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The symbols are shiny, the ideals are dead. Only in America.

"The symbols are shiny, the ideals are dead." ~ Wolfie

The ideals aren't dead -- the people who hold to them are just out-numbered at the moment.
"We The People" would not have decadant REPRESENTATIVES in our government, if we weren't first decadant, ourselves.

Those who "blame the government" need to look in the mirror because (unlike in a dictatorship) it is just a REFLECTION of who we are at any given point in history. We have the government we deserve.

Here's where the problem always begins: The biblical definition of "love", is, "Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law".

If the majority of our people live their daily lives in a relativistic, unrestrained, immoral way and reject God's standards for "doing no harm to neighbor", which include "Don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't covet what belongs to another (class envy, skin color, looks, talent, etc. fall into this catagory [Rom.13:9-10]), then they will elect the same sorts of ignoble mentalities to represent them in government.

Now I'm SURE that none of you fall into any of those catagories. (/sarcasm)

Here's reality. If our Constitution and the ideals of our Founders are to be preserved, the hearts and minds of the American people themselves must be changed FIRST.

They must turn from being relativists with changing ethical standards based upon whatever "the situation" is at the moment.

That is just the way it is. John Adams, James Madison, et.al., made that quite clear:

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams

"Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." --James Madison

"We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come." -- Samuel Adams

"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." --Daniel Webster

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." --George Washington

"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in which all religions agree." --Thomas Jefferson

"It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe." Washington continued: "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency." --George Washington

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians. Not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. - Patrick Henry

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. - John Quincy Adams

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. - John Jay (1st Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court)

Everyone appointed to public office must say: "I do profess faith in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost; One God and blessed forevermore; and I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration. - Delaware Constitution 1776

Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars. - George Washington (Farewell Address)

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion and all denominations of Christian are placed upon the same equal footing. - U.S. Supreme Court 1796 (Ruggles v. Winemiller)

Had the people, during the revolution, had any suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that revolution would have been strangled in its cradle...

At the time of the adoption of the constitution and the amendments; the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect...

In this age, there can be no substitution for Christianity...

That was the religion of the founders of the republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants...

The great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.- House Judiciary Committee March 27, 1854

He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity; will change the face of the world. - Benjamin Franklin

THEIR LEGAL STANDARD

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian. - U.S. Supreme Court 1892 (Church of Holy Trinity v. U.S.)

Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament, be read and taught as a divine revelation in the schools? Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? - U.S. Supreme Court 1844 (Vidal v. Girard)

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. - James Madison

What ever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government. - U.S. Supreme Court 1811 (People v. Ruggles)

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle. - George Washington

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his worship; that the legislative powers of the government research actions only and not opinions- I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of the sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. - Thomas Jefferson: Letter to Danberry Baptist Association 8 id 112 Jan. 21, 1802

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. - John Adams

As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world; they must be in this- by an inevitable chain of causes and effects. Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. - George Mason

We need God to be our friend, not our enemy. We need Him to be our ally, not our adversary. We need to make sure that we keep God's concurring aid.- Benjamin Franklin (Speech at the Constitutional Convention)

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just- that His justice cannot sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson Memorial inscription.

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens. - Abraham Lincoln (1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation)