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Contemplating the Unthinkable
By Doug Patton
March 25, 2002

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Philippians 4:8, King James Bible

The Apostle Paul's admonition is a tough one to practice in post-Christian America, especially for those of us who thrive on the news of the day. The long-asked question of whether people and their actions have become more depraved or we simply have the instant communications to hear, see and read about them is a valid one. I tend to think both factors are at work.

Setting aside the vicious attack of September 11 and confining our look at the bizarre, sometimes demonic actions of Americans, consider just a few of the major news events of the last dozen years:

• Jeffrey Dahmer commits unspeakable acts in his Milwaukee apartment.
• Susan Smith secures her helpless children in her car, pushes them into a lake to drown, then appears on network television to tell the world they have been kidnapped.
• At the Branch Davidian cult headquarters outside Waco, Texas, the Justice Department oversees an operation wherein men, women and children are burned to death.
• Two years later, to the day, in an act of blind, savage revenge against the government, Timothy McVeigh blows up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 innocent people.
• James Byrd is dragged to death behind a pickup in Jasper, Texas, because of his race.
• Two Colorado teenagers murder their classmates in cold blood (one of many such attacks in the nineties, this was the most deadly).
• After considerable deliberation, Andrea Yates drowns her five children in the bathtub.
• A Fort Worth woman hits a man with her car, drives home with him lying on her hood, broken and helpless but alive, his head protruding through her windshield, parks her car in her garage and ignores his pleas for help for three days, after which she and her boyfriend dump the body.
• A Los Angeles couple is convicted of homicide when their vicious dogs tear out the throat of a young woman and rip her body to pieces.

There is more, of course, much more, but these examples make the point. What is happening to our society? What accounts for the difference between what America was and what America has become? The Twentieth Century saw incredible advancement and incredible cruelty. The difference between living in 2002 and living in 1902 is almost unimaginable. So, what changed?

When John Adams said, "Our Constitution was written for a moral and a religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other," he saw the potential of what our nation became in its second full century. Adams recognized that only self-restraining people, adhering to principles greater than their own self-interest, could function in an atmosphere of freedom. He knew enough of history to realize that nowhere on the face of the earth had such sweeping liberties been acknowledged as "God-given." This was something brand new. No government had ever been formed on earth wherein those in authority had voluntarily surrendered power in order to give citizens the right to control their own actions.

Adams and the other Founders could foresee the oppression that would inevitably ensue if self-interest were exalted and God was forgotten. They knew that the fragile framework of the Constitution was only safe as long as those in authority both honored the rights acknowledged in it and believed the people were still capable of governing themselves.

Thus, when a sociopath uses a homemade bomb to destroy a building, the federal government places barricades on the street in front of the White House, while members of Congress rail against the availability of fertilizer and the president blames the crime on talk radio.

When two boys take guns to school and kill anyone in sight, the clamor for more gun control is heard across the land, and the Second Amendment is eroded.

And when a black man is murdered in Texas, the laws on the books that call for penalties up to and including death by lethal injection are suddenly insufficient. "Hate crimes" laws, wherein racist thoughts in the mind of the perpetrator somehow make the crime more heinous, are said to be necessary.

The Bill of Rights was a radical document when it was written. It still is. Ben Franklin's answer to the question posed to him as he emerged from the Constitutional Convention still reverberates across two-and-a-quarter centuries. When asked, "What sort of government have you given us?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."