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By Tom Anselm

Some days I fear this old world will just split down the middle.  There are so many divisions.  Red states, blue states. Israelis versus Palestinians.  And, in spite of all that has happened over the pas 50 years, there is still white against black. Not to mention Mizzou zealots hating on Kansas fans.

Why is our ship of state springing leaks?  One could argue that there has always been division in history.  Heck, back in the Garden of Eden, Cain knocked off his brother Abel.  The Egyptians showed little use for the Hebrews, although they loved to use them as their slaves.

Muslims and Christians fought over who ran the Holy Land in what came to be known as The Crusades.  And good old Martin Luther hammered up his problems with the Catholic Church back in 1517, starting probably the largest religious division the world has ever known.

Maybe it’s a function of today’s 24-hour news coverage where everything happening gets reported, but doesn’t it seem like things are getting crazier?  To paraphrase Rodney King, we can’t seem to “just get along.”  These are the days I really wonder what is to become of our culture.

You know, them Romans lost their edge as world leaders when they let down their moral guard.   They were so weakened by years of corruption from within that they were easy pickins’ for the invading mercenaries from the north of Europe.

I believe we are doing the same.  It seems we have lost our moral center.   Since 1973, we have legally eliminated over 55 million of our future populace through abortion. Could this be one reason why our Social Security system is struggling?

Or some basic minimum wage jobs are going unfilled?  Or why our number of national births to deaths is going down each year?  Most of Europe and especially Greece have gone below their replacement rate, and they are in very bad straits financially, not to mention spiritually.

We have allowed the misuse of the First Amendment right of free speech to give protection to pornographers and producers of mega-violent video games within which our youth are engrossed for countless hours.  We are suffering from a veritable epidemic of childhood depression, teen suicides, and drug-related deaths of our most vibrant youth.

Parents are killing their kids and then taking their own lives.  Nearly every month, there is news of someone shooting up a school or randomly firing into a crowd; nearly every day a crime where someone is killed and many times, it is a youthful someone. Yet praying in schools has long been declared illegal.

Use the words moral malaise, if you will.  Say lack of real leadership, if you must.  I just don’t see much of the latter going on.  Politicians caught in sex and cheating scandals.  Popular figures dying of drug overdoses or constantly in trouble with the law.  Men, and women, working closely with youth, still taking sexual advantage of them.   A football coach paying bonuses for deliberately maiming an opponent.

There is a lot out there in the media pointing to a culmination of all this mess.    We hear of “end time” prophecies, the predictions of Nostradamus, the Mayan Calendar theories.  I don’t know if any of this is really going to happen.  But I do know that we the people are in a period of great unrest.  It makes one wonder… Is there any hope out there?

Well, sports fans, I have to say, yes.  In my various wanderings as a substitute teacher, I have seen the future.   Kids who were less-than-stellar middle school citizens are going to graduate high school.  They have girl friends who are keeping them on the right track.  They are planning on advanced education.  Young men and women of all races walk the halls together, share team victories and defeats, learning to “just get along.”

I see kids working hard in college, active in church youth groups, volunteering during disasters, joining the military.  One of my tutoring kids is starting to worry about getting his GED and staying out of trouble so he can get a decent job.  Go get a burger somewhere and who do you see working there… young people who are discovering the value of work.

They are seeing the light, in spite of what’s going on around them.  They want to do better by the world than have their parents.  They want the country to grow and prosper and get back to being the best in the world again.

I guess the question really is, will we who are currently at the helm be able to keep this ship of state afloat long enough for them to take over and right it’s course?

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