Paul’s Revolution – Day 9

There comes a moment in every revolution where the dark secrets of the revolutionaries must come to light. It is therefore necessary for me to come clean. I must confess -- I like Country Music! Which brings me today. As I travel from Houston to Illinois I switch between talk radio and whatever local country station I can find. A new song to me was “The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert. The singer goes back to her childhood home hoping to connect with her roots. She hopes that by remembering her roots she would be able to live through the pain in her life. Of course, her home had been filled with love and acceptance.

A democracy (or really any government) will stand only as strong as its basic unit – the family. When the family begins to fall into disarray there is moral drift, and moral drift leads to narcissism and narcissism leads to relativism. When a country embraces relativism there can never be consensus on what is important because importance is determine by the individual. In the confusion those who control power will lead by default and the downfall of a democratic society secured. Society becomes the family and the decisions that are made are for the benefit of the family (often at the expense of the individual).

The only way for American Democracy to survive is to focus on the family, passing laws that support the family, and creating infrastructures that are pro-family. It is within strong families that children learn the moral values of caring, compassion, justice, self-sufficiency, honesty, and community. Yet, there are no easy remedies. The family has been fragmented by a culture that is more interested in producing quality cars than quality kids. Our children grow up with babysitters, sit in front of television, left alone to surf the net, and spend countless hours playing video games. The average teen from 18 to 22 years of age spends 25.6 hours a week on the Internet. I asked some college students about this statistic and they were surprised it was so low.

Most families couldn’t return to a single income family if they wanted to. Because of our insatiable hunger for new and better stuff we don’t have time to build character into the lives our children. In fact we have given that task over to the school system – and the state becomes the parent. I am not calling for a return but to a renewal; a commitment to teach our children the value of hard work, sacrifice, and supporting themselves and eventually their own families. Our culture believes that new is better, but like the scriptures say we need to return to the ancient paths for they are good. Sit down with one of your children today or tomorrow and talk with them about what they would like to see the world to be like and begin teaching them the character necessary to get there.