Alien Drums

“Human passions unbridled by morality and religion … would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” — John Adams (as quoted by William J. Bennett in Our Sacred Honor, p. 16)

I hear very few people saying this kind of thing today, and most of those who do are part of the religious right with a one-sided view of both morality and religion. I wish more progressive/liberal folks would speak up about the importance of morality and religion, and I think maybe they are. But morality and unselfish religion are not easy. With both, an “anything goes” or “do your own thing” mentality is just not consistent with letting standards beyond oneself serve as a guide for living. And both the left and the right have such tendencies at the extremes.

I’m a Republican right now who has voted Democratic as much as GOP through the years and am definitely leaning to the left right now. I have trouble finding that either party has a monopoly on wisdom.  I’m not trying to be far or against either party here. I think all Americans, left and right, need to understand the importance of morality and religion if our nation is to remain strong.

Our current president talks very religious, but his administration has been a moral failure in many way, primarily by prosecuting an offensive war against a perceived threat — emphasis on “perceived.”

But I get too far afield. Back to the main point.

“As the poet Robert Frost observed, the ‘vision’ of the Founders was ‘to occupy the land with character … with people in self control.’” (from Our Sacred Honor, p. 16)

That’s not easy, but it is possible.