I am stirred into responding to the article written in 1998 by Christina Hoff Sommers, Professor of Philosophy, Clark University: Are We Living in a Moral Stone Age? Written from the perspective of one who is charged to educate our nation’s youth, she seems to be deeply concerned with the evident deficiency of moral sensibility exhibited by a large number of them. Professor Sommers’ description of these young people as morally confused is troubling.

“This is a generation of kids that, despite relatively little moral guidance or religious training, is putting compassion into practice. Conceptually and culturally, however, today’s young people live in a moral haze. Ask one of them if there are such things as “right” and “wrong,” and suddenly you are confronted with a confused, tongue-tied, nervous, and insecure individual.”

            I am struck by the fact that the professor recognizes a deficit of moral or religious training in today’s youth, while at the same time having identified no apparent lack of compassion. Compassion is defined in the Encarta Dictionary: English (North America) as: “sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help”. Compassion and sympathy, even when inciting one into taking measures intended to ameliorate the suffering of others, may be expressed with little consideration for moral correctness. On several occasions I have witnessed the compassionate expression of sympathy demonstrated, for instance, in the friend of a bereaved alcoholic or crack addict supplying his or her bereaved friend with alcohol or illegal drugs as a gesture of compassion and sympathy. In these cases there definitely exists compassion and a desire to help, but where is the morality in such actions? In other cases, compassion and the desire to help

do not necessarily produce any action on the part of the compassionate sympathizer. The compassionate individual says:  “Oh, I feel so sorry for Joe. I wish there was something I could do!” For many in today’s society, this kind of sentiment alone gives them a sense of moral complacency.

            I believe some insight may be found in an earlier passage from Professor Sommers’ article:

“Most of the students I meet are basically decent individuals. They form wonderful friendships and seem to be considerate of and grateful to their parents—more so than the baby-boomers were. In many ways they are more likable than the baby-boomers—they are less fascinated with themselves and more able to laugh at their faults.”

Many of today’s morally challenged youth are the progeny of morally deficient baby-boomers; a generation which in itself, it can be argued, was spoiled into a perverted sense of superiority, brashness, egotism, and pomposity and who continue to show a disdain for the institutions and principles upon which this nation was built . Combine these attributes with a 1970’s era disrespect for governmental, and subsequently parental, authority, due to the unpopularity of the Viet Nam war and the advent of a “If it feels good, do it” philosophy and one will begin to understand how and why American society has come to embrace a “moral Stone Age”. The renunciation of faith, the bringing of homosexuality out of the closet and into the curriculum, while conversely, removing God and The Ten Commandments from the schoolhouses and public squares of this country, has brought with it the natural consequence of   “Conceptual Moral Chaos” and “The Loss of Truth” in our society’s youth. Are we living in a moral Stone Age? Yes, but we did not arrive at this sad state of affairs entirely by accident. Mostly, it is the result of the

radically liberal and secularized views disseminated by the majority of those now occupying positions of authority in our schools, churches, courts and political offices. 

Sadly, our students are living in the moral Stone Age many present-day parents, educators, entertainers, and policy makers have led them to embrace.

            Ever since the Vietnam conflict and its questionable politics, which did not seem to justify our reasons for having gone there, there seems to have developed, as a result, a movement by some in our society whose proclivity is to reject the whole idea of America, and American values, as the moral and ethical leader of the world’s governments. Because of the mistaken approach our politicians took with regard to that conflict, in what actually was a Cold War skirmish between the Soviet Union and the United States of America and a rather awkward attempt to abort the further spread of the Soviet Communists’ influence in that part of the world, those of every cynical, hedonistic, and subversive stripe became emboldened by the seeming dent in America’s moral armor.

And so, we have, all too willingly it appears, consigned ourselves and our nation over to an inclusion of the subversive elements in society; after having drugged and sexed ourselves into a state in which we have come to concede that we have no moral authority at all, after all. 

As a result of having given credence to the lie of moral relativism and political correctness, which allow for on-demand abortion of innocent lives and which holds that marriage between two men is as morally acceptable as life-sustaining marriage between a man and a woman, we are fast becoming a culture of death. All-too-eager to reject anything that hints at a Judeo-Christian ethic, we have become a society rushing headlong towards our own annihilation.

It is no wonder to me, then, that under the emblem of “political correctness” we have become a nation with no set of cohesive moral values and one so divided into our own little “special-interests” groups that we cannot find it in our collective will to mount any effective defense against an enemy that suffers from no such confusion in the unity of his convictions.

The use of “harsh interrogation practices” such as prolonged standing or “water-boarding”, when employed by those entrusted with protecting us and our children from the Islamic fascist, throat-cutters, who plot daily on how to kill as many of us “infidels” as they can, and who address the “rights” of  homosexuals by executing them, causes cries for new Congressional investigations.  American liberals and the “politically correct” are quick to condemn our military service. Many of these “moral” Americans are appalled that our government has employed such tactics and lay claim to a sense of moral outrage that Americans should resort to such inhumane tortures. Virtually all of these same Americans are silent or stumble over their tongues in making excuses for the savage Islamic maniacs when they perform, for the entire world to see, their barbaric beheadings and suicide bombings of innocent men, women, and children. The same Americans who advocate for new laws against “hate speech” on the radio stations, line up to see the Hitler caricature president of Iran spew hatred for all things American or Israeli while they are preparing the “red carpet” treatment for him at one of our nation’s most “prestigious” Ivy League universities; applauding as he and his collaborators continue to wage their jihadist war of religious intolerance against the very freedoms they claim to hold so dear.

            One thing, however, is certain; this nation is in the throes of a moral and ethical dilemma. We will remain ill-prepared to defend ourselves from the enemy without, until we learn how to purge the demons within. Societal cohesion is rooted in shared moral and ethical values and is the best defense we can ever have. Shared values are what once made this country so steadfast as a beacon of hope and prosperity.  We were once proud to be called the United States of America. We as a nation would do well to reattach ourselves to the anchor of our great traditions. The Judeo-Christian ethic, however unpopular in today’s society, is a life-sustaining ethic. I fear that a society that embraces an ethic of “abortion rights”, “homosexual marriages”, “moral relativism”, and "political correctness" is embracing an ethic of societal annihilation.