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Part of the problem with our republic today is that we have politicized morals and moralized politics. What do I mean by that? Morals have become whatever the majority votes them to be. If the majority says something is right or wrong, then that is the way it is supposed to be. However, depending on the mood of the country, this means that morals are on a sliding scale and there is no absolute morality. This means that morals will slide to the lowest of the low because of the human factor.
Seneca, the Roman court philosopher during the time of Nero, said that mankind needed to have a helping hand from someone outside the human race because of the corrupt morals of their time. Man is incapable of setting high morals for himself and will always go to the lowest denominator. It seems that we need to look to something outside the human race to set our morals. We need a moral compass that is not swayed by politics or extreme left or right ideologies.
Could that something or someone be the Bible which is God's written word. Also, politics has become a religion to the extreme right and the extreme left. They believe religiously that the right set of laws, the right person, the right attitude, according to their view of life will be the salvation of the country. To get laws and changes enacted by the government seems almost like a religion to the extreme right and left.
Morals have to be set from outside the human race by a being that is considered good and kind and sane and just. Only God can set morals and judge them. Just because something is legal by our standards does not mean it is moral. We have brought moral issues into politics and politics into moral issues. This should never have happened.
Our social standards in Western Civilization have been set by the Bible for 2,000 years. It has worked for the United States for the last 200-plus years. But in the last 50 years, people have challenged the social morals of the Bible and we have become a nation of chaos. Maybe we should go back to ancient wisdom for social ills because, even though we have become more technologically advanced, man has not become any morally better than his ancestors.
DANIEL J TUCKER
Covington
Submitted via Virtual Newsroom