http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-lack-of-seriousness
Have we reached a stage in our national development where seriousness on almost any subject is impossible? Examples abound.
Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency surveillance projects to the British Guardian, said, “I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” And he noted, “the public should decide, not the government.”
Here is a remarkable claim of a bureaucrat who has arrogated to himself the role of spokesman for the public. Moreover, he seems to ignore the responsibility the National Security Agency has in lawfully gathering intelligence that assists in targeting prospective terror activity. In fact, the public does make a decision about these surveillance procedures in the form of elections; but no one ever attributed seriousness to Snowden’s arguments.
Reading a catalogue at a major university is also an exercise in frivolousness. From rock climbing to queer studies, from film noir to Lady Gaga, universities demonstrate a loss of purpose. There is an emergent orthodoxy that deals with environmentalism and homosexual marriage, but inquiry of a serious nature is in decline. The Socratic Method has been replaced by Star Chamber psychology of acceptance or banishment.
Popular film has remained popular by appealing to the sensibility of a fourteen year old boy. Films such as “Man of Steel”, “Iron Man”, “Fast and Furious” have scripts that could be composed by monkeys; what they offer are remarkable computer driven special effects, simply breathtaking technology that is riveting yet mindless.
In New York City a man found culpable of lascivious texting to teenage girls and consistently lied about it, (Anthony Weiner) wants to be regarded as a serious mayoral candidate. Remarkably, his Democratic adherents think this is a good idea. Where is the shame? Whatever happened to taste and modesty? Once again, here is an issue put through the cauldron of media cleansing without the slightest regard for serious criticism.
The Obama administration invested millions of taxpayer dollars in an electric car, Solyndra, which was bound to fail from the outset, yet the public response has been ho-hum, another day in Washington. But that money squandered to sustain a marginal company belongs to the taxpayers is theirs, John and Mary Public.
