Luke Hamilton
Decay is a one-way street -- time to excise the rot
By Luke Hamilton
When was the last time you cleaned out your fridge? If you were cleaning out the refrigerator and found a Tupperware container with that 3-Bean Dip you made for the Stanley Cup Finals, tucked away behind the Country Crock, would you pull it out and transfer it to a Ziploc bag for further preservation? Would you pop the lid off the moldy and putrescent remains of your award-winning chip dip and put a couple layers of fresh saran wrap on it? Would you toss it in the microwave and heat it up, like nothing was amiss? Of course you wouldn't! You would grab a clothes-pin for your nose, open the garbage can, and shovel the spoiled mess into the bin of no return. Then you'd likely empty half a container of dish soap into the Tupperware, let it soak for 4 days, and pay some brave neighborhood kid to try and take your garbage bag from your waste bin to a dumpster without passing out from the stench.
Why? Because the food is spoiled and we understand that food does not unspoil. There is no special, top-shelf Mrs. Dash which can be added to spoiled food in order to remove the mold and make it safe for consumption again. So why do we think it functions any differently with social rot? All around us we see the rancid fruit produced by decades of moral decay in our society and we pretend that we can unspoil it. The foundations of our culture decompose before our eyes. In our school classrooms, halls of legislature, court chambers, studios of our entertainment, pages of our literature, and the sanctuaries of some churches, rancid putrefaction swallows the last vestiges of righteousness and honor.
In his excellent book How to Stay Christian in College, J. Budziszewski says the following: "The only way to get a bad thing is to take a good thing and spoil it. For example, darkness isn't made up from nothing; you get it by blocking the light. Disease isn't made up from nothing; you get it by ruining health. Notice that this doesn't work the other way around – you can't get light by blocking darkness or health by ruining disease. So God created only good things, but some of them have been spoiled."
Decay is a one-way street. Honest Americans admit that we have cultural gangrene to some degree, yet refuse to treat it as such. The only way to treat a condition such as this is isolation and removal. If the decay is too wide-spread, the entire appendage is removed. How foolish is it to hope that the leprous doctors running the clinic will effectively restore our body to its former health? Or to trust in the worm which is boring through my mushy apple to heal it to an edible condition? Yet we leave the future health of this country to union organizers, career politicians, unscrupulous lobbyists, bloodless regulators, and vapid, coked-up film stars.
Compromise is not possible with decay. It is imperative that we identify where the decay lies in our nation and amputate it. Logic and history dictate this course of action. Time and again in the Bible, the slow regression to Gomorrah was only (temporarily) halted when a people full of conviction made the hard decision and cut bait. Sometimes it worked, as in the case of Ninevah after being visited by Jonah. And sometimes the warning signs were ignored, as in the case of Ninevah's destruction by the Assyrians, prophesied by Nahum. But there is no alternate course of action.
Whether this degree of isolation and amputation from the leprous factions of our body politic is possible at this late stage, I know not. If the American people demand school waivers and put politicians in power who will force the issue, the public school system will collapse in a soggy, rotten mess. If we continue to try and reform the public schools from within, the decay will continue unabated. Likewise, we can demand a Presidential candidate who understands absolute morality and seeks righteousness and we might get one. Or we can quibble about electability and respectability until the progressives running the GOP give us another sad-sack to lose 2016 for us.
The choice is clear. The course of action could not be more cut and dry. Can we make the hard choices necessary? Will we risk alienating friends and family to stand for what is right? The Federal Leviathan needs surgery to remove branches and departments which overstep their Constitutional boundaries. Instead of silent disapproval, Hollywood and the music industry need to hear vociferous condemnation over their attempts to pervert and subvert our children. Washington needs a deeper cut than the rest, because the gangrenous tendrils have nearly reached the bone. Mandatory term limits for all Federal elected officials will ensure that our politicians are motivated to serve, not to make a career of leeching our prosperity to build their own personal fiefdoms.
Will we be Ninevah the Repentent and Resolute? Or Ninevah the Razed? Signs point to the latter, but let the faithful remnant remain true and let us keep our powder dry.
© Luke Hamilton
September 21, 2013
When was the last time you cleaned out your fridge? If you were cleaning out the refrigerator and found a Tupperware container with that 3-Bean Dip you made for the Stanley Cup Finals, tucked away behind the Country Crock, would you pull it out and transfer it to a Ziploc bag for further preservation? Would you pop the lid off the moldy and putrescent remains of your award-winning chip dip and put a couple layers of fresh saran wrap on it? Would you toss it in the microwave and heat it up, like nothing was amiss? Of course you wouldn't! You would grab a clothes-pin for your nose, open the garbage can, and shovel the spoiled mess into the bin of no return. Then you'd likely empty half a container of dish soap into the Tupperware, let it soak for 4 days, and pay some brave neighborhood kid to try and take your garbage bag from your waste bin to a dumpster without passing out from the stench.
Why? Because the food is spoiled and we understand that food does not unspoil. There is no special, top-shelf Mrs. Dash which can be added to spoiled food in order to remove the mold and make it safe for consumption again. So why do we think it functions any differently with social rot? All around us we see the rancid fruit produced by decades of moral decay in our society and we pretend that we can unspoil it. The foundations of our culture decompose before our eyes. In our school classrooms, halls of legislature, court chambers, studios of our entertainment, pages of our literature, and the sanctuaries of some churches, rancid putrefaction swallows the last vestiges of righteousness and honor.
In his excellent book How to Stay Christian in College, J. Budziszewski says the following: "The only way to get a bad thing is to take a good thing and spoil it. For example, darkness isn't made up from nothing; you get it by blocking the light. Disease isn't made up from nothing; you get it by ruining health. Notice that this doesn't work the other way around – you can't get light by blocking darkness or health by ruining disease. So God created only good things, but some of them have been spoiled."
Decay is a one-way street. Honest Americans admit that we have cultural gangrene to some degree, yet refuse to treat it as such. The only way to treat a condition such as this is isolation and removal. If the decay is too wide-spread, the entire appendage is removed. How foolish is it to hope that the leprous doctors running the clinic will effectively restore our body to its former health? Or to trust in the worm which is boring through my mushy apple to heal it to an edible condition? Yet we leave the future health of this country to union organizers, career politicians, unscrupulous lobbyists, bloodless regulators, and vapid, coked-up film stars.
Compromise is not possible with decay. It is imperative that we identify where the decay lies in our nation and amputate it. Logic and history dictate this course of action. Time and again in the Bible, the slow regression to Gomorrah was only (temporarily) halted when a people full of conviction made the hard decision and cut bait. Sometimes it worked, as in the case of Ninevah after being visited by Jonah. And sometimes the warning signs were ignored, as in the case of Ninevah's destruction by the Assyrians, prophesied by Nahum. But there is no alternate course of action.
Whether this degree of isolation and amputation from the leprous factions of our body politic is possible at this late stage, I know not. If the American people demand school waivers and put politicians in power who will force the issue, the public school system will collapse in a soggy, rotten mess. If we continue to try and reform the public schools from within, the decay will continue unabated. Likewise, we can demand a Presidential candidate who understands absolute morality and seeks righteousness and we might get one. Or we can quibble about electability and respectability until the progressives running the GOP give us another sad-sack to lose 2016 for us.
The choice is clear. The course of action could not be more cut and dry. Can we make the hard choices necessary? Will we risk alienating friends and family to stand for what is right? The Federal Leviathan needs surgery to remove branches and departments which overstep their Constitutional boundaries. Instead of silent disapproval, Hollywood and the music industry need to hear vociferous condemnation over their attempts to pervert and subvert our children. Washington needs a deeper cut than the rest, because the gangrenous tendrils have nearly reached the bone. Mandatory term limits for all Federal elected officials will ensure that our politicians are motivated to serve, not to make a career of leeching our prosperity to build their own personal fiefdoms.
Will we be Ninevah the Repentent and Resolute? Or Ninevah the Razed? Signs point to the latter, but let the faithful remnant remain true and let us keep our powder dry.
© Luke Hamilton
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