I don’t know if you folks will be able to use this but I’m sending it along because it will be printed this week in our local newspaper, The Greenville News.

The serious application of almost every non-secular standard is rapidly decaying in America. Judeo-Christian-God-based definitive moral and ethical bases are giving way to one’s “feelings,” opinions or self-esteem as determinants of behavior and actions. As such, the only test of whether or not to undertake a particular endeavor, and in what manner, ultimately will depend nearly exclusively on “self” without regard to society’s customs, adherence to its religious tenets, basic morality or even its laws. The hippies coined the phrase, “If it feels good, do it," and this trend no doubt will endure into our future. Such devaluation of any moral authority above one's singular predispositions must lead to a civilization without cohesive purpose. And, any society yielding to the temptation of individuals’ self-directed gestalts surely cannot survive intact. In short, America is ceding its collective seriousness in favor of its individuals’ "wants,” ably abetted by the politician whose sole endgame is re-election.

Hence, we wring our hands over bicyclists, joggers, power walkers and automobiles sharing the same, highly limited, physical space. We invent “pet parks” for the convenience of animals and their owners. Many of us feel no compunction about “walking away” from our mortgages when the value of our homes decline, though we are able to pay the bank each month and signed legally binding contracts with our lenders. Most of us do not complain when our representatives in Washington, D.C. write three thousand page laws, don’t read them and then tell us, “Well, we have to pass it and then we can find out what’s in it!” Most don’t even think about the fact that if one loses his job he has become entitled to two years of payments from the government (apparently now being stretched to three years) because he is not working. And, we do not stand up when told by our leaders that not only are certain tiny minorities entitled to serve in the military, counter to the vehement protestations of our admirals and generals, but also that the war-fighters on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq must take “sensitivity training” to learn empathy towards those the military would not accept if left to its own precepts. The anecdotes are far too numerous to catalogue. But there is one inescapable truth: America and a great number of Americans have become unserious.

The Founders of this nation believed that God created all of us equal. They did not believe that each of us was entitled to whatever he desired. And that was by design since those giants understood that this society could not survive for any significant period of time once its citizenry eschewed behavioral criteria emanating from its own history or from authority higher than itself.

America must redefine its conjoint goals or it surely will whither, as have the vast majority of republics and democracies preceding us. America must regain its sense of the serious and deflect the sense of the individual if it is to survive.