Where is our nation headed? - An analysis from RenewAmerica...

Here's an outstanding and thoughtful "issues analysis" from Joshua Herring and Renew America: A mirror for the nation, a mirror for the soul.

Whether or not you're a Christian... or religious at all for that matter, consider reading this article carefully. A return to Christian values and morality doesn't imply a return to tyranny or religious persecution. It is, despite what many are learning in our public schools, a return to the historical strength of our nation.

Here are the headings and some snippets of the analysis by Joshua Herring:

What do we see in the mirror today as a nation?

Is America deteriorating so fast that by the time we realize it we will have become foreign to ourselves?

Americans are losing their sense of national identity and national destiny.

Two factors were more responsible for the failure of the new Russian government than any others.

First, there was the institution of socialism by the new government, destroying any incentive to work hard to excel. A lack of motivation to achieve in the lives of people always leads to restlessness and discontent. ...

The second factor that contributed so heavily to the failure of the Soviet Union was government endorsement of atheism. ...

An important parallel: leftist efforts to create a new Amerika.

... The rise of atheism in Russia began with a government decree that there was to be "freedom of religion for all religions, including atheism." From there, atheism just took over from the top down and choked the life out of the Christian Church with government authority. Considering some of this puts me in mind of things that have taken place in modern America. ...

The new religious establishment in America.

The move towards secular humanism in America began as a move of seduction. All the familiar rhetoric about "protection of constitutional rights and religious liberties" has been part of the seduction. Finally, the fruits of this moral decline are rousing the Christian community from its slumber and propelling Christians into action. Christians are becoming increasingly aware of how pervasive and thoroughly dominant humanistic thinking has become in our society. They also see how firmly entrenched and influential those who wish to go even further have become in American government.

Granted, unlike Russia, we haven't had a bloody revolution in modern America yet - or have we? How many millions of unborn babies have been sacrificed to date on the altars of hedonism, lasciviousness, and greed by secular forces in America? Liberals are always talking about such "progress."

Let's consider some of the "progress" made by American society since the year 1962. That is when the Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court decision ruled that prayer in public schools is unconstitutional, and paved the way for the tragic 1973 Supreme Court debacle, Roe v. Wade. These two rulings have virtually changed the face of our nation.

So let's consider the facts, shall we?

Those on the left commonly seek to justify their agendas by means of surveys, statistics, and theories. Liberal surveys, of course, are conducted according to biases and presuppositions, and the statistics are interpreted in the same manner. In spite of liberal statistics and theories, the fact of the matter is that many of the worst problems America is facing are directly related to a societal dismissal of biblical ethics and morality.

The result of four decades on a liberal treadmill.

The breakdown of the American family once divorce became as easy to procure as a box of cereal, combined with a societal de-emphasis on marriage itself, has arguably led to rampant drug abuse in America. In turn, these things have led to increased susceptibility and addiction to pornography. If you counsel porn addicts, you learn that as surprising as it may seem, they are looking for love more than for sex. Another result of the grip pornography has taken on American society has been an ever-increasing incidence of sex crimes. Those of a more perverse and heinous nature seem to be on the increase.

Liberals claim their programs and fixes are working. They say all that is needed is more programs, the allocation of more funds to support them, and more time to run them. A realistic view of conditions in this nation, however, tells a different story - none of this has been working. In spite of all the government "help" during the past four decades, Americans have sunk to the level of despair. The impact of this alone has been devastating. Their desperate search of something to fill the void and ease the pain has led to mass patronage of bookstores and theaters peddling trash that is among the primary sources of the mental and emotional instability that grips our nation. Politicians seeking legalization of this filth initially claimed: "It's only entertainment, and it will have no negative impact on people."

The truth is that pornography is like a narcotic. By means of use, an emotional dependence develops that invariably grows. Gradually, increased dosage is required to scratch an itch that becomes an insatiable drive as pornography tightens its grip on those victimized by it. It is a drive that also requires the introduction of new and more powerful (that is, perverse) stimuli, in the midst of futile efforts to find satisfaction or fulfillment in something that is harmfully addictive and void of substance. Porn users are drinking from a poisoned well - and pornography has the American public by the throat.

After legalization of pornography in America, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases began to increase dramatically. Today, the new generation of STDs is more dangerous than ever, and according to the National Cancer Institute, "about 10 percent of women at any one time have an oncogenic HPV infection." The most common STD, Chlamydia, causes sterility both in men and women, and the advanced stage may require removal of the uterus, tubes, and ovaries in women. Since cases involving noticeable symptoms of Chlamydia are few, 75% of those affected are unaware of it. Thus, they are likely to spread the disease while failing to get treatment before it reaches the advanced stage.

As liberals study their statistics and theorize, the incidence of child abuse in America, including that of a sexual nature, continues to rise steadily. News stories involving "sexual predators" are increasing at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, not only has the Supreme Court upheld the "constitutional right," so called, of people to engage in virtual child porn on the internet, but a pedophile club has been issued a business license to operate in an American city (San Francisco). What have we come to as a nation?

Another problem: America has become a jungle infested with gangs. When I was young, New York City was infamous for rampant gang violence, but that sort of thing was the exception--rather than the rule--in America at the time. Now, we have the same situation all across the nation in our cities, large and small. It is a problem that has reached epidemic proportions. The overall impact of all that I've been speaking about has been an ever-more fearful, bitter, aggressive, unstable mindset and atmosphere among our citizenry. America has gone from being the safest place in the world to nation in which people are afraid to go out alone after dusk, or to trust their closest neighbors.

How much more needs to be said about the destructive impact of godless humanism on our nation? What greater testimony could there be to the devastating impact of pornography on society than what we are witnessing all around us? Yet, secularists insist that these things have no connection with our country's rejection of the Providence upon which our nation has depended for so long. But there is more that must be said.

How far we have fallen?

Among roommates of the same sex, this would reward those who engage in sexual relations. What is a civil union? Exactly what is the qualifier? Look it up and read the requirements in Vermont (the only state thus far to adopt civil unions) and then ask yourself this question: What is to prevent heterosexual roommates from applying for and receiving governmental benefits? As sad as it is to say, you know that some persons would eventually do so. Will benefits be denied if they deny engaging together in sexual behavior? You know what the qualifier is.

Furthermore, anyone who says the gay rights movement is "only seeking equal rights" for homosexuals either lies, or simply doesn't know what they're talking about. The California State Senate passed a bill in 1991, AB101, which would have made it illegal to refuse to rent a room in a home on the basis of sexual preference.

As the leadership goes--so goes the nation

1 - In the sixties, we saw untamed passion released in our gifted nation, beginning with the sexual revolution and the corruption of our society at every level - as a result of progressive abandonment of traditional moral standards and restraints.

2 - In the seventies, we saw wanton power displayed in a nation that was strong, but which was beginning to weaken as it began to rot from within.

3 - After a brief break during the eighties, due to the Reagan presidency--during which time America seemed to be turning back towards God and regaining her strength--we stumbled into the nineties. For most of a decade, we saw the unteachable temperament of a privileged man during the Clinton era, which set the stage for multiplying the same attitude across our nation, even today.

Rebellion in America: Seed of liberty--or of decline, degradation, and devastation?

In the early 1940's, the Supreme Court ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated all the provisions of the First Amendment. This decision paved the way for a massive destruction of a former order of things in our nation. The Supreme Court facilitated this destruction by applying a doctrine they called "selective incorporation."

Using this tool, the Court, increasingly inebriated by newly arrogated power, gradually drew under its arbitrary power nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights under their jurisdiction. The task was completed by the sixties. As the Court went forward from there, things began to dovetail into a humanistic extravaganza that is now threatening to remove the influence of the Christian Church from American society altogether.

Where is America today?

Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, a church with about 12,000 members, said this:

There was a time when your word was your guarantee, when marriage was permanent, when ethics were assumed. Not so very long ago, heaven and hell were unquestioned, and caring for the poor was an obvious part of what it meant to be a decent person. Conspicuous consumption was frowned upon because it was conspicuous. The label "self centered" was to be avoided at all costs, because it said something horrendous about your character. Today, all that has changed. Not only is it different, but people can hardly remember what the former days were like. [3] (emphasis added)

Secular forces, with their relativism in the "marketplace of ideas," have brought about dramatic change both in American government and the Christian Church. As a result of this, the truth of American history and the traditional American heritage are being lost. We are raising a generation of kids who've never even seen an America in which the killing of babies wasn't legal. They've never seen an America in which true virtue, humility, moral restraint, and human dignity were common. They've never seen an America in which they couldn't watch television at home and see things that would have gotten people in the entertainment industry arrested not long ago--and why? BECAUSE THEY'VE NEVER SEEN AN AMERICA IN WHICH THE NAME OF CHRIST ISN'T TREATED AS IF IT WERE A DIRTY WORD IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN GENERAL.

The perverted secular gospel of tolerance.

"Tolerance, tolerance" is the clarion call that rings out across the nation in American universities and political circles today. What they're actually calling for, of course, is intolerance of everything that seeks to promote and preserve moral restraints!

Consider that if Christians hadn't been so inclined to be tolerant of things they disagree with, liberal agendas wouldn't have gotten as far as they have before the real fight began. Clearly, acceptance of disgraceful and degrading conduct in the name of "tolerance" - to justify intolerance of those who refuse to accept it - does not actually make someone broadminded.

This emphasis on tolerance is a hypocritical game played by secularists who masquerade as patriots. At the same time, they seek to obscure truth by means of subtlety and deception. If those things don't get the job done, secularists simply try to run over everyone who stands in the way of their insidious agendas. If they run up against someone who refuses to back down, or whom they can't run over, that person is labeled "narrow minded" --- possibly even a "bigot."

Many on the left think a strict sense of biblical morality is a form of a disease that produces "right wing extremists." They are convinced that if allowed to go unchecked, this can even drive someone to the point of becoming a morally crazed, mentally imbalanced throwback to the Middle Ages, not uncommonly referred to as a "fanatical right wing zealot."

Almost to a man, the Founding Fathers of America would have had such labels pinned on them by the liberal media today. This, despite the fact that our forebears fought for "liberty of conscience" that allowed people to be free from religion - but only to the point where it would not interfere with sound morality, or infringe upon the rights of Americans to live in peace, as the free Christian people they were meant to be.

The great deception (that liberalism is the way of the American founding).

Many of the people crying out for "tolerance" today have claimed for years that they wanted to take America back to its founding principles. Those people wouldn't have thrived in early American society at all. From the outset, America was a nation in which anyone maligning the Christian religion would, at the very least, find themselves on the wrong side of a judge's gavel.

How tolerant should we be?

Godless forces have been redefining things, twisting terminology, and abusing principles as they have unconscionably altered the law. Liberals have been virtually destroying the American heritage by manipulating of the Constitution.

The liberal bid for takeover of America cannot be allowed to go any further, for we are too close to the point of no return. The damage has been done not by the majority - but by humanists and atheists in the minority bullying their way to what they want. They will use any tactic that works, regardless of how unorthodox or unconstitutional it may be. All this has been facilitated by a runaway judiciary overrun with liberal justices who've been willing to spindle, fold, and mutilate the Constitution shamelessly.

We are in for a real fight to take back what has been lost in days to come. After a bully is allowed to take something away, a point comes when the bully believes he has a right to it. Look at the liberal opposition and listen to their rhetoric - you will realize that this point has arrived in liberal circles of America today.

This is only about half of the entire analysis. Read it all... here.

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