MISSING: ONE FIBRE

The world has changed dramatically in a number of ways since I was a teenager, and perhaps the change with the greatest impact has been the loss of our country's moral underpinning.

Morality ran high during WWII. The world consisted of the good guys and the bad guys...the line of delineation was clear...and the bad guys had to be beaten down at all costs. It is not to say everyone was honest and moral. I am saying that there was a pervasive feeling that one ought to be honest and moral...and that those who weren't were failing to live in accordance with the proper standard. That was the dominant moral fibre in the country.

It was exemplified in the 1952 movie, High Noon. The sheriff stays to fight the bad guys, although his new wife pleads with him to leave when the townspeople refuse to fight with him to protect their homes, their lives. because he had given his word to do so when he put on the badge. (Over 400,000 American military men and women died protecting our homes and our lives in WWII.) Perhaps, as John Wayne suggested, the first crack in our country's moral fibre showed up at the end of the movie when, after having killed the bad guys, the sheriff takes off his badge, throws it to the ground, and stomps on it. Wayne called it "unAmerican", and in the way I see it, it was...a change in our moral outlook.

Shortly afterward, the moral unraveling sped up, spearheaded by our political leaders and by events involving our country's leaders.

1963: the assassination of JFK, America's perceived prince

1963-75: the questionable reports by President Johnson on which our involvement in the Vietnam War was sustained

1968: the assassination of Martin Luther King, one of America's outstanding moral leaders

1968: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

1972: the break-in at Watergate, orchestrated by President Nixon

1974: the resignation of President Nixon

1998: the impeachment of President Clinton on grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice arising from the Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones affairs, though subsequently acquitted by an essentially political vote (were there any who thought Clinton had not lied?)

2003: our invasion of Iraq and the prevalent belief today that the George W. Bush administration had lied to us about Hussein's having weapons of mass destruction to support that invasion

Today: President Obama refuses to live up to his oath to enforce our laws, who treats the Constitution as a piece of political trash

I could cite other triggers to our loss of moral standards...such as the scandals unveiled in the Catholic Church, formerly accepted as a moral voice in the world, and wanton promotion by political hacks of the immorally applied concept of "entitlements". One is entitled to what one earns and to be left free to earn it. Period. Every other so-called "entitlement" involves the taking of something...property, rights...from A and immorally giving it to B. And, if I am entitled to something, then morality be damned. I will lie to get it, steal it, or kill for it if I have to.

Here's the real killer though about the missing fibre: no one seems to be looking for it.