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"Permissiveness" Curse of Western Society!

Do you realize the PRICE we are paying for following permissive social and educational theories? It is time we looked at results — and the wretchedness which is sure to come if drastic changes are not made.

   EVEN bandleader Lawrence Welk felt compelled to speak out.
   He warned: "Permissiveness and immorality in the United States are very dangerous. You see it in the crime rate. We've got to get back to Christian principles and a decent moral standard. The trend must be reversed if we are going to save ourselves."
   America and Britain are sick. Unless basic changes are made in our national policies and individual lives, we are, unquestionably, "sick unto death."
   Alarmist, you say?
   No, we are dealing with facts. We are dealing with national and historical trends of ominous proportions. The recent campus riots across America are but a symptom of our sickness.
   Who taught students to rebel? What basic social and educational philosophy is behind the disruption and disarray now so clearly evident in America's educational system?
   And why are our marriages sick? In spite of more "freedoms" and permissiveness, why are college students and other young people more miserable and unhappy than ever before?

WHY We Started Down the Path of Permissiveness

   Most of the permissive parents, professors and psychologists are, of course, sincere. They have seen the evils of cruelty toward children in the home and in the school. They tell tales of child beating — of little babies and grade school children with welts all over their bodies, or even broken bones. They have heard or read of young people whose whole personality and approach to life has been warped and stunted by harsh, rigid, unfeeling discipline in the home or school.
   And this certainly has been a very real problem over the centuries.
   Then the permissive see the cruel and inhuman way that criminals have often been treated: forced to "confess" under physical and mental duress, sometimes kept in jail for weeks or months (in the past) without proper legal counsel and often without even knowing the charges against them.
   The sympathetic permissive sees that often the criminal who has no money or who comes from an ethnic minority group is bullied, manhandled, given short shrift and spends far more time in jail than the suave, affluent "city slicker" type criminal who can hire the best lawyers, get out immediately on bail and often evade punishment entirely through legal technicalities and interminable appeals to higher courts.
   Needless to say, all of the above does happen — and does need to be changed.
   But how?

The Problem

   The problem is that human beings nearly always tend to "overreact." We tend to go to one extreme or the other. However, we could seek the safe, sound, balanced "middle-road" solution if we would think our problem through.
   Read this somber analysis of our problem in the words of Governor Ronald Reagan of California: "In our humanitarian society we have safeguarded the rights of the accused. Nothing horrifies us so much as the possibility of punishing the non-guilty. But now we have carried this to an excessive concern for the guilty. We do not call the criminal a criminal; he is a patient made ill by the failure of society. And since society cannot be tried for its crime, why should he take the blame?
   "Permissiveness from cradle to crime is our philosophy and what were once considered privileges are now recognized as rights, and first and foremost is the right to adjust any grievance by the nearest means at hand, be it rock, club or fire bomb.
   "Our Constitution has been eroded by court decisions pretending to extend freedom to all when in reality they gave license to a few. Guilt or innocence is of less importance than the legal niceties. The confessed killer of wife and four children walks free because of his confession, not in spite of it. His lawyer was not present to hear it. Another confessed murderer walks our streets a free man because the police held him too long — a matter of hours — before formally charging him with the crime he had voluntarily confessed."

The Results

   No one can deny that the English-speaking peoples of the world are facing a moral toboggan slide. Crime is up, and the lawless elements are bolder than ever before. Riots and rebellion are now commonplace not only in America, but in Britain, Northern Ireland, Canada and Australia as well.
   The statistics for forcible rape and all sexual crimes are way up. And the purveyors of filth and pornography are having a heyday.
   Speaking of America, noted sportswriter Jim Murray commented that we are "a country that shrinks away from punishing its criminals, disciplining its children and locking up its mad." He likened it to a lamb defending the lion's right to eat it and said, "the Constitution was never conceived as a shield for degeneracy. You start out burning the flag and you end up burning Detroit. A young, vigorous country is immobilized by bumper stickers, slogans, neurotic students with their feet on desks they couldn't make, pulling down universities they wouldn't know how to rebuild."
   Some of the results of our permissiveness and lawless society are the following:
   • Crime in the U. S. is increasing nearly nine times as fast as population.
   • One third of our firstborn children in the United States from 1964 through 1966 were conceived out of wedlock.
   • In 1969 there were an estimated 400,000 illegitimate births in the United States.
   • A recent survey disclosed that "at least 50% of the female dropouts from high school are pregnant."
   • Today, venereal disease is out of control in the United States. It is the number-one communicable disease and the number-two killer among communicable diseases.
   • More than one million American women each year resort to illegitimate abortions. An estimated 8,000 women die every year from the consequences.
   • Suicide is now the number-one cause of death among all U. S. college students.
   For decades we have followed the urgings of the self-appointed "do-gooders" and ultra-liberals. And we have bred a whole generation of malcontents. These undisciplined products of permissive homes, schools and colleges are now beginning to disrupt and destroy the very institutions which gave them license to practice anarchy.
   We now have with us a vast segment of society which is delinquent in its responsibility to provide for itself. Other vast numbers have found it impossible to provide for themselves — due to our upside-down society.
   We all must pay and pay and pay in an attempt to rectify the omissions of others. So the national economy is being sapped to feed the products of permissive teachings and doings.
   We trust our enemies because modern theorists teach that human nature is basically good and that human reason is the key to solving all problems. We support foreign revolutionary "reformers" because do-gooders expound that faulty social or environmental conditions must be eradicated and that the will of the majority is the truth. We allow complete freedom of expression — including smut and filth — because these theorists insist that absolute truth does not exist.
   We cannot punish anyone — from rebellious children to psychotic criminals — because permissive psychology stipulates that only ignorance and bad social (environmental) institutions can be blamed — not people.

The Permissives' Dream World

   As the permissive thinker views his narrow little world, he is sure of only one thing — that he can never be certain that he knows the truth about anything. "Truth," as defined by these modern thinkers, must necessarily be changing — always in a state of flux.
   When applied to human actions, this concept is known as "moral relativism."
   This is an age-old ploy of man's deceitful mind — desperately striving to justify his own nasty, secret activities.
   Absolute truth of a religious nature is the ingredient most likely to boil blood. All supernatural superstitions, all ingrained religious prejudices, all moral taboos must be expunged from a position of any consequence in human affairs in order to create an "enlightened" world.
   Since permissive psychology teaches that there is no eternal truth, there can be no fixed standards by which we can judge any issue, no way of knowing what is right or wrong — and certainly NO God to look to for guidance.
   For all practical purposes, truth — to the permissive — is simply the present scientific consensus within any given field, and political and racial truth is whatever is voted by the majority. Yet, the permissive radical activists are, in fact, not a majority at all! They are a loud — often violent — minority, attempting to make their voices heard by any convenient method.
   Thus, "ultra-liberal" students at Berkeley, Columbia, Kent State and elsewhere feel they have every right to riot, bomb, burn and pillage their campus and community — perhaps even imprisoning for a time some of their permissive professors who taught them this "truth." And if students get shot by the National Guard or police, why aren't these professors who advocated and fulminated student rebellion held at least partially responsible?

Permissive Educators, Ministers and Psychologists Sidestep Responsibility

   Many of these self-appointed guardians of truth — rejecting God, the laws of the land and often decency itself — are busy teaching our young a strange and contradicting set of doctrines. But they piously avoid responsibility for the END RESULTS of following their philosophy, their "New Morality."
   THEY PITY (quite rightly) the individual criminal. They want to be kind to him. But they are not worried that their brand of kindness, by spreading the gospel of "Do What Thou Wilt," appears to be creating thousands of new criminals.
   THEY PITY (quite rightly) the individual homosexual. But they do not consider for a moment whether they are being kind to thousands who might never have considered homosexuality except in the permissive climate created by ultra-liberal teachings.
   THEY PITY (quite rightly) the romantic teenage girl who believes that the world will come to an end unless she agrees to go away with her boyfriend for the weekend. They indicate that any parent who is shocked by the idea is merely responding to old hypocritical taboos. And if, as a result of this "new morality," the young girl becomes pregnant — why, their pity is (quite rightly) roused again!
   THEY PITY (quite rightly) the plight of an unmarried mother and her problems of rearing a child without a father. And (despite their much-vaunted regard for the sanctity of human life when the execution of murderers is involved) they denounce the supposedly callous abortion laws which prevent the child being put out of its misery by execution before birth! They do not seem aware that they may possibly have been responsible for the misery themselves.
   There is only one sort of "ignoramus" who can count on no kindness whatever from these ardent new revolutionaries: the "ordinary man" who, though he may not be perfect himself, feels in his heart that certain things — whether drug taking or abortion-for-convenience — are wrong.
   Against him the revolutionary army brings up all its most shattering weapons. A bombardment of TV plays represents him as a hard-faced moron. He is sprayed with half-facts and cracked logic.
   If these assaults fail, the revolutionaries try a new tactic.
   They pretend that the ordinary man simply isn't there. Thus a newspaper columnist asked: "Why do we allow a bitter, confused minority to stand in the way?"
   Now, can you possibly beat that? Bitter! Confused! Yet who, in fact, makes up this "sinister minority"? Why, the majority of men and women in the country and certainly most of the readers of that very newspaper!

Face the RESULTS

   Permissive teachers need to be made to look squarely at the RESULTS of their teachings. They need to comprehend that the very foundations of our English-speaking world are crumbling, at least partly due to their ideologies.
   The stark lesson is that national weakness in the face of threat only invites more aggression. Socialist experiments and welfare-stateism breed a lack of character and purpose that wrecks the fiber of a people, and drains the national resources to the point of pity.
   The lesson should be clear to those that advocate "freedom" for filth, smut, rebellion and a general climate of permissiveness. All these are direct step. ping stones to the youthful RIOTS and rebellion surging through our land, the spiraling rise of crime and drug addiction, the destruction of millions of dollars in properties and possessions, and the literal DEATHS of many of the youthful dissenters and police, plus increasing numbers of innocent bystanders.
   These "freedoms" also lead to pathetic little orphans destined never to know their real parents, future generations of even more violent juvenile delinquents who were rejected by their parents before birth, uncounted thousands of babies born BLIND or mentally damaged because of venereal disease in the mother, even higher suicide rates among the youth who finally discover that the "freedoms" found in illicit sex and drugs make them miserable.

Let's UNDERSTAND

   What should you do about this ominous trend?
   For one thing, educate yourself about it even further. Understand not just the promises, but the END RESULTS Of it. Make sure that your children or loved ones are not misled by empty platitudes or perverted psychology. Make sure that your young are trained and disciplined in a firm yet loving manner to respect you, their parent, to respect law and order and the rights and privileges of others. Teach them to respect the authority of schools, teachers, government officials, their nation and their flag.
   Hurry and teach them this while we still have a nation and a flag! If you have not already done so, read our vital and interest-packed booklet The Plain Truth About Child Rearing. It is absolutely free.
   If you want to understand more deeply WHY America and Britain are in trouble and are hated around the world, write for our gripping book, The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy. It, too, will be sent to you absolutely free by return mail.
   Then, be willing to ask yourself about the biggest "key" to solving the problem of permissiveness and immorality: "Does a real GOD exist?"
   What does that have to do with it?
   EVERYTHING.
   Because if there is no God, then each man's opinion is just that — an opinion. All the writings of the great theologians, philosophers, psychologists and thinkers are reduced to the same common denominator — human opinion.
   And the opinions of fallible human beings have ALWAYS tended to contradict, criticize or confute one another.
   Without a real God, everyone is free to think or say: "Here's the way I look at it!" And no one can be sure otherwise, can truly speak with authority, or refer to a recognized basis of Truth. For without a living God, there Is no basis, there is no certain truth.
   If you haven't yet proved whether God is, then you need to read our booklet, Does God Exist?
   Be willing to prove for yourself whether or not a God exists. Men have lost all deep respect for law and decent principles, because they are confused about the very source of ALL law and authority! Yet, your Bible claims: "There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy" (James 4:12). Who is that lawgiver?
   One of the world's foremost educators, before his death, warned a group of military leaders of this very problem. He was Dr. Rufus von KleinSmid, former Chancellor of the University of Southern California. He stated: "I have no quarrel with the present emphasis placed on science, but today we are paying for support of schools which act from September 1 to June 30 as if there were no God." Dr. Von KleinSmid noted the "absence of moral values" in our youth resulting from this attitude.
   Wise King Solomon advised: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov. 1:7). This fear didn't mean a personal dread, but a deep respect and reverence for the great office and authority of God — for His divine power, wisdom and love.
   Yet, in nearly all present-day religious denominations, the tendency is to try to "modernize" and "democratize" God, to do away with the idea that a divine Authority RULES the creation — and us, His creatures. There are very few truly "God-fearing men" left on earth today!
   Solomon also concluded that without faith in such a great and real God, man IS INCOMPLETE. Cut off from this true God of law and order, man is purposeless, empty, frustrated, confused.
   Summarizing the WAY to achieve fulfillment of man's desire for a happy, abundant and purposeful life, Solomon wrote these words at the end of the book of Ecclesiastes: "The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the WHOLE man" (Eccl. 12:13, Moffat translation).
   Solomon knew that a living God ruled the universe with active, dynamic, beneficial LAWS. And that without this divine LAW, there is no absolute standard of behavior. The result is moral chaos. It is lawlessness and wretchedness in the human heart — the "permissive society" we see all about us in Britain and America today.
   The WAY OF LIFE revealed in this basic Law is simply the way of GIVING. It is outgoing concern to our Creator and our fellow man — yet with stated safeguards to prevent even this principle from being misapplied through faulty human reasoning.
   This great Law teaches young people to honor and obey their parents. It teaches us all NOT to kill, NOT to commit adultery or even to "lust" — thus FORBIDDING pornography in all forms. It teaches us NOT to steal, bear false witness or covet.
   If understood and obeyed, this Law would END PERMISSIVENESS — and it would end crime, war, broken homes and a host of other ills. Nationally, it would STOP the deterioration of the British Commonwealth and American peoples as world powers.
   One of America's premier writers and editorialists, Raymond Moley, recently wrote in his concluding editorial of our national "infection." He described it as "a state of apathetic PERMISSIVENESS [emphasis ours] induced by twin delusions: that great national might is ours in perpetuity and that what is called a free society is indestructible."
   True.
   We must not ASSUME that we can continue to breed rebellious youngsters, coddle criminals, wallow in sex in every perverted form, become a nation of weirdoes, pill poppers and drug addicts, and yet somehow our enemies will "go away" — that hungry nations more disciplined than ourselves will not bring us down as surely as they did ancient Rome!
   Yes, indeed. Permissiveness even has to do with our national SURVIVAL.
   Mr. Moley continued: "The 'blessings of liberty' as written by the makers of our Constitution imply LAWS and authority which protect those who enjoy them. Freedom provides no blessings. It creates no environment but chaos."
   If you would like to understand the Law that is the basis of all right human law — directly called "the law of liberty" — read our vital free book, The Ten Commandments. It sets forth a practical, realistic approach to a way of life which would end all permissiveness, immorality and emptiness in men's lives.
   Also, read immediately for our free magazine, TOMORROW'S WORLD. It reveals the philosophical and spiritual basis of our problems — with articles that spell out in detail the real SOLUTIONS to mankind's ills. If you want non-sentimental, hard-hitting spiritual truth and answers, write for this new magazine today.
   As TOMORROW'S WORLD makes clear, a generation is soon coming which will be taught to appreciate law, order, harmony and peace. War, rebellion, immorality and permissiveness are on the way OUT. Our task is to prepare to be leaders in that new and better tomorrow.

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Plain Truth MagazineMarch 1971Vol XXXVI, No.3