Honour and the Downfall of American Society

Yesterday, I was emailing a very intelligent friend from LEA, and he sent me this:
 "I was reading A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons a couple of days ago, when I came across a passage that said, ''He (speaking of the Gallienus, the Emperor of the time) was even destitute of a sense of honour, which so frequently supplies the absence of public virtue.'' Sound familiar? The word honour has slipped from the vocabulary of the average American, and most of our lawmakers are sub-average. That is why, after reading that, the loss of morality in our society is no longer a surprise. When honour fails to be a word used correctly and not lightly, expect that society's downfall. We are Rome. We will fall, unless we fix quite a few things up, and soon."

After this, I looked up the word honour in the Webster's 1828 dictionary, because I like that dictionary. Here are some of the definitions:

1. The esteem due or paid to worth; high estimation.

2. A testimony of esteem; any expression of respect or of high estimation by words or actions;

4. Reverence; veneration; or any act by which reverence and submission are expressed,as worship paid to the Supreme Being.

6. True nobleness of mind; magnanimity; dignified respect for character, springing from probity, principle or moral rectitude; a distinguishing trait in the character of good men

As a society, we don't respect anything except our own desires. We look at reverence and venration as foolish. We definitely don't value true nobility of mind. We must learn to respect virtue, to remember that there is something higher than ourselves, and be keepers of virtue, or we will not keep freedom. As John Adams said,
"Our Constitution  was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

This new year, let's all try to improve ourselves so we can preserve this freedom for ourselves and future generations of our children. 


Happy New Year! I hope it's full of love and improvement in our characters.