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The Dumbing Down of America
By Jim Fritz
Maybe I am just getting old, but it certainly seems many in this country are getting dumber by the day. We have all seen TV shows with a news reporter interviewing people on the street, asking them simple questions like, “Who is the Vice President?” and no one can give a correct answer. I know this is a TV show, and maybe only the dummies were selected from the group; nevertheless, I encounter stupefying ignorance daily.
We are fortunate to have good Catholic radio here, and I seldom listen to anything else. Last week I traveled to the Washington DC area and had to tune in a different station. I knew better, but I turned on NPR to a show called Science Friday which sounded interesting. Their guest was a professor who had done a study comparing current effects of the weather with the effects recorded by Henry David Thoreau in the days of Walden’s Pond. Thoreau kept fairly detailed records of the first signs in Spring of certain insects, birds and flowers. The college professor used this information with information he collected in the same area comparing the dates of the arrival of the same insects, birds and flowers today with the dates recorded by Thoreau in 1845.
From this analysis the professor proclaimed the climate is warming. He ignored the possibility of unusually colder weather in Massachusetts in 1845 as well as some other conditions. Historical records indicate periods when average temperatures rise slightly and others when drop. For the global warming enthusiasts, actual weather or the buffer of atmospheric phenomena like cloud cover make no difference. We are supposed to trust their analysis just because “It is science.” I think if I had submitted this analysis as a high school science project, my science teacher would have thrown it out. The guest professor used a famous name and famous place to support his agenda promoting more government control.
Recently, in another attempt to promote a political agenda, a self-professed Catholic (let’s call him Ken) declared his friend who is running for a political office is pro-life when his friend definitely has a clear record of just the opposite. The candidate claims he is pro-choice even though he sells birth control and abortifacients in his pharmacy. In trying to rationalize this, Ken states everyone is pro-choice when it comes to making their own decisions without government mandating what they can or cannot do. He is really defining anarchism. How unbelievable! The candidate believes a woman should have a choice, yet calls himself pro-life.
Narrowing the issue to “a woman’s choice” indicates complete ignorance of the real facts. Statistics show over 60 percent of women “choosing” abortion are forced to do so against their will. This is not choice for the majority of women as the blather coming from the so-called ‘pro-choice’ politicians would indicate. In addition, the women who do choose abortion often suffer depression, and in some extreme cases, even suicide following their abortions. To believe women who resort to abortion will not likely suffer any physical or psychological effects (even serious regrets or guilt) is simply blind ignorance.
Having spent many years on the sidewalks in front of abortion “clinics” attempting to provide some counseling to the women entering these facilities, I can testify to the accuracy of claims that 60 percent going in against their will. Many are physically forced by their boyfriends who wsh to avoid having to pay child support. Also, a great many younger girls are forced to enter by their parents and even by grandmothers. This, definitely, is the saddest scene to witness in front of an abortion facility. I had the experience of trying to counsel a mother and father bringing in their very young teenage daughter for an abortion when the girl was adamant she did not want to abort her baby. Seeing she had reinforcement from me, she became even louder and more adamant. Her mother was in my face and would not listen to anything I said. They went into the abortion facility, and I can only imagine what went on in there. About a half hour later the parents came out, then the girl. The girl said it all when she gave me a huge smile which I will never forget. They left, but not before the girl took some literature on how to obtain help..
A few years ago another woman was being dragged in by both her boyfriend and her mother. She did not want the abortion. She had been using drugs and her mother and boyfriend insisted the drugs had already damaged or would damage the child. The mother was very vocal and could be heard half a block away. Two counselors, one talking to the mother and one to the boyfriend finally convinced all three of them to go to a local OB/GYN and get a true analysis of the baby’s health. This they did, escorted by the two counselors, and were told by the doctor the baby was fine. Aborting it would only worsen the girl’s chances of getting off drugs as it would worsen her depression. They finally agreed, and the girl eventually had a beautiful baby boy which she proudly brought back months later to show off to the sidewalk counselors who had helped to save the baby. The young woman herself recovered entirely from her drug addiction, and her little baby was the joy of her life.
What right do these politicians, completely ignorant of the truth, have to support the pro-abortion agenda and call it pro-choice? They make the same uneducated decision in promoting contraceptive birth control as a health benefit when in truth it is a carcinogenen with no health benefits.
Crisis Magazine recently published an excellent article describing how secularists are known to dismiss religion as mere espousal of a set of blind-faith beliefs without evidence to support them. The crudest among them will often do so in a snide and sneering way, holding that religious belief is imagination and fantasy—a childhood fairy tale—in contrast to the “scientific” view they espouse. Actually, they reveal themselves as the truly ignorant ones.
Even as the secularists scorn religion as blind faith, one is awestruck by their own blind faith beliefs. These are beliefs that often have no basis in the empirical science they claim to be devoted to. We can find such blind faith beliefs everywhere in the secular culture. Christians have even unthinkingly accepted some of these because they have heard them so often. One of these is global warming which we mentioned previously. Another is the theory of evolution. People routinely call evolution a theory yet the evolutionists treat it essentially as a law. At best we could call it a hypothesis.
We have covered examples of blind faith in sexual and family matters before with the exception of homosexuality which has spawned “science” that declares same-sex attraction is intrinsic from birth in a “gay gene”. The evidence clearly points otherwise. There has never been any proof of a “gay gene” no matter how often this fable is repeated.
These examples of secularist blind faith beliefs are just the tip of the iceberg but illustrate the ignorance of those expounding on the blind faith which characterizes secularism, not true religion.
Ignorant people are not all as obvious as the young man wearing his visor cap on backwards and holding up his hand to keep the sun out of his eyes. Most of these people are politicians, college professors and others in authority. As the Book of Wisdom indicates, it is more difficult for a person in high standing to achieve wisdom than the faithful.