Addressing The Symptoms, Not The Problem

As I was watching the Bucs/Redskins game, at one point the NFL had a commercial about a youth center where kids could play and learn. It made me realize that society has made great strides in all the areas of helping people, except in the one area that matters most... family. There are libraries and after school clubs and learning centers and youth trips and boys clubs and girls clubs, etc., etc., etc.

We've spent all of our energies filling voids cause by the disintegration of the family unit instead of just fixing the family. We wouldn't need all of these social projects if the family unit was strong and intact.

Our nation was so much stronger when we didn't have all of these club and groups and events... we didn't need them because our families were so strong, our neighborhoods so protective and our priorities in line.

Now we simply say you can do whatever you want and we'll pick up the pieces. You can have sex whenever you want with whomever you want, you can have kids whether your married or single or gay or straight. If you have a kid out of wedlock and can't take care of them, we'll build complexes to fill their time keeping them distracted instead of educating you on how not to be a single parent.

Or, if you can't be bothered with owning up to your own sexual mistakes, you can burden the medical industry by contracting a deadly sexual disease or you can kill the baby growing inside of you because it'll cramp your style.

At the end of the day, the message we are sending is clear... do whatever you want and damn the results. We've successfully trained our children that actions do not result in direct consequences, that responsibility is a choice, not an obligation and that others will solve your problems instead of you solving your own.

I could list a hundred other examples, but it's all the same thing. No one is allowed to tell you how to live your life, but everyone is responsible for fixing your life after you screw it up.

Fix the family and all of these other problems will disappear. Don't fix the family and nothing will get better.

We spend millions of dollars on bandaging the scrapes on our face, instead of sewing closed the gash on our collective jugular veins.

Unless our treatment changes, it's only a matter of time before our society has bled itself dry.