It's The Morality, Stupid! (by Pastor Linda Pugsley)

In the scheme of things, life is short, but what we do while we are here is immensely powerful and influential...for the good or for the bad. Attitudes, behaviors and behavioral patterns, body language, words used in communication, style of dress, thought patterns, sexual practices, family structure, decision making, every single aspect of our lives...have all been influenced by something and/or someone. Even in the womb, before we enter this world, we are affected for the good or for the bad.

Morality is the foundational set of core values that frame your thoughts, words, and deeds; they are the fabric or your being; the clothes in which you wrap yourself. The Latin saying, "Vestis virum reddit", "Clothes make the man" could not be any truer than today. I believe that the tumult in which our society finds itself today is a direct result of sending our children out into a cold world, for at least the last two generations, dressed only in moral rags.

Our legislative dilemmas, our educational morass, the insipid drain of poverty and ignorance, the entertainment community's ever inundating emphasis on sex, drugs and alcohol, the encouragement of a heady pursuit of "wine, women and song", the gender blending and dissolution of clear sexual roles and sexual identity, the violence, lying, bribery, cheating, poor planning, skyrocketing debt, out of wedlock pregnancies, high illiteracy rate, the increase of school drop outs and its resulting menace, rebellion, increasing prison populations topped off by an overall attitude of disrespect, dishonesty, and hedonism, accompanied by an unhealthy disdain for all that is structured or in any way requiring thoughtful consideration instead of knee jerk reaction; anything requiring behavioral modification and self-control instead of pure animal level cravings and their instant gratification; or anything that allows the ignorance of the moment to supercede the wisdom of the ages...all are the end result of the societal regression caused by what is touted as a "progressive" ideology. An ideology that sends each successive generation out clothed in thinner and thinner layers of core values and less and less family and community encouragement to travel the road to higher moral excellence instead of moral mediocrity. To espouse that our society should exist on a core of moral relativism and that the decider of wrongness or rightness is each individual is to espouse a recipe for moral anarchy and even eventual civil war.

Imagine a football game where each player decides where the foul line is; decides whether it was a touchdown or not; decides the length and number of time outs; the number of players on the team; the equipment to be used etc. That game would be in utter chaos in less than ten minutes. No play book, no rules, no fouls...and yet, that is exactly what we ask our youth, to do! If a mere football game needs standards, guidelines, rules, foul lines and punishments for non-compliance...and if moral excellence rather than decadence will obviously temper the above listing of cultural weaknesses and failures, how much more then do our youth need to be taught and shown the more morally excellent guidelines in order to play the most important game...the game of life?

Americans have the privilege to vote for their leaders. What standards, rules, and guidelines influence that vote? What do we desire to be made better, smoother, more efficient, more cost effective, and more successful? How will this be accomplished? Will the issues remain the economy, the Middle East, immigration, the Islamo-Fascist war against the world, border security, education, the cultural war, the war on poverty? In all of these areas, and in many more, there is an underlying factor, which if diminished, negated, ignored, or disregarded will cause the failure, chaos, and diminished capacity of them all. What could possibly be so important to actually influence the vote of the good and upstanding citizens of this country...take heed, oh sage ones who run for office...for many Americans...it's the morality, stupid!

This election has come and gone and it seems, unfortunately, the moral essence of the issues and the moral make up of those running, seemed to take a back seat for many voters...if that continues, what will future elections hold? What will the future of our nation hold? For me, it may not matter much because I have put in more time on the earth than I have left; but what will it be for those who come after us? What legacy will they receive? What kind of America will they inherit? If moral excellence is encouraged and incorporated into the fabric of our lives, then the American cloth will be weaved in fullness and strength, if not, we leave only rags for our children.

[Original publication: Pugsley, Linda. "It's the Morality, Stupid." Yahoo! Contributor Network. N.p., 19 Nov. 2008. http://voices.yahoo.com/its-morality-stupid-2188040.html?cat=4]

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