We have spent the last several days with a seemingly constant string of violent acts of the sort that capture the national attention and create an atmosphere in which so many take the opportunistic stage to publicly display their “compassion” and “reasonableness”. These public pronouncements normally start and end with “doing something” but rarely target the most contributing elements of our social malfunction. My thoughts on the matter are hardly original. They are pretty straightforward and will seem less than simple-minded to those so warped up in new controls or who take too much joy in endless, directionless discussions.

There are many ways in which we have all contributed to the frayed cultural fabric that is the real reason for what now strikes at all our hearts. There is only time for mentioning one or two here. In less than a lifetime (at least for mossyhorns like myself), we have allowed our national, daily attention to be distracted from the basic elements of a character necessary for a people to govern themselves.

Our attention is constantly circling around some of the most base, unnatural, self-absorbed, arrogant, and just plain stupid crap that a directionless human mind can wrap itself around.

Our national moral compass has been purposely undermined and we have “gone with the flow”. I won’t spend much time reminding how our Founding was based in the Judeo/Christian ethic and how vital its role is in responsible self-governance. But any honest reflection of our present condition has to begin with a hard realization that a committed reaffirmation of this ethic has to be central to any true American restoration. Let’s just look at one aspect of that tradition, one at the very ground level of our successful existence – and how its deterioration follows almost step by step with that of our “popular culture”.

The family is the most basic of human institutions. It is here human relations begin. It is here that values are first learned, so it is the beginning of culture. It is here that Liberty and the responsibility necessary for its practice are taught by everyday conduct and reinforcement. It is here that love is first experienced without any definition or instruction.

At least, that is the way it is supposed to be. At one time that was the rule and not the exception.

We have always had evil and murder among us. But they were not the accepted standard. Mass killings hardly began with the introduction of semi-automatic firearms, or any other firearm. Even in today’s America, far more people are killed with knives than rifles ….. or handguns. Multi-round clips are certainly not required for sick individuals to kill several. All it takes is the distorted desire to do it. I am told that even fertilizer or pressure cookers can do massive damage when the desire is there.

This world has always had a certain fraction of twisted, broken souls who would strike out at the surrounding world if given the chance. We now raise them in numbers too high to count.

Those who would rule others, regardless of what their ideology or title of the moment might be, have always known that the road to tyranny almost always goes through social chaos which breeds political chaos that opens the gate for the tyrant.

So for over a hundred years, the left has laid the groundwork for the destruction of an American culture that promises to give man his rightful dignity but requires the constant attention to principle. At first it was only the seeds sowed among us under the label of progressivism and later roots began to claim a slight hold on the soil needed for a fuller development. But now the product of those roots has become giant, thorny trees that tear at the fabric of our culture and the souls of children. The destruction of our families is intentional so that another power will take its place. The destruction has always been for replacing the family with central authority.

To use only the “mass shootings” as a measuring stick, during the 1950s there was one so-called mass shooting — one. In all the years and decades before when guns were commonly a part of everyday life, they were just as rare. Charles Whitman atop the tower at the University of Texas certainly was an example during the 1960s but the number of mass shootings was still less than five for the decade. It was 1980 before the number would ever reach 20. The “explosion” in the number of such incidents has come in the last quarter-century.

At present, there have been 20 in just a matter of days.

In almost all cases, these are the acts of broken individuals with a troubled family history.

In the last fifty years fatherless, broken homes have become not just commonplace but an industry unto themselves. They are financed by politicos of all stripes eager to prove their “compassion”. Laws are patterned to assure their perpetuation. The best way to ensure that anything will become entrenched is to have a government program for it. We now have an extended network to create a perpetual class of government wards.

The restoration of the American family begins with two parents acting as responsible adults, even when it is hard or unpleasant for them. I have stated on these pages that the most important thing we can do in this secular world is probably to raise a good human being. That is our first job, our first calling. It is our first responsibility to the world we live in.

Each of these parents has their role and contribution to make. This simple, basic observation is hardly sexist. It is the practical acknowledgment of the ideal design, one that has worked throughout man’s history.

The value system that is passed to their children is the parent’s legacy. Our nation was founded to run on the Judeo/Christian ethic. One does not have to be a believer to clearly see how following this model benefits a free, productive society better than any other. One does not have to be a believer to share in the benefits of such an ethic, or to have a vested interest in its enduring standards.

We have noted here that true Liberty requires responsibility and the accountability that comes with it. Those two vital elements of Liberty are central to parenthood. Making the decision to become a parent (reckless or not) means avoiding that responsibility and accountability is a socially destructive act that affects us all.

For this day, I will focus on just one side of parenting. All children need to have a strong father influence in their lives. Fatherless children are at the core of a great fraction of our social problems, especially among young males.

Parents should battle for their children to have a safe environment, not just in school, or on a bus but everywhere they go. It is their job to protect the treasure they are raising for the rest of us to benefit from.

Education begins and ends in the home. Children from a two-parent home that not only values education but demands it are about ten times more likely to be productive citizens. Our educational system certainly needs to be fixed and hopefully I can speak to that another day, but parents should realize that the final responsibility is theirs. And it is the father who should be leading the household, not ruling it, but leading it as a strong man focused on the welfare of all in that household.

It is our individual responsibility not to be moral failures in the raising of our children. One of the first and vitally important moral lessons is the treasuring of individual life. If every child reached adulthood with that simple truth stamped on their heart, how much different would the daily news be?

This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the realization that there really are some moral absolutes.

Although I detest playing the leftist game of grouping citizens into “classes”, I will borrow that time-worn term of “working class”. In truth, this tends to include all members of the society who are actively productive, making the wheels of the economy and national order turn. At least, that is the way I am using it, the grassroots of our national existence. That working class has been the most affected by the social fraying we have seen grow and grow since the 1960s. It is they who have to be discouraged and broken for our nation to crumble into submission.

We have not challenged the moral failures of our ruling class strongly enough, loudly enough, or determinedly enough. An example of moral cowardice within that class was seen years ago when Obama was correct enough in a speech to point out the damage fatherlessness had done to black families. Even while he continued to speak, an icon of the parasite class, Jesse Jackson, was mouthing how he would like to alter Mr. O’s lower anatomy for endangering a key pillar of the leftist platform to dominate and subjugate. Obama, of course, got the message and never mentioned it again. His soul had already been sold and he didn’t want to threaten the rewards of the bargain.

But most on the other side of the aisle have hardly been brave champions either. They will voice support for the ideals but settle for a few more government goodies to deliver back home while keeping the waters smooth for our betters to step by step advance toward a destruction of our culture. They will occasionally speak but hardly fight hard enough to draw the complete disapproval of the media culture.

Allowing the family structure to crumble is a rejection of our Founding which was justified and built on the principle of Natural Order. It is within this Order that our God-given Liberty exists. It is the structure for our maximum human potential set in place by Nature and Nature’s God. The nuclear family is a key part of that divine Natural Order. It is at its base. So the destroyers well understood where to begin their attack so that the rest would weaken even faster and more completely.

Because of our failures, far too many of our children live in a world of delusion where the most realistic, constant factors of this world are seen as fluid. Their values, even their gender, can change to fit the mood of the secular and so they have little worth. They lack the strength, support, and guidance that all children deserve from an interconnected family unit. They are unprotected from evil, which is ever busy. They deserve the atmosphere in which to grow a full heart, not a dark closed one devoid of either strength or empathy. They deserve it and our culture has to have it for survival against those who want most to subjugate.

Where are the leaders who will stand tall in front of the whole of the media and political class (who do not consist of anything close to a real majority), stomp the foot, set their jaw, and call these distortions what they are?

I would suggest that they are the ones who have embarrassed and made uncomfortable the establishment classes by fighting back at school board meetings, city council meetings and, yes, at those political rallies.

It is past time that we concede that we are the political leaders who have to turn things around. We are all the parents of our national family. We are the ones who have to loudly make these social distortions unacceptable. And expect better from our fellow citizens. Peer expectations are really leverage.

Yes, I will again say that real “change” for a more American expression of Liberty must and should come from the ground up. Men should realize they will not have the respect of their male peers if they are not a positive force in the life of their families. Those in positions of authority should realize there are lines that they cannot cross in regard to our children. Schools will be the expression of the parent’s vision for their children, not the state’s. The list goes on.

What is at stake is the soul of those who hold this republic’s future in their hands. We often speak of what is “in our hearts”. It may well mean slightly different things to each of us. But somewhere in all of our definitions is a concept of “spirit”, something that touches us deeply, something that can warm us or wound us beyond description. Many see it as some sort of guidance system, perhaps even the very reflection of our character.

However one sees it, it has to be realized that it is not the race, or class, or politics, or economic status that makes mass killers. It is what is in their hearts. It is that we are raising people with empty, angry hearts. That has been our failure. We have not protected our children’s hearts. We have not guided their development and allowed their natural growth. We have allowed those hearts to reflect a worldview hostile to our own, one that will destroy them as well as the future our heritage hopes for them. That is the responsibility of us all to put the cowards on both sides of the aisle in their place and then rightfully become their leaders.

This is only one of the many steps we have to take but one necessary for that healing heritage to spread through the power of both faith and family into the hearts that carry it from friend to friend to the heart of the community, into the hearts of the regions and states and finally into the hearts of a nation – from the ground up.