When I was young, we heard over and over again that America was on its way to going down the path of all great empires, like Rome, and the degradation of cultural standards, religion, tradition, and moral decency are always at the heart of cultural decline. Star Parker and Rush Limbaugh addressed two aspects of our journey down that road and a look at what needs to be done to turn America around.
Reprogramming our destructive culture
Star Parker, author of Uncle Sam's Plantation touts pregnancy centers that actually give women a 'choice'
With the convictions in in the case against abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell – three counts of murdering live babies and one count of involuntary manslaughter – abortion is back in the national discussion.
It’s pretty clear from the Grand Jury report that, during Gosnell’s 30-plus-year career, he likely murdered hundreds if not thousands of babies. But because of the difficulty in documenting it all, he was just convicted of three.
Reports now are coming in from around the nation indicating that more Gosnells are out there.
The abortion lobby claims that as long as we have tight regulations on abortion, a black market will exist. Abortion, they argue, is like any product or service that consumers want and government prohibits or over-regulates. If they can’t get what they want legally, they will get it illegally.
We also hear that we get Gosnells when government refuses to pay for the abortions of poor women. The Hyde Amendment, they say, which prohibits Medicaid compensation for abortion, makes unsafe abortion inevitable.
Poor women, according to this reasoning, desperate because of an unwanted pregnancy, pressed because regulations and costs make abortion difficult to get, turn to sleazebag doctors, who will do it cheaply, with no regard for the woman, the law, or safety.
But it is ironic that those who call themselves “pro-choice” argue that the only alternatives facing low-income women are unsafe abortions done by sleazebags or government-subsidized abortions.
There is another choice, but those who call themselves “pro-choice” don’t want women, particularly poor women, to consider this option.
This option is called birth.
When conservatives talk about a culture of responsibility, we’re not just talking about the personal responsibility of the individual in trouble. We’re talking about the personal responsibility of the rest of us toward that individual.
There are now thousands of crisis pregnancy centers operating nationwide. Over 2,000 are affiliated with either Care Net or Heartbeat International. I maintain a regular active speaking schedule for and consult with these centers.
They work with pregnant women in trouble and provide them the services they need to have their child. They provide ultrasound, parental counseling, life management counseling, help with the physical needs of the mother and child, and, if need be, help with adoption services.
Unwanted pregnancies often are the result of loneliness, fear and lack of information. Crisis pregnancy centers deal with all this.
The left, so called “pro-choice” activists, have an interesting concept of a culture of responsibility. That is to promote a culture that detaches sex from love and responsibility, that minimizes the central importance of family, that justifies youth sex, promiscuity and the “hook-up” culture. In short, a culture that encourages people to relate to each other in the same callous way as it encourages women to relate to the unborn children that often result from it all.
Then they want taxpayers, other people, to foot the bill.
Is it any wonder we live in a country in which we are drowning in debt that’s the direct result of this culture of entitlement?
Planned Parenthood, which rakes in hundreds of millions in the abortion business, actively discourages women from going to crisis pregnancy centers.
On the Planned Parenthood website, they call these centers “fake clinics … that have a history of giving women wrong and biased information.”
These crisis pregnancy centers are financed and run by committed Christian Americans where often women, for the first time in their lives, experience love and meaning.
The information they get, that Planned Parenthood calls “wrong and biased,” is that life should be chosen over death and that responsibility is a community affair.
It is not a given that we must live in a country of promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies and abortion. We do have choice.
We can reprogram the destructive culture we have created and in which we now live.
Rush Limbaugh ran the following segment on his radio show this week: Social Media, the Hookup Culture -- and the Insidious Quest for Fame
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: As you know, ladies and gentlemen, I constantly use the phrase "on the cutting edge of societal evolution." One of the things I mean by that is that if you are a regular listener to this program, in many cases, you will hear things discussed long before they reach the mainstream, long before they reach the popular culture. One of those areas that I have been -- I don't know if "warning" is correct, but at least I've been -- highlighting, is the phenomenon of social media.
One of the things that always bothered me about it was the pop culture's temptations. People, young kids are desperately wanting fame, doing anything they can to get noticed or to become famous, thinking that it's glamorous, that it's fun, that it will make them rich. It has, in fact, given rise to all kinds of gossip networks, television newspaper columns, you name it. Even though gossip's been around for a long time, it's now become mainstream.
Entertainment programs, starting actually with Entertainment Tonight and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, were programs that created an impression that if you became famous, that the world was your oyster. Everybody wants to be noticed and everybody wants their life to matter, and everybody wants to be cool, and everybody wants to be hip. So with the advent of social networks on computers and mobile devices, it became possible for young people to start connecting in any which way they wanted to.
It was a phenomenon I noticed many years ago. Young people were just giving up every bit of information about themselves they could. They were violating their own privacy, seeking fame, wanting everybody to know everything about them, publishing nude photos of themselves, lewd photos, you name it. As one that's concerned about the overall culture, I happen to believe that a society's culture is a harbinger of what kind of country you're going to be.
Now, I've always had to avoid and be cognizant of the fact that as people grow older and then look at other generations, they think, "Oh, my God, this is horrible! It has never been this bad, this raunchy, this debauched. The country's finished." You have to avoid that because every generation looking at young people thinks that. So you have to be constantly vigilant that you don't become an old fuddy-duddy when looking at these things. At the same time, you have to be honest about it.
I really am governed here by love as I do this show each and every day. When I say these things, I mean them. I want a great country. I want people happy. This has got to be a great country if we are to continue to provide the opportunity, both economic and spiritual, for freedom that this country has always provided, more so than any other country ever. A great country is only as great as its people, and at some point people have to get serious.
At some point when they grow older and mature, they have to get serious, and certain things have to be revered, including certain cultural things. There have to be "guardrails," to borrow a term that I once saw on a Wall Street Journal editorial about just out-of-control pop culture. Morality, the sense of right and wrong, personal responsibility, all of those things are fundamental. Who teaches that? The schools are not.
Social media is, of course, obliterating those concepts. It's just exact opposite. The role is more important now than ever, and it's really up to parents. If you happen to believe, for example, that the culture is out of control, and if you would phrase it in a way to say, "The genie is out of the bottle," how do you put the genie back in the bottle? You don't. You never can put the genie back in the bottle.
But what you can do is start anew with a certain generation and try to raise them/educate them in ways that send them in different directions than the temptations that exist now. And they're always there. I don't want to be misunderstood. This kind of thing has gone on as long as the country has. But, however, there are factors now that exist that didn't. I've always been... Without being able to put my finger on it, I've been worried about what is going to happen to people who just dive head first into this anything-goes, no-judgment culture where there is no more privacy.
There is no concern for it, and people just want everybody to know everything about them every minute of the day -- what they're doing, what they're thinking, where they're going, when they got there, how long they're gonna be there, when they're leaving. There are apps for such things for people's mobile devices, and one of the things that has been around for a while (I first heard of it way back in the nineties) was the notion of "hooking up," something that scared particularly mothers like crazy.
It's just the notion of having meaningless sex -- and not even for the sex, not even for the enjoyment. It's just to say you've done it, just to be able to brag about it and so forth and taking meaning out of it. These kinds of things take place when you're young, and as you get older and grow up, everybody looks back on things when they were younger. Some people get embarrassed. Some say, "Gee, I wish that didn't happen. I wish nobody knew that." That's gonna be tougher and tougher for people to pull off. Because as young kids get exposed to all the social media, they're telling everybody everything they're doing.
I mean, we're getting to the point now where I think it's gonna be common that candidates for political office will have posted nude photos of themselves (or worse) on social websites. The first known example of that that I can recall is a woman that's now a cohostette on MSNBC. Her Name Is Krystal Ball. She may not be the first but she's the one that comes to mind. She ran for office. She lost, but there are nude photos (sic) of her that she had posted. Her opponent decided to use them and she was outraged that such things would be used.
Anthony Weiner --- who, by the way, is gonna run for office again. He's gonna run for mayor of New York, and you ought to see the New York Post. Their Web app, if you have an iPad and you get the New York Post... This is not on their website, and I don't know that it's in the newspaper. I don't read newspapers. It may be in the printed edition, but I know it's in the iPad version. There's a column by Andrea Peyser on Weiner, who is the husband of Huma Weiner. Hillary's Huma.
She just rakes him over the coals as most everybody's doing, and then there's a sidebar called "the Twitterati Response," and it's people on Twitter issuing comments about the potential reemergence of Weiner. It's hilarious, some of these comments. I didn't print it out. I'll do it; I'll share some of it with you. Well, the reception is all across the gamut. He's getting a warm reception in some places. Everybody's happy. "Weiner's rising again!" All the typical things.
But the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is lamenting, "Oh, my God! Woe is us if this guy wins. Oh, it's our bad if this guy wins." Why is he saying that? Anthony Weiner is a perfect liberal. Anthony Weiner is an ideal liberal. He's a combative liberal. He will take conservatives to the back alley and beat 'em up every day. If he hadn't posted the nude photos of himself and his member to the babes, he'd be right in there. He'd be on the ladder cruising to the top of liberalism.
But why do they care? This is the kind of thing that normally launches liberals to great heights. This kind of embarrassment or failure is a resume enhancement for these people. But it isn't, you see? This is my point. Even for liberals it isn't. He's gonna have his problem here. Krystal Ball had hers. It's gonna become more and more frequent. Folks, look, I'm not an old fuddy-duddy. It just concerns me, only from the standpoint that you want serious people.
You want at least 5% of the population being serious. That five, 6% of the population carries the rest of the people. You've heard that old axiom: 5% of the people pull the wagon; 95% are in it. You need five or 6% of the population serious about things: Their jobs, their careers, the country, understanding it. You need that. I'm just all for anything that continues to teach that, and cause people to respect it and to revere it. I cringe... I mean, I laugh, too, but I cringe when I see videos of these man-on-the-street interviews that Leno does. People are clueless. They don't know diddly-squat about things.
Anyway, I've gotta take a break here. I have a couple of sound bites I want to play because this is finally now reached mainstream media. My point about being on the cutting edge of societal evolution. I've been warning, talking about this for at least 20 of the 25 years that I've been doing this program here at the EIB Network. I bring to it a certain experience. I have lost my anonymity. I know what it's like to lose your anonymity and I know what it's like to have no privacy.
I know what it's like to not be able to go anywhere and do anything anonymously. And I'm telling you, when you lose that and you can't get it back, that's a huge regret, and there are a lot of people that want that. And I don't think it's healthy, and I think it leads to distorted values and distorted decisions that people make about their lives and a number of other things that are not healthy for them and the country the large. Now, again, do not confuse me with an old fuddy-duddy like my parents who thought the world was coming to an end because the Beatles had long hair. That's not where I'm coming from here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A minor correction. And this, by the way, feeds into my point. I got it wrong about Krystal Ball. She did not pose nude. The Krystal Ball photos were not nude. The photos depicted her doing sexually suggestive things at a party. Well, my memory was that the controversy was over nude photos. This is how things get wrong or made wrong, and then amplified as wrong and then, "No, no, it wasn't a nude photo, gosh, can't anybody get it right?" You people that want all this fame, get used to everybody being wrong about you.
At any rate, just a correction here. They were not nude photos of Krystal Ball on her website, for her blog, whatever it was. They were just photos of her doing sexually suggestive things. I have no idea if they're still online. Literally no idea. You know what? I'm not interested. This is my point. What, are you sitting in there all excited now to find the pictures? Well, I'm not the least bit inspired to go try find them.
At any rate, this morning on Fox Martha MacCallum had a guest who has written a book about this phenomenon called hooking up, and the guest was Donna Freitas. And I think that's how she pronounces the name. Her book is: "The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy." And Martha MacCallum said, "Where do we go from here? How does this affect, or does it affect these kids' relationships as they go through life?"
FREITAS: One of the things that I think we really need to talk about as a culture is what is the meaning of sex, given hookup culture. You showed those words that students will use, "regretful" and "empty" and "ashamed," you know, that 41% of students, you know, and how they respond to hooking up. But there's another middle group, about 30% of students, who are really ambivalent. And I think that group is getting bigger because I think students are getting much better at hooking up, which means they're getting better at having ambivalent sex. The sex isn't about fun or even really about pleasure. It's about getting it done and being able to say that you did it.
RUSH: That's right. And that last part is the key. What are you frowning at? Snerdley said, "So what? What's wrong with this, people having sex, who in the world could be upset with that?" Is that what you're saying? Well, she went out there and she did surveys of these students. She talked to the students, I guess. (interruption) Well, I don't know, she did a book on it, Snerdley. She talked to the students and the students told her, and that's what she based her book on. Any, here's what Martha MacCallum said in response it.
MACCALLUM: That's the whole thing, just documenting, 'cause we live in this media culture where it's like, you know, the numbers and just doing something just to say you did it or to take pictures of the event and then put it out there online so you can prove to everybody that you're having a great time.
FREITAS: They're getting better at hooking up. You know, when they're better at being able to walk away and say, "You know what, I don't feel a thing. I don't want to see that person again. It didn't really mean anything to me."
RUSH: Now, this has been going on, this hookup business, for years, folks. And it is meaningless, and it is just a belt notch. But you know one of the most dangerous things about all this social media is? And I think it's gonna be a big challenge for anybody that has to deal with kids and young adults. It's not just this quest for fame and giving up all the privacy. Most kids are insecure, it's safe to say. And when they read all of this social media, what they are really seeing is all the stuff they are not doing. They see all the stuff other people are doing and they say, "I'm not doing all that," and they're gonna get inferiority complexes over this, which creates its own set of problems. They're gonna set out trying to fix this. It's a snowball effect.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I tell you, all this stuff is not good, folks. Look at what feminism has done for women. Look what feminism's done for everybody. It's just confused everybody and made most people miserable. We got more. We'll be back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I want to close the loop here on the hooking-up business, but for me it's much more than that. The hooking up is just one characteristic of the phenomenon that's happening. The hooking up business has been going on a long time. Tom Wolfe wrote a nonfiction book called Hooking Up in 2000. He said a lot of kids that are hooking up don't know each other's names. So it's not just this babe that talked to the students, Snerdley. It's Tom Wolfe. Are you gonna tell me Tom Wolfe doesn't know what he's talking about?
I do think that it's a phenomenon. I don't question that it's happening. Look, Bill Clinton didn't ask Monica her name 'til the sixth date. This hooking up can happen. It's happened throughout. I know. The sixties, the free love and the free sex. But look what that begot us. That's my whole point. I mean, we are living some of the trash that happened in the 1960s, and some of those people -- many of them -- assumed office, political office, high power in the Clinton years. It's demonstrably problematic. There's no question that it is.
The disintegrating values? The idea that the IRS, all these institutions can be used to intimidate political foes? That stuff has roots in the sixties. That's actually a very good point about this. But I want to bring it down even more locally than that, and not just tie it to what happens when people end up into politics from this. I'm actually more concerned just about their lives in general. I'm telling you, this willingness that these kids have to just vomit everything about themselves to everybody and give up their privacy, and give up their anonymity...
It's not so much just that; it's why they're doing it. This quest for fame, I'm telling you, it is insidious to me. It's copycats. You know, fame by itself is how you get Kardashian. Now, people who become famous after having done something -- a major achievement, major accomplishment -- that's one thing. But fame for its sake is a pursuit that is empty, and it's endless, and it's never satisfying. But the big problem with all of this social media in addition to the obvious, and I think one of the most dangerous things about it...
Look, I don't have kids, but I've got nephews and nieces. More than that, I really do care. All of this concern for me is about country. When I tell you that I want a great country, I mean I want self-reliant, rugged individuals taking care of themselves and their families. That's how you get Norman Rockwell communities and neighborhoods and towns. That's how you get decency and respect and a common, valuable culture. I think that you have that crucially important.
Yeah, it may sound old-fashioned and it may sound like I want to go back to the fifties and the Donna Reed shows. No, no. That's not what I'm talking about. The stuff I'm talking about is timeless, and these characteristics are the things that used to be commonly taught. Honor, valor, honesty, integrity. That's all I'm talking about. It's things like this that people laugh at today, but people are just willingly abandoning any hope, any chance of having those characteristics about themselves.
The debasement of the language is part of that; you see that now in prime time TV. The debasement of the language is happening really quickly. Taken in isolated chunks it isn't any big deal. But the cumulative, year-after-year impact of this is not good for the country. That's always been my concern. It's my concern with politics: Its effect on the country and the people. The people of the country are what matter to me. Having the continued opportunity to do what they want, to fulfill their dreams.
Have the desires and dreams be things of importance and substance, rather than fleeting, fly-by-night things that really don't offer any substantive satisfaction. It's a real change for parents today, I would think. I'd think it would be a real challenge, especially for parents of young girls. I just think it would be an absolute nightmare out there today, constant concern, worry. You start talking about hooking up stuff, just one thing. But the biggest danger, I think -- or one of the most dangerous things -- about all this is not just this quest for fame and the giving up of all privacy.
Add to this that most kids are insecure, and then add another human characteristic, and it is this: The grass always looks greener. Everybody. I don't care who you are, you always think everybody else is happier. Everybody else is more normal. Everybody else doesn't have the problems you do. It's just a natural thing to think. A lot of people think this way. And when you start reading social media or watching television shows and you see depictions of people in certain ways, and you know that that doesn't in any way depict you?
Then what does that make you feel like if you're not emotionally secure? I think that all the social media just adds to this. You add up this natural insecurity that everybody has, particularly amplified in kids, and this idea that the grass is always greener and that somebody else's life -- everybody else's life -- is more fulfilling and better than yours or whatever. It's just a fact of life for most people. When young kids read all of this social media... There's tons and oodles of it out there.
When they read all this stuff and they see all the stuff they're not doing... My dad used to tell it to me this way. He said, "Son, all your friends bragging to you about all the things they're doing are lying to you. All they're doing is telling you the things they wish they were doing, and they're just trying to impress you," and that's social media. How many people are lying about where they are every night going to these clubs or whatever it is they're doing that they think is fun.
You've got these kids sitting at home not do all this stuff, reading about it -- and, man, all they're seeing is things that they're not doing. Compared to everybody else who seems to be really having a ball out there. "Gosh, my life is boring at hell! Look what all these people are doing!" What's it gonna make 'em want to do? Kids lie about their social achievements like everybody else lies about their social achievements: To impress everybody.
You've got this wild collection of insecurity and kids reading all this. In addition to the complex they could develop, because they think they're missing out on all this cool stuff, that creates its own set of problems. Either depression or a madcap desire to catch up and experience all these things that they think are cool, that people really aren't doing but they think they are. Now, none of this is new in a psychological sense. I'm not saying any of this is new and hasn't been the case before, but the sheer volume of all this stuff that they can expose themselves to could be overwhelming.
I've always had a bad feeling about it.
I don't even have any kids, but I've always had a bad feeling about it, knowing in my own limited way what losing your anonymity means, what it really means, and whole business of fame. Nothing is ever what you really think it is. When you're young -- when you're any age -- and you're imagining a promotion at the job or you're imagining new place to live or whatever? When you finally get there, it's never really entirely what you think it is. There are always things about it you didn't consider. It's just... I don't know. It's a problem for parents, and I think it just becoming more and more intensified.
In fact, I have call. Let me grab a call on this. This is Jeff in Goshen, New York. Hi, Jeff. I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks so much for having me on.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I heard your comments on social media, and I had to call in. You hit the nail on the head. These kids have no idea what they're giving up in way of their privacy when you put this stuff out there. I'm actually the director of the IT department for a manufacturing group. So I've done a... I thought I did a good job at educating my kids. I have four kids: Two girls, two boys. The girls being the oldest. One's a teenager, and she dabbled in social media.
She kinda went around my back a little bit to dabble in it, and when I found out, I showed her with just her e-mail address all the information I can pull up -- on her Vines account, her Instagram, her Ask.fm -- and I said, "If I can do it, anybody can do it." These days kids don't know what they're giving up, and I think what's worse is the parents don't know what their kids are doing or what their kids are giving up. And we're doing a terrible job in the schools. They're not educating kids.
RUSH: Well, that's another aspect because the kids are so far ahead of parents on what you can do online. Parents have no concept.
CALLER: No. And Facebook, I know a lot of the teenage kids today, they don't want Facebook 'cause mom and dad are on it. So they're finding other things, and my only advice to parents is, "Know what your kids are doing. Talk to them about it." You know, I use the stuff. I like social media for its positive aspects. But Rush, you and I know, you can take the best tool in the world that's made for good purposes, and turn it for evil things. And that's what happens with the social media sites.
RUSH: That's a good point. I'm not preaching. I don't want anybody to think I'm preaching, and I don't want anybody inferring that I think this stuff should be shut down. Far from it. That's not at all a possible solution, not even something I contemplate. It's a reality that has to be dealt with. You're right, it's a challenge for parents in raising kids. It just gets harder and harder to do. There are just more and more distractions. More temptations, and do what you can to provide a solid moral foundation. And after a certain point, you're done. There's not much you can do, and then, it's true, people have to live. They have to live their lives. They have to make mistakes to learn from 'em, and you hope that the foundation you gave 'em is sufficient that when they do screw up, have embarrassing things happen or whatever, that there is a foundation from which they can learn from it and not repeat it. Anyway, Jeff, I appreciate the call. I really do.
When we come back, folks, I just wanted to get into this because it's finally reached the pinnacle here of the pop culture, the mainstream culture, talking about this, and you've been on the cutting edge. We've been talking about this for many, many moons now.
END TRANSCRIPT
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Christmas! It comes but once a year, but what a warm and joyous holiday it is. No other holiday in America boasts such a wealth of traditions and customs. Christmas is familiar songs, delicious food, gifts and greeting cards, as well as brightly lit trees and red-ribboned wreaths, Santa Claus and stockings. But all these traditions didn’t come from the same place, as did the people who brought them to America.
Alex Greene is the Investment Director of 