by Ben Shapiro
My wife and I make family the center of everything we do, and at the center of our family is faith in God, and the practice of our religion. I do think the state has a role to play; I am a conservative, not a libertarian. But if we wait for state officials to get their act together, our kids will be grown and gone. Nobody is coming to rescue any of us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.
This is not grim work. It is a joy to celebrate life, and tradition, and to participate in the drama of teaching your children wisdom. But to do it right requires a level of commitment, spiritually and emotionally, that cannot be sustained on a casual basis. You have to mean it, and you have to be smart about it, and you have to stick with it, no matter what. It can seem daunting. It is daunting. But what choice do we have? If we love our kids, we know what we have to do.
MCCLOSKEY: People’s hearts have to change in order to change their minds and behavior; and that’s obviously made easier when society encourages virtue and the building of strong character. Ultimately the changing of hearts has to come from a “New Evangelization,” such as John Paul II preached to Catholics and from an orthodox Jewish and evangelical Christian equivalent.
Ultimately, only religion can transform a corrupt and decaying culture, such as we live in. It may take decades or centuries as it did in the time of early Christianity but it can be done. Pornography was rampant in ancient Rome. Only a society that respects the indissolubility of marriage, the equality of women, and the good of having children can have a proper attitude towards the body.
LIMBAUGH: Parents cannot, obviously, entirely shield their children from the pervasive secular influences in our culture. But there are constructive steps they can take. Those able to afford private schools can avoid much of the destructive message being advanced by the public education establishment. Others, if they are in a position to do so, can home school their children. As for parents who find either option unfeasible or undesirable, they should actively monitor the curricula and activities at the public schools they attend. They should participate in the PTA and otherwise demand accountability from their schools and teachers and strenuously object when indecency rears its head or when secular values are promoted.
I believe that whether we personally participate in home schooling or enroll our children in private schools, we should do what we can to encourage and protect the home schooling and school choice movements. If nothing else, the robustness of these movements will force public schools to compete and improve academically.
The government definitely has a role in upholding moral standards. Regulating obscenity and profanity is certainly compatible with conservative governance, provided the regulators don’t use “decency” as an excuse to suppress speech they find politically objectionable. So while these regulations are fine in theory it is sometimes difficult to maintain a balance and the government should always be scrutinized against overreaching, which could be worse than the harm they seek to regulate.
It is also proper, indeed imperative for the government to advance moral standards through the laws it promulgates. The conventional wisdom dictating that we must not legislate morality is patently absurd. As I (and others) have written elsewhere, almost all of our laws, both criminal and civil, are grounded in morality. We outlaw certain behaviors on the criminal side, or make certain civil wrongs actionable, primarily because they violate our moral code. Our government is perfectly within its proper purview to sanction certain behaviors and discourage others. It is appropriate, for example, that government places its imprimatur on traditional marriage and refuses to recognize same-sex marriage, if for no other reason than heterosexual marriage is a profoundly important institution that lends essential stability to our society.
Generally, those who argue against legislating morality are opposed not to our legislatures injecting their moral values into the law, but to the type of morality that is legislated. The radical homosexual lobby, for example, is quite comfortable with laws that force the government to recognize, officially, homosexual marriage. Political liberals are all too happy with the state enacting hate crime legislation on mostly moral grounds. Affirmative action laws are similarly rooted in moral concerns. Some liberals opposed the Iraq War resolution on moral grounds. On a host of other issues, liberals are insistent on using the law to enforce their version of morality. Sadly, all too often, they are perfectly happy with the judiciary imposing those laws when they can’t elect legislatures willing to legislate in accordance with their worldview.
Under our constitutional separation of powers, it is improper for the judiciary to “legislate.” Conservatives have long decried judicial activism because they believe that judges are required to honor the plain meaning of the text of the Constitution and the framers’ original intent concerning it. When judges make policy they are usurping the constitutional authority of the legislative branch, whose members were duly elected by the people and are politically accountable. It is one thing for the courts to interpret the Constitution and to exercise judicial review—to pass upon the constitutionality of laws—but it is not proper for the courts to rewrite the Constitution or otherwise to legislate from the bench.
Conservatives need to continue to push for the election of executives who will appoint constitutionalist judges and legislators who will confirm them. We need to encourage the Senate—if it hasn’t already done so by the time this book is published—to change the Senate rules to outlaw filibustering over judicial nominees to ensure that the minority cannot thwart the president’s constitutional judicial appointment power. We have co-equal branches of government, but that doesn’t mean they have co-equal authority over every governmental function within their sphere. The Senate has an advise and consent role on judicial appointments, not the power to veto any appointment for any reason. The Senate should pass on the competency and character of the nominees, but beyond watch-dogging those threshold qualifications, the Senate should recognize that the judicial appointment power resides in the executive—the president—who is elected by the people and the states, democratically. Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress can take other actions to rein in an abusive judiciary, such as limiting the courts’ jurisdiction over certain matters.
While the courts and to a lesser extent the legislative branch has contributed to the pollution of our moral fabric, most of the decay has occurred outside government at the level of our culture. If traditionalists want to reverse this trend they must be willing to engage in the culture war and try to take back our culture from those who have systematically degraded it. Christians, for their part, should try to clean up their churches, eradicating the corruption that has infected their hierarchies and diluted their biblical message.
But Christians or not, all who care about restoring overall decency to our culture need to do what they can to positively influence society, by raising their children on the values they believe in and by standing up for and defending those values in the public square and promoting them through the government officials they elect.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a tribute to the greatness of American values and traditional morality. Those who have helped shape this work are embodiments of all that makes this country great.
First and foremost, I must thank David Limbaugh. David is a true gentleman, a man of true discernment, and a touchstone during difficult times. It is about people like David that Jethro spoke of in Exodus 18:21-23 when he informed Moses to find “men of accomplishment, God-fearing people, men of truth.”
I must also thank the wonderful people at Regnery. The faith in me shown by Jeff Carneal and Harry Crocker has been incredibly gratifying and humbling. Thanks to my editor, Ben Domenech, for honing this work and pushing me to greater clarity and concision.
Thanks to Rick Newcombe and all of the folks at Creators Syndicate, who gave me the opportunity to grow both in my writing and in my vision. Thanks in particular to Katherine Searcy, my former editor, and Ashley Daley, my current editor, for their invalu
able input and guidance.
Thanks to Jon Garthwaite and Jennifer Biddison of Townhall.com, who provide Americans with an everpresent source for conservative thought and news—and who provide me with friendship and guidance. Thanks also to David Horowitz and the people at Frontpagemag.com, as well as the people over at WorldNetDaily.com, all of whom are fighting the good fight every day in the culture wars.
Thanks to Ann Coulter for her constant humor, wisdom, support—and, of course, her biting wit. Thanks also to Andrew Breitbart, who has been a source of knowledge and advice since I first met him four years ago. Thanks to Michelle Malkin, Rod Dreher, and Father C. John McCloskey III for their help and their brilliance in completing this work. Thanks to Sandy Schulz for her tremendous aid in navigating the waters of the publishing and publicity world.
Thanks to all of my friends in talk radio and column-writing—without all of them, this country truly would be doomed to the slow decay of moral relativism.
Thanks to my three younger sisters—they are all shining examples of purity on earth. It is people like them who will bring this culture back from the brink.
Finally, thanks to Dad and Mom. God commands all of us to “honor your father and your mother, so that your days will be lengthened upon the land that Hashem, your God, gives you.”(Exodus 20:12) Never has a child been able to fulfill a commandment with such ease. My parents are truly righteous people—in Hebrew, tzadikkim. It has been a privilege—a true blessing—to grow up in their house. May every child be blessed with such parents.
And lastly, I must thank God, both for the opportunities He has granted me, and for granting all of us the priceless gift of His morality. Without Him, we would be lost to chaos, nihilism, narcissism and hedonism. With Him, we can—and we will—cross over to the promised land.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1: A GENERATION LOST
1 Interview, 19 February 2005
2 Leland Elliot and Cynthia Brantley, Sex on Campus: the naked truth about the REAL SEX lives of college students (United States of America: Random House, Inc., 1997), 5-19
3 Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons (United States of America: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004), 156
4 Ibid, 150
5 Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
6 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar, Winter 1993
7 Charles Krauthammer, “Defining Deviancy Up,” The New Republic, 22 November 1993
8 Ben Shapiro, “The radical homosexual agenda and the destruction of standards,” Townhall.com, 9 March 2005
9 Paddy Chayefsky, The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Screenplays Vol. II (New York, NY: Applause Books, 1995), 251
10 Kaiser Family Foundation, “Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds,” March 2005,http://www.kff.org/entmedia/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=51805
11 “Urban, suburban students engage in similar bad behaviors,” Today’s School Psychologist , 25 February 2004
12 “Survey: Parents Blasé About Kids’ Drug Use,” NewsMax.com, 22 February 2005
13 The Today Show, NBC, 27 January 2005
14 The Today Show, NBC, 26 January 2005
15 Rhonda Bodfield Bloom, “Safer choices: Sex can wait,” Arizona Daily Star, 27 January 2004
16 Associated Press, “Report: Suburban schools not safe havens,” CNN.com, 29 January 2004
17 Meg Meeker, Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Company, 2002), 12
18 Cassie Wolfe, “SEX, ETC.: Young People’s Sexual Choices: Hot News, Hot Topic,” MTV.com, March 2004
19 Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, and Lauren R. Noyes, “Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide,” Center for Data Analysis Report #03-04, June 3, 2003
20 The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, “America’s Adults and Teens Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy: An Annual National Survey,” December 2003
21 Michelle Malkin, “The new youth craze: Self-mutilation,” Townhall.com, 23 February 2005
22 Laura Vanderkam, “Hookups starve the soul,” USA Today, 26 July 2001
23 Anne Jarrell, “The face of teenage sex grows younger,” The New York Times, 2 April 2000
24 Dr. James Hitchcock, “Limits of Tolerance,” WF-F.com, 24 March 2005
CHAPTER 2: FUN WITH BANANAS
1 “Dr. Laura Considers Presidential Run,” NewsMax.com, 3 June 2002
2 Name changed to protect personal privacy
3 Interview conducted 28 February 2005
4 Kay S. Hymowitz, Ready Or Not: What Happens When We Treat Children As Small Adults (San Francisco, California: Encounter Books, 2000), 165
5 Wolf Blitzer et al, “Should Iraqi Elections Be Postponed?; Are Police Close to Catching BTK Killer?,” Wolf Blitzer Reports (5:00 PM EST) on CNN, 2 December 2004
6 John Gibson, “Back of the Book Abstinence-Only Programs,” The O’Reilly Factor (20:45) on Fox News Network, 9 August 2001
7 David Campos, Sex, Youth, and Sex Education: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2002), 9
8 As quoted in Ibid
9 Name changed to protect privacy
10 Interview, 18 March 2005
11 Name changed to protect privacy
12 Interview, 18 March 2005
13 http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/real_choices_keystone
14 Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah (New York, New York: ReganBooks, 1997), 159
15 Kay S. Hymowitz, Ready Or Not: What Happens When We Treat Children As Small Adults (San Francisco, California: Encounter Books, 2000), 172
16 Robert E. Rector, “When Sex Ed Becomes Porn 101,” The Heritage Foundation Press Room Commentary, 27 August 2003, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed082703b.cfm
17 Ibid
18 Jim Brown and Jody Brown, “Parents Generally Unaware What ‘Comprehensive Sex Ed’ Entails,” AgapePress News, 21 April 2003, http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/4/afa/21003e.asp
19 C.W. Eliot, “The Pioneer Qualities of Dr. Morrow,” Social Diseases 4 (July 1913), 135
20 “OBSESSED WITH SEX,” WorldNetDaily.com, 18 November 2004
21 Daniel J. Flynn, “Kinsey revisited,” Townhall.com, 17 November 2004
22 Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: the Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), 135
23 Samual Blumenfeld, “Sex ed and the destruction of American morality,” WorldNet-Daily. com, 18 January 2003
24 Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: the Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), 161
25 Ibid, 167
26 Ibid, 168
27 Ibid, 167-168
28 Bonnie Nelson Trudell, Doing Sex Education: Gender Politics and Schooling (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993), 104
29 SIECUS Homepage, http://www.siecus.org
30 Planned Parenthood, “Planned Parenthood Federation of America Mission and Policy Statements,” http://plannedparenthood.com/pp2/portal/files/portal/aboutus/mission.xml
31 Philip J. Hilts, “Blunt Style On Teen Sex And Health,” The New York Times, 14 September 1993
32 “SIECUS to Address the Failings of Federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs at March for Women’s Lives in New York,” U.S. Newswire, 28 August 2004
33 Clare Kittredge, “BENEFITS OF ABSTINENCE STRESSED,” The Boston Globe, 22 April 2004
34 Ibid
35 Anne Kim, “Garden of abstinence,” The Seattle Times, 18 April 2004
36 Cheryl Wetzstein, “Pledge seen reducing out-of-wedlock births,” The Washington Times, 30 March 2004
37 Ibid
38 Suzanne Goldenberg, “US study of teenage sexual disease destroys basis of virginity crusade,” The Guardian, 10 March 2004
39 Melissa G. Pardue, Robert E. Rector, and Shannan Martin, “Government Spends $12 o
n Safe Sex and Contraceptives for Every $1 Spent on Abstinence,” The Heritage Foundation Policy Research and Analysis, Backgrounder #1718, 14 January 2004, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/bg1718.cfm
40 Mary Eberstadt, “Home-Alone America,” Policy Review, 1 June 2001
41 Sharon Robb, “FAT STAT: 1 IN 4 GETS ENOUGH EXERCISE,” Sun-Sentinel, 18 March 2001
42 Kay S. Hymowitz, Ready Or Not: What Happens When We Treat Children As Small Adults (San Francisco, California: Encounter Books, 2000), 173
43 “Urban, suburban students engage in similar bad behaviors,” Today’s School Psychologist , 25 February 2004
44 Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah (New York, New York: ReganBooks, 1997), 155
45 Jim Hunter, “Stronger marriages are worth working for,” The Commercial Appeal, 11 February 2005
46 Dr. Joe S. McIlhaney, “Q: Should Congress stay the course on education for sexual abstinence until marriage?,” Insight on the News, 20 May 2002
47 Nicholas D. Kristof, “Bush’s Sex Scandal,” The New York Times, 16 February 2005
48 Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks of Senator Clinton to NYS Family Planning Providers,” 24 January 2005
49 “guys’ love & sex secrets,” Seventeen, February 2005, 66-67
50 Henry Hyde, Chairman, House Judiciary, “Report on the Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton: President of the United States—Part 1 of 6,” Congressional Press Releases, 16 December 1998
51 Ibid
52 W.A. Friedlander, “Clinton’s distinction,” News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), 26 September 1998
53 Walter Kirn, with reporting by Jay Branegan, James Carney, J.F.O. McAllister /Washington and Victoria Rainert/New York, “When Sex Is Not Really Having Sex,” Time Magazine, 2 February 1998
54 Ricardo Gandara, “What isn’t sex to teens really stuns parents,” Austin American-Statesman , 4 February 2001
