All of my life, I have heard stories from older people, telling us how our world and our society has changed throughout their lifetimes.  I didn’t realize I would be able to relate to them, even though I am just shy of my 46th birthday.  Our country and our society is changing at a fast pace and I am not at all sure it is for the better.  In fact, I would venture to say it is for the worse.  Here are a couple of examples.

It seems that every summer brings more and more people who wear as little clothing as possible.  I understand that it gets hot where I live.  This morning, as I write this, the weather forecast is for a high of 103° with a heat index of 107°.  It has been this way for a couple of weeks and will probably continue into the rest of August, unless we get some relieve from the tropical storms coming ashore on the Texas gulf coast.  I work in an automotive repair shop and there are times when I literally have to turn my head away from some women because they have almost no clothes on.  I realize most men would be looking and gawking, but that is not the way I was raised.

As a society, we seem to want to complain about how our children act, but in reality, a lot of it is our fault.  How do we expect our young people to act and dress in a decent fashion if we do not show them how it is done?  How do we expect our children to work and live a good, productive live if we do not let them learn by our example?  I understand we can not control how our children turn out as adults, but a lot of how they are as adults has to do with what we teach them as they grow into adulthood.  How can a young women grow into a grown woman with good values, if she doesn’t see her mother having good values? How can I, as a father, expect my children to grow up and take responsibility as an adult, if I do not show them how to take that responsibility by doing so myself?

Every morning, I usually listen to NPR as I drive to work.  They have a feature on Friday mornings called Story Corps and they play audio clips of stories ordinary Americans that they have told one another.  I have found the feature funny and interesting at times, but last Friday, they played the story of a young homosexual man and how his mom came to accept the fact that he was the way he was.  I am not trying to bash those who are living this lifestyle, but it bothers me as more and more, I see our country embracing such things as the homosexual lifestyle as a normal part of life, instead of the terrible tragedy it really is.

Little by little, this kind of thing has been creeping into our society for a long time and little by little, we are getting used to the dark.  I’m afraid we may not realize just how dark it really is.

That’s my take!

Larry

Tags: Adults, Children, Decency, Homosexual, NPR, Story Corps

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 5:07 am and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.