Daniel Patrick Moynihan could never have imagined how far down America might define deviancy when he penned his seminal essay Defining Deviancy Down.
The diplomat, scholar and four-term Democratic Party senator from New York theorized that deviant behavior had become so pervasive, we must redefine it simply to cope as a nation.
“I wrote that there is always a certain amount of deviancy in a society,” Moynihan said of his 1993 essay. “But when you get too much, you begin to think that it’s not really that bad. Pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.”
Millions of Americans are now accustomed to some of the most destructive behaviors imaginable, and recent examples of this demonstrate a breathtaking repudiation of human morality.
An American president publicly expressed support for the surgical mutilation of children. Taxpayers are funding drag queen story hours for three year olds. High school girls are banned from their own locker room because they are uncomfortable sharing it with a boy. A teacher badgers her students not to “judge people just because they wanna have sex with a 5-year-old.”
What used to be defined as medical malpractice, criminal molestation, voyeurism and rape is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged and, in some cases, required. It is deviancy defined so downward, it’s positively subterranean.
This descent into cultural mayhem has been a long, slow grind. We like to blame politicians and the news media and Hollywood for this catastrophe but it’s also important to look inward.
The laws, policies and mores of society are written by humans but we have been too willing to permit bad law at the expense of the laws that are written on the heart. These are laws that people innately understand, most simply described as knowing right from wrong.
Your neighbor irritates you but you don’t vandalize his home because that’s wrong. The guy who stole your parking space at the grocery store is a jerk but you don’t key his car because that’s wrong. You may consider taking somebody’s stuff when nobody is looking but you don’t because that’s wrong.
These laws are written on our hearts by God. Jeremiah the prophet wrote how the Lord declared, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” The new covenant foretold by Jeremiah was validated in the epistle to the Hebrews, in which God says, “I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.”
People can have reasonable disagreements over things like tax policy and immigration law. But some things, like raping children and mutilating youngsters, have never been topics of debate in civilized society. That’s because the laws governing such behavior are among those written on our hearts.
Or so we thought.
America today is reflecting what the apostle Paul knew when he wrote in his letter to the Romans, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not be done.”
When we abandon the law written on our hearts, we invite moral hazards. Killing becomes commonplace. Theft runs rampant. Lies and slanders are expected and countenanced. The protection and nurturing of children is supplanted by abuse and exploitation for the pleasure of evil adults.
There are indeed laws that are written on our hearts. But perhaps the time has come to demand civic recognition of these laws rather than simply abide by them. We’re tempted to remain silent because vocalizing these laws might be seen as confrontational, but we become complicit when we refuse to denounce some of the most heinous deviancy in the human experience.
Those promoting and defending the mutilation and rape of children are not simply misguided people. They are malicious individuals whose advocacy on behalf of evil is creating a culture that would horrify Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His analysis of America nearly 30 years ago was wise and the passage of time has revealed his prescience. But not even he could have anticipated what is happening today.
These cultural defects are not normal. This is not a subjective judgement but an objective observation, in that these defects are outside the statistical norm. But the statistical norm is shifting, rapidly. It is shifting because deviancy is being vigorously promoted by the American Left. It is defining deviancy so far down, our fundamental morality as a species is being obliterated, one perversion at a time.
Historians bicker about who said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” but there is no bickering about the truth of that observation. Every shred of this deviancy is coming from the political Left and it is designed to destroy America. Good men must do something about the destructive behavior of which Moynihan warned us before it’s too late.
The roots of the moral and spiritual decline we are seeing presently began some centuries ago.. It all stated very slowly. At first it was just setting out that the earth was not at the center of the universe. It is almost totally unknown. that Galileo was not opposed because he could present a mathematical system that put the Sun at the center, and the earth rotating on its axis in orbit around the central Sun. The cleric Ballermine, stated that as long as Galileo held his position as an hypothesis, there would be no problem. It was when Galileo stated that it was reality not just a hypothetical system, conflict with the Catholic Church ensued. With the advent of relativity theory, It was realized the conflict was actually unnecessary. It could be said that Ballermine was closer to a relativistic view of the situation than Galileo. However, the Copernican system that Galileo championed became the “scientific” view for generations to come. In the minds of many this was a blow to the idea that the earth was a special creation with a central place in God’s plan.
I thing this viewpoint is going considerably to far!
First, our sun is NOT the center of the universe! That it IS the center of our planetary system in no way that I have ever seen or been told, any reduction of the majesty and position of “God, creator of the universe”.
Second, I tend to view most of the observations in the article to the decline of nuclear families aided and abetted by the abnegation of organized religion to far better proclaim and teach its beliefs. Empty pews are caused by rote performance of rituals without sufficient teaching of the principles behind it. Empty ritual performance only teaches that you are stuck in the past and it pronounces loudly and clearly to those dwindling congregants “we are fifty years behind the times and that’s the way we want it!” Sorry, that just doesn’t cut it!
The left is exceptionally aware of these factors and it works very hard to exploit them! Nothing new here. We are where we are because our religious leaders have abandoned their callings if they ever had them in the first place. This gives license for biological fathers to abandon their families without fear of any real penalties and the same sometimes to errant mothers as well with ever more negative consequences.
These statements are admittedly generalizations and a longer more detailed article should be written. We’ll see.
With the rise of the uniformitarian historical geology of Charles Lyell, which provided the longer time frame needed for the rise of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the Noachian world wide flood, with its geology of catastrophism, was pushed aside. Then came the Darwinian theory itself. With the establishment of these “sciences” the final blow to a biblical view took place. The age of the earth began to increase in the minds of men, and man himself was no longer created in the image of God, but arose from lower life forms. by way of an “evolutionary process”.
The impact of these developments helped the rise of Marxism and Nazism in the 20th century.
Presently the evolutionary worldview dominates the west, and even the world as a whole. It must also be said, that the dominant position of modern science is one of atheistic materialism. This is not to say that all persons involved in the scientific enterprise are atheists, but the view of science itself has moved into a strict materialism where only materialistic explanations are allowed as scientific “fact” or “truth”.
The pace of moral confusion and decline are now accelerating. A secularist/atheist worldview is now bringing about moral conditions that few secuarists, of years gone by, would have thought possible. This accelerating process may have dire ramifications for the near future. The question is, now that the modern worldview in the west has essentially cast off the Judeo-Christian view for an evolutionary, materialistic worldview, will the west, as we knew it, survive.
Repeal the U.S. Constitution and replace it with various UN Treaties signed by the Traitors like with John Kerry and Small Ams Control Treaty and the Paris Accord more reasons Biden needs to be Impeached all Liberal Democrats/Traitors removed
Repeal the Constitution?
Can you walk upright without your backbone?
As will our country go without our Constitution.
For several decades now we have been told that among the worst things one can be is “judgmental.” Of course, being able to make judgments is on the the things that makes us human but never mind that. As a result, many people are no longer to make, or are unwilling to make, judgments about “good” and “bad” or “better” and “worse.” As a result they will accept and excuse almost anything. Besides, doing that is so much easier than standing up to this garbage. We are truly lost.
I know people that sincerely hold to their Christian faith who are scared out of their minds of the “Religious Right.”, asserting that you “cannot legislate morality”. So they end up not only supporting the left’s erosion of morality, but actually justifying it as virtuous (tolerance and not judging and all that silliness.) Debased minds, indeed.
There is only one Source of wisdom, without Whom we all are fools. As has been observed, “but for the grace of God, there go I…”
I could not agree more with this post. Moynihan would indeed be abhorred by what passes for non-deviant behavior in today’s America.
I believe that it was Francis Schaefer who wrote that, looking at America, the Lord might think about apologizing to Sodom and Gomorrah. I’d say that applies to the media, digital demagogues, and many in politics.
When God asked what Solomon wanted, Solomon actually asked for a listening heart, which we have translated to wisdom. This article perfectly illustrates the presence of the possibility of a listening heart in all believers. We MUST listen and stand for what is right.
Recommend looking at the work of The Ruth Institute.
Perhaps we ought to look to the writings of Jean-Jacques “Steal the Silver” Rousseau, whose place in the pantheon of the left is pretty much ensured. Once you read his recommendations for education, government, and other important institutions, you begin to understand the origins of the left. He was the darling of a certain set of the French aristocracy even if they did have to count the spoons whenever he came over for dinner. He was a truly vile human being who preached morality to the credulous and influential.
Pedophiles, rapists, child abusers and serial killers do not see themselves as degenerate. The problem is that the Left has bought into this and twisted degeneracy into moral equivalency and acceptance – “minor-attracted persons:”, “gender-affirming surgery”, etc. Our societies have become the laughingstock of the rest of the world, and they see us as “easy pickings” to take over and dominate. Why note? It seems we are eager to buy hook, line and sinker everything that is shoved down our throats. There are still millions of parents and individuals out there who are fighting to reverse this dangerous slope, and I hope it’s not too late to restore sanity.
This planet is on course for a rude awakening because people who were supposed to be ADULTS, and sane allowed this transgender ideology to be in their schools and directly affect and harm the future of young children. Do you really think God is going to forgive and bless a nation that promotes men in drag to influence your children that they can mutilate their bogies and become something unrecognizable from the way God created us all in his own image?
An appalling sight is going into a library and seeing your children being read to by a Drag Queen. Look how we have sunk as a culture and have glorified all things evil, perverted, and aberrant.
Too true! Our freedom was won on battlefields by men in uniform who fought, and some died to win it. As it has been said, “Freedom is not free.” Is it time to water the tree of liberty with our blood? If we are not willing to die for our freedom, then we don’t deserve it.