, to a large degeree, I agree with you. I see America in a decline since probably the mid sixties. I see much of it due to a moral decline that then permeates throughout the culture. >>
I'm not really surprised, Professor, I know you've expressed those thoughts on Iraq before. But it's hard to agree on the moral decline because our standards of morality are very different. When you speak of moral decline, I'm sure you're thinking Roe v. Wade, gay liberation, gay marriage, pulling the plug on Terry Schiavo, stem cell research - - all stuff that I approve of and support, to varying degrees.
I'm not happy about abortions, I don't think it's a golden, shining moment for Western Civilization when a mother has to still the life within her for any reason. It's almost unbearably sad that something that began in an act of love is choked off and killed by the mother that nurtured it. I might not personally do it if I were a woman - - but I have to say that nobody can tell that woman what purpose her body is to be put to or what God expects of her - - that is her decision and hers alone. Similarly with gay liberation and gay marriage - - I would be devastated to learn that my son or my grandson were gay; there's no way I could turn that into something postitive. But would I support them or any other gay person in an effort to live their lives as they see fit, to marry or not without the State intervening to tell them what they can or cannot do? Absolutely.
"Moral decline" obviously is a very subjective assessment. I would say that in the right-wing areas of concern that they consider "moral values" (from which, curiously, most of them have excluded Thou-shallt-not-kill" violations from their area of concern, at least with regard to non-Christian victims) all seem to involve areas of Constitutional concern as well, and what they consider to be a moral decline, others might see as more of an expansion of Constitutional rights over how they were previously interpreted by the Courts.
