Barbarians In Lord Of The Flies

A prosperous and free society is possible only when each individual is, by rule of law, protected from force imposed by others, especially those in his own government. The Founders created a nation based on the fundamental principle that the state is subservient to the people. As Clint Eastwood put it to an imaginary president:"We own this country. We...we own it. It is not you owning it and not the politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.""We own it" is what is remarkable about the Constitution as originally written. "We own it" is our most fundamental rule.As the nation moved into the twentieth century, that rule began to be weakened by those who, like the old barbarians, have no use for any rules which might get in

Such an outcome is never but one individual away. When "we own it," each individual is responsible for his share of "ownership." The moral standards that each individual decides for his share determine a civil society or a barbarian society. Failure of individual ethics is beautifully illustrated in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. The author says of his work:The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.As in Lord of the Flies, individuals who reject existing standards without a plausible replacement end up with a defective society. Without an ethical foundation, they become followers and inevitably strike out with hatred and cruelty when their ideas cannot be defended, as with the sloganized and quick-to-hate left of today. Later, they may come to the frightening realization that the rules which once protected them are no longer there. Few examples are more dramatic than 1930s Germany, where Hitler led an entire cultured nation into barbarism. How was this possible? In Hitler's own words: "How fortunate for leaders that

From these positions, they pressure the rest of us to not only tolerate, but give legitimacy to whatever they want to do, even behaviors we find repugnant or immoral.In the age of the anti-rules generation, an ex-president can still be held in high esteem by his party despite a string of sexual peccadilloes stretching from the state house to the Oval Office. The sad fact is that that party no longer seems to hold to anything resembling traditional American moral values.In the age of the anti-rules generation, media personalities and politicians can lie, smear, and slander without limit. Entertainment media encourages sex and profanity. Films can be made featuring extreme violence, as lamented by Carol Platt Liebau:"Unconstrained by any sense of morality -- and wholly untrained in any sort of systemic moral reasoning -- it is impossible for film makers to understand why it matters whether they expose the young and the vulnerable to a level of evil and sadistic brutality that would once have been unthinkable on-screen."Without rules, marriage vows can be discarded at the first inconvenience, despite the effects on the children. It was different in grandfather's time, as in the Judds' plaintive song:Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days.Sometimes it feels like this world's gone crazy.Grandpa, take me back to yesterdayWhen