Despite all evidence to the contrary, liberal dogma remains unshaken that crime is-caused by poverty and lack of education, and that therefore crime can be eliminated by spending more government money, sharing the wealth, and giving everybody a college education. The liberals remind me of the story told about the philosopher Hegel. When informed by a colleague that the facts did not tally with his theories, Hegel sternly replied, “All the worse for the facts.”
On college campuses today, the big problem is cheating. It isn’t merely underprivileged students who cheat to avoid failing grades. Even “A” students are cheating. Some students, not content with getting the best grades are sabotaging the lab experiments of their fellow students, are stealing journals containing assigned reading, are blacking out crucial paragraphs in books on reserved shelves, and are resorting to other dirty tricks.
Violent crime has invaded our high schools. In New York, one high school senior was recently arraigned on murder charges in the sniper shooting deaths of three persons. Eleven others were injured in the shooting spree. The boy was an honor student who ranked eighth in his class.
Another area of widespread crime among the non-poor was revealed recently by the head of the big Marriott hotel and restaurant chain. J. Willard Marriott stated at a national meeting of his hotel managers that “employees are stealing us blind.” Stealing by hotel guests and shoplifting in retail stores are already adding significantly to the prices all of us must pay.
The traitors who stole the secrets of our atom bomb were all highly educated, as were all the Watergate conspirators and cover-up collaborators. Most of them had degrees from graduate schools.
At a recent press interview at the State Capitol in Indianapolis, I saw a reporter contemptuously ask “are you a moralist?” and then stalk out in disbelief when the person being interviewed referred to the Ten Commandments. Whether or not you believe that God handed Moses the tablets on Mount Sinai, the-Decalogue is the best code of behavior yet devised for gluing together the fabric of civilization. The American Republic will come apart at its seams if our educated and affluent citizens reject the Ten Commandments as an anachronism of a bygone era.
The Founding Fathers of America, whose great vision we will commemorate in 1976, were all educated in religious schools where morality was stressed. Our public schools provided moral education through various methods, including McGuffey’s Readers and released time, until it was ground to a halt by Supreme court decisions and the agitation of Congress atheists. “
Now we are reaping the whirlwind: a deterioration of moral values among the educated classes of our people.
