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The Daily Signal
Even the Best
Laws Cannot Save Our Society. Here’s What We Need.
Walter E. Williams
December 13, 2017
I’m approaching my 82nd birthday, and my daughter will occasionally
suggest that modernity is perplexing to me because I’m from prehistoric
times.
As such, it points to one of the unavoidable problems of youth—namely,
the temptation to think that today’s behavioral standards have always
been. Let’s look at a few of the differences between yesteryear and
today.
One of those differences is the treatment of women.
There are awesome physical strength differences between men and women.
To create and maintain civil relationships between the sexes is to drum
into boys, starting from very young ages, that they are not to use
violence against a woman for any reason.
Special respect is given women. Yesteryear even the lowest of lowdown
men would not curse or use foul language to or in the presence of women.
To see a man sitting on a crowded bus or trolley car while a woman is
standing used to be unthinkable. It was deemed common decency for a man
to give up his seat for a woman or elderly person.
Today young people use foul language in front of—and often to—adults
and teachers. It’s not just foul language. Many youngsters feel that
it’s acceptable to assault teachers. Just recently, 45 Pennsylvania
teachers resigned because of student violence.
Back in what my daughter calls prehistoric times, the use of foul
language to an adult or teacher would have meant a smack across the
face. Of course, today a parent taking such corrective action risks
being reported to a local child protective service and even being
arrested.
The modern parental or teacher response to misbehavior is to call for
“time out.” In other words, what we’ve taught miscreants of all ages is
that they can impose physical pain on others and not suffer physical
pain themselves. That’s an open invitation to bad behavior.
It has always been considered a good idea to refrain from sexual
intercourse until marriage or at least adulthood. During the sexual
revolution of the 1960s, lessons of abstinence were ridiculed,
considered passé, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth
control pills, and abortion.
Out-of-wedlock childbirths are no longer seen as shameful and a
disgrace. As a result, the rate of illegitimate births among whites is
over 30 percent, and among blacks, it’s over 70 percent.
For over a half-century, the nation’s liberals—along with the education
establishment, pseudo-intellectuals, and the courts—have waged war on
traditions, customs, and moral values.
Many in today’s generation have been counseled to believe that there
are no moral absolutes. Instead, what’s moral or immoral, right or
wrong, is a matter of convenience, personal opinion, or what is or is
not criminal.
Society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions,
and moral values. Customs, traditions, and moral values are those
important thou-shalt-nots, such as thou shalt not murder, shalt not
steal, shalt not lie, and shalt not cheat. They also include respect
for parents, teachers, and others in authority, plus those courtesies
one might read in Emily Post’s rules of etiquette.
These behavioral norms—mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth,
and religious teachings—represent a body of wisdom distilled over the
ages through experience, trial and error, and looking at what works and
what doesn’t.
The importance of customs, traditions, and moral values as a means of
regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody’s
watching.
There are not enough cops. Laws can never replace these restraints on
personal conduct in producing a civilized society. At best, the police
and the criminal justice system are the last desperate lines of defense
for a civilized society.
Unfortunately, customs, traditions, and moral values have been
discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating
a civilized society, and now we’re paying the price—and that includes
the recent revelations regarding the treatment of women.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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