America Adrift: The Crisis of Values will present evidence that America’s present confusion about what are her values is having a negative social impact. There is a dichotomy of values perspectives in America today. We will examine its origin and impact on the rise of self-destructive behavior in America.

Our title suggests that our nation and its people have become divided on essential precepts upon which the nation was founded and from which it is to derive its fundamental identity and value.

The Culture and Media Institute conducted a recent poll on national cultural values to gauge the public’s perception of what were the values of America that made it great and were important for its future. They concluded from the poll results that “America no longer enjoys cultural consensus on God, religion and what constitutes right and wrong.”

The world of the 21st century is quite different than the world of a hundred years ago. In 1900, most people in the world, including Americans, had not travel beyond fifty miles of their homes.

The world today is indeed vastly different than that former time. The advancement of communications, travel and technology are unprecedented. How hard it would be for George Washington to conceive of a jumbo jet, text messaging or downloading a copy of the Constitution from thousands of miles away?

We live in miraculous times. Yet with all our advancement in technology, industry and science ... has it made us a good nation today? Are we more happy and less in danger because of the advancements in technology and material comfort?

In our introduction presentation we called for America to realize its ideal of “one nation under God” as a model that can be universalized to “one family under God.”

To do that, America should:
- Become a model of interfaith harmony and cooperation
- Revive America’s founding spirit and virtue, and universalize the American Dream in the context of God’s Dream for all humanity.
- Demonstrate the power of “one family under God” to change the way we see each other and treat each other - thus changing the climate of conflict in our world today.

Thus, as was mentioned in the last presentation, we need a new level of patriotism; a deeper definition of “love of country.” to answer this new call. We need to renew our understanding and commitment of the unique founding principles of America. A new patriotism also means that we must be willing to rise to a deeper honesty about the shortcomings of America ... not in the spirit of the “blame America first” crowd, but out of a deeper faith in America; that if we can face our problems squarely we can surely rise above them and, finally, bring into substance the ideal and vision for which America was founded. America needs “tough love.” They say that the first step on the long road of recovery is to admit that we have a problem.

Whereas, we see the signs of advancement of our civilization, we also see the signs of stress and decline. Let’s consider one snapshot, a sample that may illustrate this downward trend. A 1940 CBS poll of teachers showed that the top discipline problems in schools at that time were: students chewing gum in class - noise in class - dress code - littering - running in the hall.

A National Education Association Teacher’s Poll was administered in the mid 1950’s at a time when there was a heightened concern about the apparent rise of teen unrest and delinquency. At that time, the teachers who took the poll felt that 95% of their students were “well behaved.”
This same CBS poll administered in 1980 gives us a far more disturbing view and one that indicates the existence of a decades long trend of decline of standards and behavior. The top discipline problems in 1980 were: DRUGS - ALCOHOL - PREGNANCY - SUICIDE - RAPE AND ROBBERY. Today, problems in High Schools and Colleges have been exploding. We hear of events almost daily, splashed across our newspapers and television screens, of a most extreme dimension.

Another leading indicator pointing toward decline is the demise of the two-parent family. It is an often recited truism “As families go ... so goes the nation.” This is not just a colloquial truth, it is an empirical reality. When the family declines, that is, when men and women can no longer maintain a bond of love and trust ... society declines; and in its wake rises an ever-increasing tide of self-destructive behavior.

In 1940 - 1950: over 80% of youth had the benefit of being raised in a two-parent family. Today, that number has declined to less than 50%. Even more ominous for our future, presently, 35.8% of all births are out of wedlock.

Uncle Sam, we love you and we deeply respect you as we always have and will. . .but we can’t be “the enabler” anymore. We can’t just hide behind the Flag and shout U-S-A!. . .We must admit. Uncle. . .you’ve got a problem and something has to change.

The following is but a brief list of some of the behaviors that take place everyday in America. America has been on a decades-long bender toward ultimate self destruction. Everyday in America:

2,054 teens (age 15-19) become pregnant – (overall 46% of teens are sexually active)
24,657 young people (age 15-24) contract a sexually transmitted infection (STI)
588 abortions among teens (age 15-19)
89 Americans commit suicide
4,493 children born out of wedlock – (35.8% of all births)
7,000 students drop out of high school
2,461 cases of child abuse reported
4,931 violent crimes committed
517 sexual assault incidents reported
7,000,000 fellow Americans are in the penal system

A 1990 commission of leaders from the fields of health, education and business gathered together specifically to study the circumstance of the health of youth in America. Their conclusions were a rather stunning and damning indictment of modernity in America. The title of their report, CODE BLUE, was so named to illustrate the urgency they felt. The report concluded with this most disturbing observation:

“... the challenges to the health and well-being of America’s youth are not primarily rooted in illness or economics. Unlike the past, the problem is not childhood disease or unsanitary slums. The most basic cause of suffering in our youth today is profoundly self-destructive behavior.”

As we mentioned before, the idiom “As families go ... so goes the nation” is not without empirical support: British historian and anthropologist J. D. Unwin had been intrigued by Sigmund Freud’s observation that the regulation of sexual desire within certain cultures was then a transformed energy toward social progress. Unwin wanted to see if this was universally true and thus conducted a study of 86 cultures that had existed over the course of 5000 years of history. He discovered that those cultures that embraced the values of abstinence before monogamous marriage and fidelity within marriage were cultures of “expansive energy.” In other words, they were cultures of endurance and stability. Indeed, he confirmed “As the family goes ... so goes the nation.”

The founder of Harvard’s department of sociology, Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin in his 1956 book, The American Sex Revolution, stunned the Bohemian-friendly American intelligencia with his indictment of the attempt to discard all sexual morays in its sexual revolution. “Voluntary suicide” is what he called it. Sorokin was referring to its impact on the family and the subsequent social chaos that it would engender. He was a prophet of sort, predicting the type of consequences the Code Blue study would document 34 years later.

Richard G. Wilkins, Professor of Law at Brigham Young University in his 2004 book “Marriage on the Brink,” states, “Without stable marriage, women suffer, men suffer – and children suffer the most. Every deviation from the ideal model of enduring monogamous marriage between a man and a woman increases the suffering of men, women and children.”

A very important study conducted by the Center for Marriage and Families for The Institute for American Values in September 2005, was able to identify some of the concrete implications of marriage and its importance toward a productive and stable society. Their study called “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-six Conclusions from the Social Sciences” listed 26 truths, backed by empirical social science research, that indicated “Why Marriage Matters.” We will just list four of the 26 here:

1. Divorce and unmarried child bearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.
2. Parental divorce appears to increase children’s risk of school failure.
3. Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and substance abuse for both adults and teens.
4. Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological distress and mental illness.

Seen in this light, the statistic shared earlier, indicating that 35.8% of all births are out of wedlock, we now can understand how that does not bode well for our society. As more young people lose the opportunity to be raised by two parents, the increase of self-destructive behavior will subsequently rise. Eventually, such behavior permeates society, eventually touching all our lives.

A poignant case in point is from a 1997 Hudson Institute study titled “Fathers, Marriage and Welfare Reform” demonstrated the social impact of one type of dysfunction family, where fathers abandon their families.

70 percent of long-term prison inmates,
60 percent of rapists,
75 percent of adolescents charged with murder, grew up without fathers!

Father-less children are: Three times more likely to fail at school, require psychiatric treatment and commit suicide as adolescents and are 40 times more likely to experience child abuse compared with children growing up in two-parent families.

Of course there are exemplary single parents who have beat the odds and achieved great success. They are to be applauded. Society should be made aware of the tremendous uphill battle that single parents face. It is in all our interests that we feel all children are OUR children.

Our society is somewhat like the proverbial frog in the saucepan. If you attempt to toss the poor frog directly into the boiling pot, he will surely hop-out straight away. However, if you stealthily place him in tepid water and incrementally increase the heat, he will not sense the gradual change and remain at ease even until a fork can be poked into his well-cooked flesh.

America is like that. We have been on a decades long process of incrementally re-engineering the values that served as the guiding perspectives of life. Increment by increment we have been edging away from the founding ideals and have replaced them with the perspective of a secular, selfish individualism. Could that be frog I smell?

They say that ideas have consequences, but it is also true that consequences have ideas. In other words, there are discernable reasons why one chooses good behavior or destructive behavior. It is an issue of character. A person of good character generally chooses good behavior. They have “good” character because they have been exposed to the ideas of good values that were modeled in their life at home and, typically, at church. They are trained to not be self-absorbed, to instead think of others and find happiness and fulfillment within the context of the greater whole.

Conversely, those prone to destructive self-absorbed behavior are usually underdeveloped in the quality of their character. They have never been properly exposed to good models. Typically they are exposed to destructive models in the home. As the family goes ... So goes the society.

This “dichotomy of perspectives” we could say is the character of our time and one cause of our present confusion of values. It is a clash between the view, on the one hand, asserting that truth, morality are self-evident common sense, prevalent in most of the world religions. The counter-perspective on the other hand, says that all morals are relative to be decided by each individual according to one's own interest. Both can’t be true. One must naturally contend with the other. This is the character of our time.

What is the genesis of the ideas that gave impetus to this counter-perspective; our modern, secular, individualistic assertions?

The Turn from Moral Absolutes

The “Victorian Era” is thought to be the time that comprised the reign of Queen Victoria from 1839 to 1901. Despite the claimed reverence for puritan ideals and having spawned the anti-slavery movement and women’s suffrage, the Victorian era also brought about numerous injustices and subsequent challenges to Christianity, including the growing trends of materialism, rationalism, communism, and “higher criticism” of the Bible. The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin also struck at core truths of Christianity, that man was created by God, created in God’s image, and responsible for his sinful actions.

Darwin, in his early years, was a rather pious person who viewed scientific truth as the handiwork of the God of nature. Some theorized that the death of his beloved daughter Annie, in 1851, had a profound effect in hardening Darwin toward the idea of God and his Christian faith. Eventually, Darwin’s theory had great implications not only in the field of the biological sciences, but also and in the fields of philosophy and sociology. It became the empirical basis for the new ideas of the radical social sciences, especially those that sought to redefine humanity and society away from the perspective and influence of religion.

“By discovering evolution, Charles Darwin, a respectable Victorian, probably did more damage to religious faith than any priest-hating revolutionary.” - “Stop in the name...,” The Economist, November 1, 2007

Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th century philosopher who is thought to be, along with Soren Kierkegaard, a pioneer of existential thought. Nietzsche is best known for his “death of God” theories. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him ... Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

He believed that whereas, the belief in God may have been necessary in the past, henceforth it would be the ideal of “ubermensch” or superman, first introduced in his most popular work Thus spoke Zarathrustra, published in 1883. This was the idea that the individual would subjectively determine truth, value and principles rather than having to accommodate external principles, laws, faiths or theories. Nietzsche said that life could not be explained as “good and evil,” there was no universal morality; no prior good ... there was only “a will for power.”

In the new field of psycho-analysis, as a young student in Vienna, Sigmund Freud was especially intrigued by Darwin’s new theories of evolution. Freud had a significant interest in the study of “sexual desire.” He had come to perceive desire in terms of formative drives, instincts and appetites that “naturally” determined one’s behaviors and beliefs. Following the biological perspective of Darwin, Freud therefore established a model for the “normal” sexual development of the human subject, what he termed the “libido” development.” In doing so, he effectively gave a dubious scientific justification for circumventing the Judeo-Christian moral system and its emphasis on self regulation of the sexual appetite. Whereas Freud recognized that civilization would not be possible without constrains on sexual desire, he, nevertheless, felt such constrains conveyed a negative impact upon the personal fulfillment of individual.

"Our civilization is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sex produces the energy, and it is repressed so the energy can be channeled into progress - but the price of progress is the prevalence of guilt instead of happiness."

It was a trend of thought that would continue into the 20th century with the development of the new field of "sexology" with Alfred Kinsey's "Kinsey Reports" and later with the research of William Masters and Virginia Johnson. All would contribute to the gathering storm of the 1950's and 60's "sexual revolution" which would be an effort to, once and for all, do away with the traditional values upon which the family and society had been based. It would lead to the "voluntary suicide" that Sorokin had predicted.

The 1960's

Frustration over the Vietnam war and the perceived superficiality of the American lifestyle created a stir within the youth of the 1960’s and 70’s. Seeking a new definition of how life should be lived, young people across the nation began to “turn-on, tune-in and drop-out.” That is, to reject the values and precepts of the norms handed down to them from their parents. Most “hippies” no doubt, were following their own brand of how to live “free,”

However, the tenets that were bearing the greatest influence upon the “Woodstock Nation” were being defined and motivated by specific trends that had their roots in 19th century materialist and existentialist thought and were being disseminated by an intellectual elite on college campuses across the nation. The campus was a hotbed of the new radical ideas making the case for selfish individualism. The institution of the university, itself, was being transformed by radical new definitions of the education mission.

Whereas, many of the most renowned universities had been founded, initially, as seminaries, by the end of World War 2, there had been a radical transformation of educational philosophy. The manifestation of that change, was cited by the Harvard Report on General Education, 1945:

…the “unifying purpose” of American higher education as recently as a century ago was “to train the Christian citizen,” but this idea has largely disappeared from all but a few institutions.

John Dewey probably had more to do with that transformation then anyone in the first half of the twentieth century. He was a highly regarded American philosopher also renowned in the fields of psychology and social reform. His greatest efforts, however, were in the area of educational reform. His book on the subject, Democracy and Education remains a historical benchmark in the development of the modern American philosophy of education. It was Dewey that had the greatest influence toward turning education away from transcendental objectives and toward the more pragmatic.

Commenting on Dewey's long-term effect on education in America, William Adrian, in his book, Truth, Freedom and (Dis)order in the American University says:

“Dewey felt that science alone contributed to ‘human good,’ which he defined exclusively in naturalistic terms. He rejected religion and metaphysics as valid supports for moral and social values, and felt that success of the scientific method presupposed the destruction of old knowledge before the new could be created.”

By, effectively, rejecting the religious and metaphysical basis of moral and social values as a core principle of a new educational philosophy, Dewey was recreating the college campus to be an institution in conflict with the founding principles of its own nation. The new mission of education was to fundamentally change America. A baby-boomer generation was made ready to be its first customers.

Herbert Marcuse, referred to by many as the “Father of the counterculture movement, was a philosopher and author. Probably his most influential work “Eros and Civilization” released in 1955, was an odd synthesis of Freudian psychology and Marxist thought.

“Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.”

Marcuse greatly influenced some of the most well-known leaders of the new counter-culture movement. Both Angela Davis and Abbie Hoffman had been his students.

Margaret Mead, in the new field of cultural anthropology had a huge influence on the 60’s counterculture and the sexual revolution. In her work, Coming of Age in Samoa, She took a decidedly positive position with regard to the cultures of the South Pacific that engaged in unconstrained sexual practices. Not only were these practices portrayed as healthy, but typically, cultural anthropologists also took a dim view of the institution of marriage.

“I think the nuclear family is an abomination. It’s a very adaptive device for immigration, emigration, from the country to the city, and it serves the purposes of large industry and powerful states very well, because the nuclear family’s so helpless in the face of society.” Margaret Mead, 1974 ABC National Radio (Australia)

Jean-Paul Sartre, popularized the ideas of 19th century existentialism beginning with the "avant-garde of the 1940’s and 50’s and continuing as the preferred philosophy of the 60’s generation. The existentialism of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, that is, the idea that moral behavior was to be determined by each individual, was well-suited for a generation bent on self-indulgence.

“Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky said, ‘If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.’ That is the very starting point of Existentialism.”

In various ways, these and other intellectuals such as Charles Reich, Susan Sontag, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman (Perls and Goodman were the co-founders of Gestalt Therapy) and Norman O. Brown, all preached a similar new countercultural gospel: “If it feels good, do it.” Some, like Kinsey and Goodman, even affirmed that restrictions against adult-child sex were oppressive and should be discarded. All these combined into a potent materialist cocktail that appeared to be giving a rational, scientific and philosophical justification for a secular, selfish individualism and a lifestyle of self-indulgence.

It was not much different than the one given by the serpent in Eden. Just as Adam and Eve suffered the consequences of compromise, America, too, would begin to suffer consequences of her own.

The Popular Culture

The rise of American “popular culture” can be more accurately understood as a media phenomenon. A whole generation of Americans that had been conditioned by the values of the counterculture era was its enablers. They had already grown accustomed during the 60’s and 70’s to having their ideas expressed via, music, movies, magazines and television and, thus, those ideas flourished as the media and entertainment industries flourished.

The ideas that had exclusively been disseminated on college campuses, were now also taken up by the new evangelists of popular culture; its media, sports and entertainment stars. The preaching of the “if it feels good, do it” gospel expanded. This time it was accompanied with a music video in celebration of self-indulgence and self-destructive behavior; all pushing the envelope of moral corruption and stretching new limits of what we would tolerate as the norm.

Ideas have consequences. The turn from the religious basis of our moral system and toward a selfish, secular individualism over the course of decades has now brought us to the precipice. The spectacle each year of “Spring Break” is a perverse example. Hundreds of thousands of college youth exalt the most vile and destructive hedonistic behavior imaginable. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, forty-nine percent (3.8 million) of full time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs.The media cashes in promoting every vile minute. What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. It rots our national soul. Consider the following studies that indicate today's pervasive influence of media:

The A. C. Nielsen Company issued a report in 2006 on the growing popularity of television in America: Nielsen Media Research Reports Television’s Popularity Is Still Growing. They concluded that the average American watches 4.5 hours of TV everyday. That means in a course of a 70 year lifespan a person would have devoted 13 uninterrupted years of watching TV. Consider the billions of dollars advertisers spend to influence your behavior toward their brands. Do you think those 30 to 60 second spots have any effect? They do. Imagine the impact on behavior of 4.5 hours of television a day!

Another study done by The National Television Violence Study is the largest study of its kind to date. It found:

• 2/3 of all programs contain violence.
• 6 violent acts per hour of television programming.
• Violence was found to be more prevalent in children’s programming than in any other type of programming, showing nearly 14 violent acts per hour.
• The average child witnesses 10,000 acts of violence per year, of which researchers estimate 500 are likely to give rise to imitation and desensitization to violence.
• The number of prime-time programs with violence has increased from 53% to 67% over a three year span during the study.

This study doesn't include the time spent in front of video games; another huge increment of time devoted to violent content and images. Is it any wonder that an increasing number of people choose violent behavior to solve their problems or advance their interests?

Another study, The Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) “Sex on TV” Report, focused on the amount of sexually explicit content on TV and its impact. It discovered the following:

• Several empirical studies in the 1990s showed a strong correlation between sexual content viewed on TV by adolescents and increase in sexual activity. More studies since 2000 showed that young people who viewed programs which were sexually permissive took on the attitudes and behaviors exhibited on TV (i.e. Friends, Ally McBeal, Dawsons Creek).
• Casual sex became more acceptable to viewers.
• Female viewers expected to have sex at a sooner stage within their relationships.
• KFF study shows that 70% of TV shows have sexual content, an increase from 56% in 1998. Amongst these shows, there was an average of 5 scenes per hour involving sex. That totaled 757 hours of pure sexual content in 2005.
• 2002 KFF survey found that nearly ¾ of teens believe that sexual content on TV influences the behavior of their peers “somewhat” or “a lot”.

As much as we are concerned about the impact of media on youth with regard to, let's say, the choice to begin smoking, we must also become sensitized to the media effects on youth with regard to the choice to become sexually active and the negative social impact of that behavior. There is Hope (There is?)

Despite the dire circumstances, we are not without hope. In fact the resiliency of America is also in display. Probably no other nation in history could have strayed as far from its founding as has America and still maintain an ability to bounce back. America, thanks be to God, can still bounce back.

The evidence is encouraging. A recent Gallop/Fox News poll showed that 92% of Americans believe in God. That is the good news.

The bad news, is that the confusion of values has taken its toll on the people of faith as well. Confusion over values has caused the light of "self-evident truths" to become not nearly so evident; even for people who affirm a faith in God. The dynamic power of our convictions, as a result, has been refracted into a million different directions.

A recent study, conducted by the Culture & Media Institute illustrates the problem:

87% of Americans believe in God 52% say the Bible is God’s authoritative word. BUT,

Only 36% believe they should live by God’s principles. 45% prefer to combine God’s teachings with their own values. 65% will excuse sex outside of marriage. 33% say they would cheat the government for unemployment benefits. 25% believe the use of illegal drugs by adults is acceptable. 25% would cheat a restaurant that left items off a bill.

Clearly, we need a fresh view of values. The refracted light must be regathered. Today, people of faith and good conscience must take up the important task of deciding whether or not we can, in the 21st century, establish a consensus on values that could be freely embraced by our society-at-large. Only then, with a renewed commitment to self-evident truths, will we be able to engage the hope to renew and complete America.

The Next Presentation:

The Case for God in the Public Square

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