In the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Ariz., a 27-year-old mother was arrested last weekend for leaving her children, ages 6 and 8, alone in a car while she was in a bar drinking into the wee hours. In New York City, a 31-year-old homeless man bled to death from stab wounds on a sidewalk while 25 passersby ignored him. In Washington, D.C., the financial giant Goldman Sachs was accused of purposely rigging bad investments to cheat clients out of billions of dollars.
However, the sickest news tidbit of the past week was the First Amendment victory in the U.S. Supreme Court of a video maker who taped dogfights for entertainment. The ruling declared unconstitutional a law intended to forbid "crush videos," films of kittens and other small animals being crushed to death by the high heels of dominitrixes acting out sexual fetishes.
Is this forensic evidence that American civility is being bred out of the culture, replaced by a mutation of rage, brutality, coarseness, hardened indifference, vulgarity, raunch and dishonesty?
Granted, most Americans are generous, charitable, reliable, thoughtful, caring and responsible. Unhappily, those characteristics are less and less the face of the nation.
The trend is toward the crude.
What is it about the "F" word that makes it indispensable in public speech? Vice President Dick Cheney used it on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Movie scripts are considered too bland without it. Cable talk show hosts seem helpless without it. Comics need it for punctuation to their gags.
Protected by anonymity and nicknames rather than their real identities, commenters on the Internet feel free to engage in vile repartee and name calling that once was reserved for bathroom stall graffiti. Is this also the language used around homes?
Promoters of so-called "gun rights" have pushed and pushed politicians to abandon sensible regulations and instead create permissive new laws that encourage packing firearms in public places. What is it about the public display of guns that so many Americans need in order to define their personalities?
Only twisted minds desperate for the most profane insults could possibly equate President Obama or any public figure with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich's genocidal brutality. Yet there they are in public, demonstrators hoisting poster images of Obama with the Hitlerian mustache.
The nation's best health and medical researchers are anguished about eating habits that're creating a new generation of grossly obese young people and the resulting dangers of diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular illness.
Maybe there's a more worrisome health trend requiring urgent attention—the fall of morals and manners in American culture and the rise of uncivilized coarseness.
