When the mob rules
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
What did we think would happen once boundaries were destroyed?
The chaos plaguing the country today was in evitable after truth, standards and self-control were all but ignored by many in our society.
That great “philosopher,” the late Marilyn Monroe, was ahead of her time when she said, “When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.”
Making one’s own boundaries has led us to this moment. Truth has become subjective. The Constitution, some judges claim, is now open to interpretation, as we witnessed last week when a Supreme Court majority (6-3) again legislated from the bench when they redefined “sex” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act as meaning not simply gender, as in male and female, but sexual identity, as in gay and transgender.
After the Court’s 2015 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage (it was 5-4), polygamist groups said they would be next to demand equal treatment. What is to stop them? What if morals and laws evolve and conformity to the spirit of the age and opinion polls is what matters most?
Statues and paintings that offend some, but not others, are being torn down, or defaced. Perhaps the frieze over the Supreme Court building should also be removed. It shows many lawgivers looking to Moses, who is at the center holding the Ten Commandments. Those are no longer considered relevant in today’s America, so maybe they should be chiseled away. Church-state separation, you know.
“In God We Trust” is embedded on walls in the House and Senate and on our money. Clearly, that is no longer objectively true, so perhaps we should remove that saying. Hearings could be held so people who claim we continue to trust in God can present evidence we still do.
Valedictorians, sports trophies and in some cases grades have been abandoned because some who were not as talented, or didn’t work as hard to achieve honor might feel bad. So, we dumb down and make everyone “equal,” supporting mediocrity as the highest objective. This is what socialism does.
Those who deny any standard and then appeal to the rest of us based on a standard of their own creation can’t have it both ways, though they are trying.
The late evangelist and scholar Ravi Zacharias observed: “Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I’ve seen again and again.”
As the Psalmist wrote long ago, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
(Readers may email Cal Thomas at [email protected]. Look for Cal Thomas’ new book “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan). Readers may email Cal Thomas at [email protected].
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