A question from a friend back at the time of the inaugural: “Little confused. Will someone explain the purpose of protesting an election. It seems to me every two years America gets to peacefully protest against politicians by voting. I get protesting issues and such, but an election. When you protest an election – I can only interpret it as throwing a “temper tantrum” with the opportunity to destroy things all under the guise of “exercising my right of free speech”.
Answer: what we are seeing is a result of the past 20-25 years of an increased sense of “everything that happens to me is me being wronged, and I must fight for justice because no one will give it to me.” So, we see frivolous lawsuits, losing sides protesting local election decisions, parents blasting teachers for a poor grade and trophies for everyone. Since the late ’60s, increasingly the national philosophy has be a “me-first” mantra, and by the 90s, those people were the majority, which deeply impacted child-rearing. Those children, largely indulged and told “your are special” and ” you can do anything” (understandable Sentiments, especially for parents, but actually untrue in the manner often meant), have now grown up to be the college students and twenty-something’s who are out protesting.
I first really noticed the impact of the “me first”…or maybe better “me only” focus after my first trip to Mexico in 2014. I wrote the following March 2016:
This is why I have been writing and saying to others that our problem is a spiritual issue. We have spent the past century saying there are no absolutes, no morals or rules for living beyond my own desires, my own self. As George Marsden writes in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, “the resultant outlook [as] characterized…by Christopher Lasch as the ‘culture of narcissism.’” to the point that “the meaning of life…could be found not by looking to tradition or to community, either past or present, but rather, by looking within.”
When I look within, I only see values and choices that “maximize me.” The result today, as Robert Putnam soberly spells out in Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, is a scenario where parents no longer know how to parent (how could they if there are no morals or standards), kids grow up in mostly broken or blended homes (why stay with someone and keep your promise when the greatest good is your own happiness), and the community no longer sees a calling or responsibility to the children, helping them all be raised to be community-minded, civically involved people.
What we need today is a return to our old values. I continue to argue that these values are mostly Christian, but if that bothers you, then fine look to some other common values. But something must be there; if not, then the warning from Thomas Hobbes becomes even more ominous. “If any two [humans] desire the same thing, which neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End…endeavor to destroy, or subdue one an other.” This is precisely what we are seeing now in all the protest.
Hobbes argues the only way to stop the violence is through a central power to over-awe the people. I think to the contrary, we can do it without a supreme central power. We did it previously in the 1740-1860 time (generally speaking….I know that takes more work on my part, but generally in that century the central government was very limited in power). Here’s what I said last January:
Now, I don’t really think any such “civilizing process” can merely exist on its own, something merely created by humans. Instead, such a process would only have effect if it were created from on high, from a power beyond human, with the ability through said process to actually change our nature leading us to other conclusions than conflict and war. If you’ve read my blog much, you probably know I am heading towards the power of the Christian God. That idea, of transforming the human through the renewing of the mind, an act done by the power of God, is exactly what Jesus came to do.
We can see, though, that the doom of our society is that we have removed both the transformative power of Christianity and also make the government not a Leviathan to fear but a “sugar daddy” to give us “bread and circuses” to keep us in a drunken stupor. We wonder why there is more apparent violence, more mass killings and more argumentation between people. We wonder why…when its very clear that we are reverting away from civilization and towards the Hobbesian natural state of conflict and war. There is no transformative power of grace from the Christian God because our culture, especially in the power of the media elite, that there is no such God. And there is no “overawe” from the Leviathan because we have chosen to believe in the “we are all good” mantra from Locke (and Progressives). If we are all good, then the central government should really just provide things for us.
We can do better than these somewhat childish temper-tantrums. But you shouldn’t be surprised…not if you’ve been paying attention to where the nation has gone in the past 30 years.