America's Chief Export: ImmoralityDecember 16, 2013Why are Americans so peeved? Is it Obamacare? Well, partly – and in a big way. One wonders, in fact, if that sign language interpreter at the Mandela funeral moonlighted as the lead IT consultant for Healthcare.gov. But it’s much more than just Obamacare. How do we explain America’s red-level economic and socio-political misery index? Is it rising unemployment, or the shrinking economy? Is it explosive debt and deficits, or pervasive government eavesdropping? Is it the atrophy of individual liberty, or an unprecedented trampling of the First, Second, Fourth and nearly every other amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Finally, is it the systematic assault on natural marriage and family, or government sanctioning of mass infanticide? Yes. It’s all of these things and more. Still, these things are only symptomatic of a far greater problem. There remains a broader explanation, a definitive catalyst, for this, the domestic winter of our discontent – and, as so often happens, a mere 14 words from the Holy Scriptures better elucidates that catalyst than ream upon ream of opinion page copy. The words are these: “When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2). America groans because the wicked rule. Indeed, under this president, America’s chief export has become immorality. Sexual deviancy, murder of the unborn, redistribution of wealth and other evils have been sanitized and propagandized as “basic human rights.” Thus, when this arrogant man stands before the U.N. and decries those nations that refuse to embrace his special brand of pagan relativism, we shouldn’t be surprised if those nations push back. And so they push back. To be sure, in addition to triggering our own spike in angst, Obama’s fevered push to “call evil good and good evil,” is likewise responsible for America’s snowballing marginalization across the globe. Under the tragic leadership of this “selfie”-centered narcissist, the United States, while never perfect, now looks less like Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and more like the biblical Whore of Babylon. A nation that once stood alone as the world’s moral guidepost now leads the contemptible charge to infect our privileged planet with its own viral iniquities. And so the world pushes back. For instance, there has been, of late, great weeping and gnashing of teeth among mainstream media – and other circles of intolerant “tolerance” – over successful efforts by several foreign governments to stem the tide of “LGBT” propaganda within their own sovereign borders. Russia, India, Croatia, Peru, Jamaica and even Australia, for instance, along with other nations, are now moving to inoculate themselves from the fast-metastasizing cancer of sexual relativism. Having witnessed, from afar, the poisonous results of such propaganda here in the U.S. (the hyper-sexualization of children, the deconstruction of natural marriage and family, the rampant spread of sexually transmitted disease, religious persecution and the like), there seems an emerging global recognition that the radical “LGBT” agenda – a pet cause of Obama’s – is not about securing “human rights,” but, rather, is about promulgating moral wrongs. The world is finding that forcing others to “tolerate” – indeed, to celebrate – unfettered licentiousness, under penalty of law, is as harmful to society as is said licentiousness to those who practice it. The world has looked to America’s moral leadership and found it wanting. The climate under Obama has gotten so bad, in fact, that Russian leader Vladimir Putin feels emboldened to claim for Russia the mantle of world moral leader – a proud distinction hitherto held by the good ol’ USA. The Daily Mail reports that, in his state of the nation address, “Putin sought to cast Russia as the moral arbiter of the world on Thursday, as he hit out at America’s ‘non-traditional values’ and its influence across the world.” Russia has barred “LGBT” and other sexual anarchist propaganda. “Mr Putin defended his government’s increasingly conservative values,” continued the report, “and decried the ‘review of norms of morality’ in the West and elsewhere. “‘This destruction of traditional values from above not only entails negative consequences for society, but is also inherently anti-democratic because it is based on an abstract notion and runs counter to the will of the majority of people,’ Mr Putin said, adding there could be no benefit for society for treating ‘good and evil’ equally.” How sad that the leader of an atheist government, in a country where tens of millions have died under Marxism – another of Obama’s pet causes – could out-Christian our once-Christian nation. Meanwhile, the tiny nation of Jamaica is among hundreds more that are likewise feeling the squeeze from both the Obama administration and allied “LGBT” pressure groups. They’re pushing for unrestrained sexual license in that Caribbean state as well. According to a Jamaican newspaper, The Gleaner, Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, recently spoke at a pro-family conference there. LaBarbera “encouraged Jamaicans to be grounded in their Christian beliefs and not to be lured by other countries in repealing the buggery (sodomy) law.” “The United States has no business lecturing anybody about sexual morality,” he observed. “America has rampant abortions, rampant promiscuity, and I stand wholeheartedly with Jamaicans and encourage you all to hold to your beliefs,” he said. “The moral clarity of my kind, pro-family hosts was refreshing, and something we in the United States need to learn from and take heart from,” said LaBarbera upon his return. “I told them, The United States government has nothing to teach you about sexual morality, but you have much to teach us!” “We are all watching Jamaica to see what happens,” he concluded, “and I believe if Jamaica can stand up and not bow to the pressure, you can be an example to the world. There is no need to follow anybody,” LaBarbera encouraged. Indeed, there is certainly no need to follow America. Not on this. Fewer nations are buying what we’re selling. They’ve placed an embargo on our chief export. While America may be lost (though I pray not), it would seem that her traditional values – values still shared by many, if not most, of the American people – are, nonetheless, gaining momentum abroad. And that is encouraging. Now let’s pray those values come full circle.
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Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action (LCA on Facebook). (Title and affiliation provided for identification purposes only.)
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