What won the West & why
Mark Greathouse
(6/2022) Was it a Colt .45? A Winchester? How about a shotgun? Despite what the old dime novels would have folks believe, guns didn’t win the west. They were important sure ‘nuf, but guns didn’t run ranches, operate banks, run post offices, or publish newspapers. Wherever commerce flourished in the old west, you would sure as shootin’ find families. Most didn’t even have Colt .45s or Winchesters.
Families build nations. Even before the first European immigrants, families formed the bedrock of America. From wikiups and teepees to log cabins and sprawling towns, families spawned America. While surveyors, trappers, miners, railroaders, and the like blazed trails from Atlantic to Pacific, the force that truly established our nation was and has always been the family. Shucks, I’ve traced my own ancestry from five brothers immigrating from Ireland to Texas between 1845 and 1867 to find them having spawned more than 2,600 family members spanning nine generations. That’s a lot of family!
Apparently in today’s America, the binding family dynamic that "won the west" isn’t so important anymore, as the family has endured ever-increasing assault by socio-political forces. Per the U.S. Census Bureau in the seven decades since 1950, two-parent families with children under age 18 dropped from 92 percent to 70.5 percent of total families with children. Minorities have been hit the hardest. Quoting from YaleGlobal Online in his bestseller Red, White, and Black, Robert Woodson, Sr. notes, "In 1925 in New York City, 85 percent of black families were a husband and wife raising their children – while today the rate of out-of-wedlock births among blacks has skyrocketed to nearly 71 percent." Planned Parenthood aborts annually more than 250,000 black babies, not exactly family friendly.
Where are America’s nuclear families going? How have we reached such a sorry state? Why? Anti-family agendas have pretty much infiltrated academia, social media, news media, public education, medicine, government, religion, and corporations. Lest we forget, greed, avarice, and pure selfishness dictate against family and were also around in the Old West. But technology has created modern social contagions, such as gender dysphoria and "wokism," that make the antidote for the disease of family destruction more difficult to deliver. Pornography creates sexual dysfunction that discourages family structure. The LGBTQ community with rare exception speaks for itself as to reduced family size. Debt is a population killer, as debt-burdened folks are fearful of being able to support large families. Divorce tears our families apart.
Academia provides the anti-family "brain trust" via classrooms and pseudo-intellectual political influence. Social media apply their "community standards" to shadow ban or outright delete arguments for traditional marriage, pro-life positions, and so on. News media stoke over-population horrors. Public schools contribute to the anti-family agenda by "educating" youth at ever-younger ages about sexuality, while teacher unions pursue family destruction by repurposing teachers to serve as substitute parents. Medical tyranny is applied to politically leverage diseases by limiting social contact and thereby reducing intimacy and controlling opportunities for conception. Even traditional religious denominations have fallen victim to the infiltration of secularist agendas that compromise moral principles and make congregations more susceptible to warped teachings destructive of family such as loosening of teachings against adultery. Seems that we
have a national pandemic of societal cowardice that gains function with each new hate-filled woke aberration.
We exist in an ever-more-divided, ever-more-decadent world. All manner of amoral agendas are being thrown at us aimed at destroying families and thereby our nation. The attack on family is part of a larger agenda, and it’s going to get worse. Readers should realize that these agendas are the antithesis of being born with equal opportunity for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The enemy is filled with hate and won’t listen to reason, and we must fight back while we yet have our freedom of choice.
We seem to have lost connection with the role of families 150 years ago such as won the west. The nuclear family, based on natural law and Judeo-Christian values, stands as a huge obstacle to those who would tear the family asunder to feed their woke agenda. While good things can be born from struggles, it’s a tall order to overcome what might be termed a mass psychosis bent on destruction of religion and morality. Folks who cluelessly put their children through public school and college brainwashing, ignore the secularization of churches, succumb to social media "community standards," believe the liberal-biased news media, accept a non-exceptional America, and the like probably won’t care for the answer to stopping the destruction of families. Far too many have been schooled to avoid conflict, avoid win-lose, avoid discomfort, and submit unquestioningly to authority. Gotta wonder how they might have fared in Montana, Kansas, or Texas of
the 1850s?
In any case, we absolutely must reclaim America’s moral compass before we can ever hope to rein in the threats that surround us. That includes finding Bible-based churches that follow God’s teachings. Mothers and fathers must regain the respect essential to strong families. We also must act strongly against the forces that are fomenting anarchy and are silencing the voices striving to revive family and American exceptionalism. It doesn’t take villages; it takes families to win America’s culture war.
Anti-family agendas have infiltrated academia, social media, news media, public education, medicine, government, religion, and corporations.
Why is building strong families important? I suggest that it should be right obvious by now. The very strength of our nation depends on its families.
We first and foremost absolutely must reclaim America’s moral compass, before we can ever hope to rein in the threats that surround us. That includes finding Bible-based churches that follow God’s teachings. Mothers and fathers must regain the respect essential to strong families. We just might follow Ephesians 5:23-28 which counsels, "Now as the church submits to Christ, so wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her to make her holy…In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." This was the wise counsel that helped build America’s families. Second, we must act strongly against the forces that are fomenting anarchy and seeking to silence the voices striving to revive the family paradigm and American exceptionalism. Those are the beginnings for turning the tide against the proponents of
anti-family agendas in our midst. It doesn’t take villages; just as in the Old West, it takes families to build a strong America.
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