I found this on a message board. I was so moved by how well this man expressed the "problems" of America, that I wanted to make its own page here. There are some hard truths to be found in this excerpt.

Thanks AJ for the posting..

Subject: Our kids a problem???

This is an interesting and noteworthy point of view from a retired Special Forces Sergeant Major from Georgia, for your contemplation:

<-----Original Message-----> >

"A NEW AMERICA

Forty years ago when I was a first grade school child guns were as common as dirt. Many, if not most, adult males had a rifle or shotgun in the closet or in a rack in an unlocked truck. Many, if not most, had a .38 revolver in the night stand drawer near their bed or in the glove box of the car. You could buy a revolver or even a 20 mm antitank rifle through the mail from advertisers who placed ads in popular magazines.

There were no school yard massacres in those days.

In those days the possession of so much as a Tijuana stag film could get an adult a few days in the pokey. Booze could not be sold from after midnight Saturday until Monday morning. Stores closed up by 6 P.M. on every other evening, 9 P,M. on Fridays and Saturdays. No stores were open on Sunday. The vagrancy laws were enforced, as were the curfew laws for children. If you spoke a racial slur or derogatory remark about someone's family, you were likely to get a broken nose for your pains. And then get whipped when you got home and had to explain yourself. Children were not allowed to talk back to their parents, nor were they allowed to run like a pack of wild animals through the stores or up and down the streets. Parents were the authorities you had to answer to.

Punishment was a bar of soap in the mouth for lesser crimes and a belt across the buttocks for more serious offenses. All adults in the community were to be obeyed and respected. All adults in the community held themselves to be responsible for all the children. Credit was something precious and hard to get, a badge of higher standing in the community. Bankruptcy was shameful. As was illegitimate birth. A young man who got a girl pregnant and didn't do right by her would never get a responsible job in his own town and would have to spend years proving himself again as trustworthy. Thrift and virtue, virginity and self-restraint, self-reliance and moral character were hallmarks of respect and public esteem.

Ministers, school authorities, parents, all firmly believed that they had a moral responsibility to live and conduct themselves, and hold others to high standards of moral conduct and good character. They believed that setting an example for others was a civic obligation. The badge of authority of adulthood.

There were no schoolyard massacres in those days.

America, since that time you have universalized every form of pornography and filth. You now have normalized every kind and type of perversion and deviancy. You have taught and rewarded Moral Relativism from kindergarten through universities for the last four decades. America, you have made the murder of babies in the womb a routine substitute for moral character and an acceptable form of birth control, and in so doing proclaimed to all your children that their lives are worthless to you. You have allowed them to become the wards of the state by abandoning them to the public schools and turning your teachers into daycare workers and baby-sitters. You have encouraged and rewarded your children for remaining in a state of immaturity long into their adult years by remaining in that state of self-absorbed immaturity yourself. You have tolerated, and rationalized, and justified self-indulgence as an enshrined right. You, America, planted the seeds of wanton greed, lust, self-glorification, self-righteousness, and arrogance.

You have pacified your military into garbage collectors and traffic cops. You have militarized your policemen into paramilitary goon squads and unsupervised spy organizations. You have turned your face away and allowed priests to molest children and go unpunished. You have allowed your judges to become Skinner-Ian social experimenters. You have allowed your leaders to commit flagrant and public crimes and shouted down and demonized those who would hold them accountable. You have closed your eyes to blatant criminal activity and acts of war by your elected representatives so long as your wealth and positions are not harmed. You have labored mightily for forty years and defended your choices against any and all who tried to stop the evil. You have made yourselves into indentured servants to unlimited desires and enslaved yourselves to mindless passions. You have elevated the most corrupt to the highest positions and persecuted those who would try to undo the horrors.

Now in your advancing years the fruits of your labors have come home to you. Now the seeds of destruction you sowed, and nurtured, and defended have flourished and are reaching their appointed harvest. Why are you now surprised? You have reached the ultimate fulfillment of all your desires and dreams. Your aspirations have reached maturity. These are your children, America. They are everything you raised them to be. They are the epitome of everything you slaved for all these years. The children who have been performing these hideous acts of evil, these schoolyard massacres are not nice, normal, "good kids " who suddenly became deranged, slivering psychotics after touching a gun. Each and every one of them signaled their intent through their behavior months, years in advance. Each of them was known to parents, teachers, police, other children as being twisted, perverse, dangerous, and blatantly so. Each had a long history of flagrantly violent and dangerous behavior that was known to everyone they ever came into contact with.

Where were the adults all those years? This is your reward for your lifetime's success at sabotaging, betraying, denying, and overturning a thousand years of law, morality, religion, and culture. Embrace your legacy, your monstrous offspring. They are the mirror image of you, their parents and the society you have reshaped. For a generation you have fought long and hard to achieve this day, You have succeeded. Nowthose other days are gone. Then, children respected their elders. Parents respected themselves, each other, and their leaders. America was respected by her friends, and by her enemies.

There were no school yard massacres in those days."