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Our Shocking
CHARACTER
The signs
of
disintegrafion are everywhere. Something
dreadfully WRONG is ha ppening to
our
peoples. We're
rapidly losing character -losing
our
ability fo blush,
our
sense of
shame. Perhaps mos f sickening
of
all, we're
learning nof to
care.
by
Garner Ted Armstrong
O
UR sociETY
is sick. We are no longer a "great"
society, no longer even a "good" society. Our
society is becoming evil.
We have lost our way.
We don't know what we stand for, where we're
going, who or what we
are.
We have no goal.
A1l you see around you today - the problems
that concern people most - are but symptoms of a
dread national sickness. The price-rigging executive,
the turned-off, long-haired youth, the screaming
hard-hat, the violent demonstrators,
th~
sick killer
- these are mere symptoms of a deeper malaise.
We're just not "good" any more. We're losing
our sense of what
is
"good." We're floundering in a
mad sea of bate,
whe~e
bickering, backbiting, name–
calling, fault-finding, blame-placing and biased
labelism replaces kindness, patience, understanding,
and love.
Why? What's happening to us?
A president is burned in effigy, anda war crimi–
nal is a hero.
The kids who scornfully ridicule the "estab–
lishment" for its "hangups" scream for the legal–
ization of "pot," and the right to their own terrible
hangup. Lampooning the establishment for its habits,
they demand legal permission to plunge into their
own ever more degenerative habits. We seek to
replace evil with evil, add poison to poison, pile abuse
upon abuse, hoping all this constitutes
á
cure for our
ills.
Criminals are admired, and public protests cry
out for their absolution and release. Sensational
trials elicit sobs of sympathy for the accused, and
calloused indifference toward the victims or the loved
ones of the victims.
We have lost our sense of values. We're not sure,
now, what
IS
"truth" or "right." And in this lies a
more deadly peril for America than any other prob–
lem of our age.
Still, in spite of the desperate need to recapture
lost values and to rekindle the spiritual and moral
principies we have trodden underfoot - perhaps the
deepest sickness of all
is
our inability tocare.
Millions
do
care; but too many millions - far
too many - do not.
People's "MIS"concern
Ask most Americans what issue concerns them
the most. With almost bovine-like placidity, they'll
answer "Vietnam." Why? They know the war is
"bad." Somehow all the demonstrations have finally
hit home. Millions of Americans, more "hawkish"
toward American involvement in Vietnam only a few
years ago, are being gradually brought around to the
anti-war view which they scorned only months
before. Surely, Americans are dying in Vietnam,
albeit not anywhere nearly approaching the rate of
those dying yearly on our streets and highways, or
from heart disease, cancer, or any number of other
diseases, but dying, nevertheless.
So they want the boys borne. Now. But it's
apparently perfectly all right to maintain any num–
ber of troops in South Korea, in Europe, or other
areas of the world where U. S. troops go daily about
the business of helping the United States police the
entire globe.
The concern over Vietnam is highly illustrative
of our lack of
VALUEs,
and our wrong sense of
PRIOR–
ITY!
Of
course
Vietnam is a useless, no-win war, with
an enemy granted sanctuary, where "victory" is not
now, and never has been, the policy. This magazine