Your Turn: What has happened to my America?

For the majority of all people in the United States, the lack of adherence to personal discipline and traditional values has become a formula for social and economic oblivion. What has happened to our personal integrity and traditional values throughout this country? Where have words like citizenship, moral ethos and personal responsibility gone? Where do we start?

By the 1960s, the euphoria of the end of World War II and Korea had come to an end. Veterans had jobs, homes in the suburbs and a new car in the driveway.

But, with the advent of the Vietnam War came the birth of the flower children bringing with it the decline of discipline and continual political unrest. Young men refused to register for the draft or moved to Canada avoiding their obligation to serve.

At the same time, President John F. Kennedy decided that mental institutions were obsolete or demeaning to the individual. With the advances in drugs, why not leave these people remain in the bosom of society and repair their lives with prescription drugs. This was a good idea, but who would monitor the administration of the drugs? This problem was exacerbated by lawsuits such as Olmstead vs L.C. which mandated mentally incapable people fall under the American Disabilities act with the right to remain in society.

The next president, Lyndon Johnson, faced with a war effort that had a no-win future, diverted attention from the Vietnam War escalation by initiating “The Great Society” program in 1964. Since then, billions of taxpayer dollars have been poured into programs that have never had positive results, the poor remain in poverty and the social security fund floundered as a result. It must be noted that these programs by presidents Kennedy and Johnson had bi-partisan support.

Planned Parenthood was given a boost as the U.S. Supreme Court passed Roe vs Wade in 1973 legalizing abortion. Planned Parenthood is a misnomer of the nth magnitude. Using the latest 2018 statistics, Planned Parenthood provided 947 abortions every day. Roe vs Wade was the first step toward making life cheap or worthless in the United States.

James Carter’s first action in office on Jan. 1, 1974, was to give amnesty to all the men who had dodged the draft during the Vietnam War, allowing thousands of US citizens to get away with what could be construed as treason. Most of them then moved back to the United States. Many of these now head our universities and continue indoctrinating our youth with their socialist ideology.

In 1978, the television and movies industries lobbies pushed through the deletion of censorship claiming the rights of the First Amendment. This allowed both industries to begin spewing sexual content and sexual innuendo into almost every home in America. This trash has decreased the integrity of mass media further as the years have gone by. Twenty-four-hour cable television provides platforms for more trivial output. Hollywood and the television industry now have the audacity to wonder why sexual harassment is so prevalent in their industries. Starting in 1974, computer games became a major part of this problem with games condoning killing people and stealing cars.

By 1980, the drug war was lost with crack cocaine becoming available on every street corner. Marijuana is now legal in most states. The proponents claim there is no harmful long-term effect from smoking marijuana. History will prove them wrong, as marijuana becomes a gateway drug.

In 1970, 31 percent of American households had two working parents. Today, that number approaches 75 percent. This means that more and more parents are turning the rearing of their children over to preschools and the educational system. Without learning discipline and traditional values at home at an early age, many children have become problems within a school system that cannot discipline children without legal backlash. In addition, the federal government, under President Carter, wrested the American school system from the states and implemented unproven curricula like Common Core in addition to dictating what students can eat for lunch during the Obama administration.

Liberal arts colleges and universities in the United States push their student factory mentality that each high school student must have a college education to succeed in life. Using federally backed loans, liberal arts college graduates end up with a diploma and a huge debt with little prospect for a meaningful job. The only viable curriculum for college students is in engineering, computer science and the medical fields. Meanwhile, technical schools are given short shrift for providing people with skills in more useable occupations that pay much more than minimum wage.

Day to day human interaction and conversation have been superseded by texting and social media. Acronyms hide the true meanings of words. They have been replaced by phony words and phrases like upward mobility, which means running over anyone in front of you whether in a public place, in your car or at your workplace. Social mobility has replaced welfare; drug and alcohol abuse are called disabilities or diseases.

Political correction tries to twist the meaning of the constitutional amendments to fit selfish needs. The First Amendment was not meant to allow filth and sexual innuendo to be spewed from television, movie theaters and minimally talented singers' mouths as freedom of speech. The First Amendment also states that Congress will not establish any federal sanctioned religion. It does not say we cannot say “under God” in the pledge of allegiance to our hallowed flag. It certainly does not condone abortion.

The thrust of my viewpoint is twofold. First, our federal government has wrested much of what should be individual states and individual rights. Usually, these actions result in harmful unintended consequences as have been shown in the previous paragraphs. All laws enacted by our federal Congress should have a clause that requires a yearly re-evaluation to ascertain the effect of each law and repeal or amendment if needed.

The second point is that we, the people, need to step up to our responsibility in our homes, in our communities and especially in the voting booths. We need to start by demanding term limits for all federal government elected officials and voting out all incumbents until this has been accomplished. We need to monitor the tax returns of all elected officials and prosecute any who show profits beyond their salary. Concurrent with that, we need to demand that lobbying be abolished.

Finally, we need to diligently monitor our children’s activities, especially electronic games. We need to boycott violent smutty television programs, concerts and movies. We must become more involved in local politics including school board meetings and other community activities along with monitoring local, state and federal government activities. Only then will we become truly responsible citizens of the United States.

Dave Sutton of South Beaver Township has resided in Beaver County for 48 years. He was raised on a dairy farm in Iowa starting his education in a one-room schoolhouse. He is now retired after a 50-year career in commercial aviation maintenance learning that trade while serving in the U. S. Marine Corps.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Your Turn: What has happened to my America?