We (America) Are Morally Bankrupt

I've used the term "morally bankrupt" many times in my post and I'd like to define what that means. Financial bankruptcy is easy enough for most people to understand, but I should clarify what I mean when I say we as a society and nation are morally bankrupt.

A morally bankrupt person or society is one or more of the following:

1. They don't know what they WANT in life. More importantly, they don't understand and accept the tradeoffs of their goals in life. Life is full of tradeoffs and compromises. They don't understand the consequences of these decisions.

2. They don't know WHO they are. They aren't able to articulate what their life is about or what they STAND for. They do things just because they have to in order to exist.

3. They don't know WHAT they believe in. They have no principles that they follow. Since they don't know what they believe in or have principles that they follow, they always do what is least painful or easiest to do at the moment. They are guided purely by emotion, comfort, and what is good for just today.

4. They don't know WHY they believe in these principles. They can't make rational arguments on why they believe in the principles that they do. A lot of religious people fall into this category. They can't make rational arguments of why they believe in God, Allah, Buddha, whoever. They believe just because they believe and it makes them feel good. They call it "faith".

If you are 18 and this describes you, I would say you are immature, you still need to figure things out, and you still have time to figure things out. But if you are over 40 and this still describes you, then you are morally bankrupt.

A morally bankrupt person/society will never be able to comeback from a setback. Once they go down, they stay down, they are done for good. Think of Roman Empire, or USSR. Haven't you noticed that there are some people that can lose everything, but somehow they almost seem like they can come back from the dead and be even stronger than they were before they had their tragedy or setback?

Lance Armstrong is a good example of this. Regardless of whether or not you think he cheated/doped, he lost everything, almost his life. He went "bankrupt" as an athlete because of cancer. But because he was still morally strong (regardless if you agree with his morals/character or not), he could come back from the dead (almost literally) and be an even greater bicycle racer than before he had cancer.

Shit can happen to anyone and even smart people make big mistakes sometimes because they are still human. But because they know what they ARE, they know what they WANT, they know what they BELIEVE in and WHY, they also know what needs to be DONE. People like Armstrong can comeback from terrible tragedies and be even greater than what they were before.

An example of a countries that went financially bankrupt, but was still morally strong are the Asian nations (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.) during the Asian financial crisis of '97. They made some serious mistakes in the previous 10 years and everything collapsed that year. But they recognized what they did wrong, they knew what they had to do, they understood the principles they believed in. They made very painful decisions that were really going to hurt them in the short run. But less than 14 years later, they are back, and their economies are stronger than it was before that crisis. Contrast this with Japan, where everything collapsed in the early 90's. They tried to take the easy way out and 20 years later, they are still not able to recover.

Let's look at ourselves at a nation because the 4 points I have listed are exactly what we have become as a nation. We are now even arguing what our Constitution means; our most fundamental and supreme law. When you argue that law X is unconstitutional because of this Amendment, they come back and say the Constitution is ambiguous and is a "living breathing document" subject to whatever interpretation they want it to be. If you point to an Amendment, say the 2nd or 10th one, they argue that it's ambiguous because the words "militia", "the States", "power", and "people" are ambiguous and subject to "interpretation". This implies that we have no principles, we have no rule of law, and we allow our politicians and appointed officials to do whatever they wish because they can "interpret" the law anyway they want to, down to the meaning of every individual word. We might as well elect a dictator every 4 years and let him dictate whatever he wants to do than making him go through the trouble of "interpreting".

We can also see this in the actions of our elected officials. Most have no principles and will take actions that are politically easy, rather than what is best for their constituents. The situation America is in now are just a symptoms of the underlying problems. We are morally bankrupt, as I have defined it here.