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RE: Buh-bye
On the whole, I agree with you. I just take exception to one (relatively minor) thing.
Clinton lying under oath about his penchant for diddling young interns
This kind of thing simply shouldn't be on the radar when talking about our society's problems. I, personally, grant Clinton total forgiveness for lying under oath - simply because he was answering a question that never should have been asked. His sex life was simply none of our business - it's only the ultra-conservative moralizing busybodies who think it should be.
In all the rhetoric that surrounded the impeachment, we seem to have forgotten what the point of the investigation was: misconduct in the Whitewater land deal. One of the reasons we forget that is that we all know the real reason - it was a partisan witch hunt.
The OIC failed to find evidence of wrongdoing in Whitewater, so they extended the investigation to include charges of sexual harassment of Paula Jones. Nothing there. So they manage to catch him in a lie in which the truth was entirely irrelevant, and turn it into cause for impeachment. One of the more shameful examples of partisan politics in American history, IMO.
Clinton's blowjob was never important. Bush's WMDs are a whole different story. To all appearances, the administration completely manufactured evidence to create support for the Iraq invasion. This matters - Lewinsky doesn't.
he is correct that the liberty and morality that founded this country (and lets leave the religious discussion out of this--I'm referring to honesty and integrity here) has gone by the wayside to be replaced by everything being about 'me'.
I agree with the sentiment, but again, not so much the detail.
The problem isn't the "me" generation. The problem is that we no longer hold our government responsible. They lie to us daily and we bend over and take it.
And I do place a substantial amount of blame on religion. Not so much on religious belief per se, but in the "fake" religion that's so predominant. Many more people seem to merely pay lip service to religion than actually believe it - the strong evidence for this is the sheer ignorance most Americans have on the subject. I've been reading Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy, and he makes a really relevant point:
The effects of this exodus remain with us today, notably in our collapsing of religion into "values" and "values" into sexual morality, which in turn functions as an odd sort of circular reasoning as a proxy for religiosity. At least in popular parlance, what makes religious folks religious today is not so much that they believe in Jesus' divinity or Buddhism's Four Noble Truths but that they hold certain moral positions on bedroom issues such as premarital sex, homosexuality, and abortion.
This kind of religion is, to my mind, much more responsible for that "moral decay" than anything Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan can do.
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RE: Buh-bye
Rome didn't fall because of drunken orgies. The "moral decay" wasn't that sort - it was a decline in civic virtues. The growth of Christianity caused the citizens to focus inward - to look to their "heavenly" salvation, and to ignore their earthly problems. Instead of sending their sons to the army, they hired barbarian mercenaries, who eventually decided that they'd rather be giving the orders than taking them.
As to 'civic virtues', one of the biggest problems I see today is the lack of engagement by everyday citizens in the political process. From a simple lack of involvement in issues(except on rare occasions as exampled by the Pennsylvania legislators voting themselves a huge pay increase two years ago.) relevant to society.
Certain issues do coalesce voters--abortion, gun control, and lately immigration. But, this attention to issues only lasts as long as the next sound bite in the media. By the time the elections roll around, low voter turnout and the tendancy for those who do vote to simply vote along some antiquated sense of duty, so they vote their 'party' affiliation, keeps the same-old political parties (for the most part, there are exceptions) in power, and the same old politicians in office. Even though I consider myself a conservative, I vote with my conscience, and not along any single party line. My votes tend to go across the spectrum.
While social has been a continuing downfall in our society but lately it has been exacerbated by issues like the whole hanging chad debacle in FL, Clinton lying under oath about his penchant for diddling young interns, allegations of voter fraud across the country in elections ranging from local to national in scope, problems with these electronic voting machines---The list is endless. However, this just illustrates that the biggest problem with voters is the general malaise they feel because they feel their votes do not count.
You contend that the 'internal moral decay' exists only in the White House, I contend that romanizzo is correct in his assertation that it exists all throughout society. While his rhetoric about California, Manhatten, et.al. seems a bit extreme--indeed secession is a bit extreme, he is correct that the liberty and morality that founded this country (and lets leave the religious discussion out of this--I'm referring to honesty and integrity here) has gone by the wayside to be replaced by everything being about 'me'.
We write books on 'exit strategies' from companies we work for, asking questions like 'What Color Is Your Parachute'. Loyalty--in both directions--is long gone. Neither side is loyal to the other, we can't even be loyal to each other longer than 5 minutes.
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