image credit: saturdayeveningpost.com
Walter E. Williams sums it up:
A society's first line of defense
is not the law or the criminal justice system but customs, traditions and moral
values. These behavioral norms, mostly imparted by example, word-of-mouth and
religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through
experience and trial and error. Police and laws can never replace these
restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system
are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Today's true
tragedy is that most people think what we see today has always been so. As
such, today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never
would have accepted.
Williams considers gun violence, popular
music, unwed mothers, manners, and more. His article “Things Haven’t Always
Been This Way” is at Townhall here. RELATED: Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker is unhappy about
the degradation of public school dress codes in Texas. Not encouraging.
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