c. 1997 Religion News Service
(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)
UNDATED _ For those dismayed over the explosion of incivility echoing through modern America, the ultimate in solutions has been offered. Under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, several dozen prominent intellectuals and associated deep thinkers _ including former Harvard President Derek C. Bok, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, and a few journalists _ will join forces to hash out this problem.
Praise be, many no doubt exclaim. If we can hold on a few months more, the Penn Commission on Society, Culture and Community will no doubt send down a blueprint for national recovery, after which nary a middle finger will wag from a passing car window, no shots will be fired in anger, and the gutter-mouthed denizens of Hollywood will repent and enter monasteries and convents.
Perhaps the good karma will find its way into the lower orders so that dogs will no longer bark after 9:30 p.m., and cats will no longer eat songbirds.
Then again, maybe not.
Count me among the skeptics. While one cannot fault fellow citizens for desiring to curb what is truly a national scandal, the notion that a panel of limelight moralists will somehow raise civility from the dead is every bit as odd as the belief that we can turn aside hurricanes by the power of positive thinking.
A full accounting of America’s swan dive into crudity, sexual obsession and cultural barbarity is hardly necessary. Yes, New York Times columnists may hail pornography prince Larry Flynt as a modern American hero and quite worthy of an adulatory film biography. And prime-time television may be preparing to offer simulated sex during the family viewing hour. But the list of people who will publicly state that our culture is admirable is quite short.
Even the creator of the latest foray into high art _”Beavis and Butthead Do America”_ has said he will not allow his children to see his movie.
The language I hear inside the prisons where I minister is little different than the language I hear outside. In fact, were I forced to rely only on my sense of hearing, I would have a hard time telling when I was in the cellblock surrounded by hardened inmates and when I was in a movie theater surrounded by starlets.
There are larger lessons to be learned from the decay of civil language. The commonplace use of vulgarities is perhaps the most constant reminder that our society has, for the past three decades, been hard at work fleeing traditional moral values. In this sense the old radicals were right: Spouting obscenities is about much more than talking dirty. It is a political/cultural act whose message is gratingly clear: away with the old morality, away with the old restrictions.
The question left behind is whether the abandonment of the supposed fetters of civility, decency, and restraint have indeed made us”free.”The answer is quite obvious, I believe. This particular crusade has had the opposite effect than the one intended. The debacle is nearly biblical in proportions.
We are now so free that some of our front doors have more locks than the front door to the Alamo just prior to Santa Ana’s charge. Large sections of our cities are deemed too dangerous for visitation, both during daylight and certainly at night.
Gated communities are commonplace, and there are now more private security officers than police. The problem, you see, is that when you take away the restraints provided by shared values, you are left with the necessity for government micromanagement of personal affairs. So we end up begging the government to censor television programming, institute curfews, undertake warrantless searches, and force children into school uniforms. When congressmen stand in the Great Hall and declare that we must unleash the military against the drug lords, the response is deafening.
If this is freedom, maybe we ought to try something else.
That we have come to this state is simply the result of having consciously undermined the moral structure that served as a bulwark against vulgarity, crudity, and social anarchy. The most startling aspect of our current situation is that despite the consensus against crudity, those who advocate a return to traditional standards continue to be dismissed with derisive laughter.
Where does that leave us? In something of a bind, I’m afraid.
The moral consensus that stood against barbarity derived its strength from a common belief that the natural law on which it was based was written by the hand of God. God has been removed from the public square, and perhaps only close relatives believe that the old-time consensus will be restored by the hand of these genteel commissioners.
MJP END COLSON
