Broken Compass? Reaction to "Weinergate"

It is always interesting to watch how the long knives come out when someone falls from grace. Both parties are good at eviscerating their opponents for failures of character, until one of their own does the same thing. The list of fallen idols, not only in politics but also in sports, Hollywood, Wall Street and even Main Street USA, is long. Fallen idols are sadly more the rule than the exception, it seems at times. Of course the media loves blood in the water. The old newspaper mantra is "if it bleeds it leads".

Joseph Stalin once said, "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

Sadly, what I am seeing in the media, and even on RedCounty.com, is a failure to address the core issue for which Rep. Weiner is the latest poster child. America has a spreading cancer growing within its body politic that is eating away at our collective patriotism, morality and spiritual body.

In finer days, such behavior would be roundly condemned, but not today. Rather, immoral behavior is looked at by many as a red badge of honor. Instead of demanding our elected officials, captains of industry, spiritual leaders and we ourselves be a people of virtue, we embrace the details of the next gritty article. All along forgetting we are being ground down to the point where ancient Rome once was, peering at the bloody sands of the coliseum, waiting for that final death blow. The coliseum today revolves around the feckless Rep. Weiner, the proverbial man in the arena.

What we have failed to recognize is we have and are raising generations of Americans who are neither patriotic, moral nor spiritual. That is the story that must be told. That is the tragedy that far to few see. That is the cancer that is consuming us all. That is the greatest threat to our freedom.

But there is hope. The TEA Party revolution is having none of this sort of behavior. TEA Party members hold on dearly to American patriotism, morality and spirituality. They understand these are the bedrock values embedded in our Constitution. They understand that liberty and freedom are only as strong as "we the people".

Perhaps it is time for all Americans to look into the mirror, look at our children and grandchildren and say are we patriotic, moral and spiritual? If the answer to any of these is no, then we have a problem in need of fixing.

As Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."