What Happened to the Great Society?
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In 1960 the United Stated elected a young senator from Boston to serve as President of the United States of America. He was a charismatic Irishman that stirred new passion and new vision in the hearts of the collegiate, declaring, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.”
A new wave of volunteerism swept across America giving rise to such organizations as the Peace Corp. Tragedy struck this new vision and passion on November 22, 1963, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was taken down by a sniper’s bullet.
An image never to be forgotten is the picture of the widow, Jackie Kennedy, standing next to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on Air Force One as Johnson was sworn in as President.
Lyndon Johnson was later elected President of the United States on the promise he would make a “Great Society.” The plan and the vision of President Johnson was based upon the concept of social engineering.
For the first time this nation was to be guided and directed entirely by the principles and concepts that mankind could improve himself and society through materialistic, rationalistic, and pragmatic reasoning.
Methods and ideology developed in the laboratories of science, psychology, sociology, and medicine would become the basis of education, community planning, and laws of the land.
It was with great hope and idealism the United States embarked upon her journey to a Great Society.
Sixty years later America must ask herself, “How has that worked for you?” Has social engineering turned America for the better? Do we have a “Great Society?” Has a pragmatic, materialistic, rationalistic world view won the day?
A brief survey over the last six decades will answer the question very clearly.
The 1960’s opened with a new POTUS and much promise of great hope, but quickly it turned into campus unrest, war protests, the Watts riots, and the Kent State shooting.
Young minds were expanding through LSD trips and exploring new morals of free love.
The 1970’s faired no better with a new president and national leadership. The overriding attitude of the ‘70’s was apathy and loss of hope. War protests continued, President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, drug addiction and sexual exploitation became pandemic, and racial unrest continued to mount.
Welfare programs grew in an effort to stem the tide of poverty.
1980 brought a new vision and a new hope. Americans were realizing wealth never dreamed of in previous generations. Women were breaking through the glass ceiling in career advancement while their sons and daughters received new and innovative training in preschools and daycare centers.
New sexual freedoms were being realized as homosexuals came “out of the closet,” coed dorms were opened on college campuses, and Hollywood exposed greater amounts of nudity in movies and on television.
The decade closed with a growing dichotomy of “He who dies with the most toys wins,” and the music of punk and grunge rock bands expressing deep attitudes of anger and frustration from young people struggling over the emptiness of their life.
They had lots of “stuff” but little or no meaningful relationships.
Both parents were working to maintain the expensive lifestyle; homes were broken from divorce and remarriage; and the kids were growing up in daycare centers or as latch-key kids.
Gay Pride parades displaying the vulgarity of radical homosexuality and Desert Storm opened the 1990’s.
The economic boom of America continued with only momentary downturns. But cracks were appearing giving grave concern regarding the health and wellbeing of America.
“For the first time in the history of country, ‘the education skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parent,’” wrote Jim Peterson in his classic work, Church Without Walls (Colorado Springs, Navpress, 1992).
William J. Bennett, former Drug Czar, and the Secretary of Education described the malignancy of the 1990’s.
Since 1960, violent crime has shot up 560 percent; illegitimate births increased 400%; quadrupling of divorce rates; tripling of percentage of young people in single parent homes; 200% increase in teenage suicide rate and drop of 754 points in the average SAT score. “The United States ranks near the top of the industrialized world in rates of abortion, divorce, and unwed births. We lead the industrialized world in murder, rape, and violent crime. In elementary and secondary education, we are at or near the bottom in achievement scores. These outward manifestations – and our complacency about them – are signs of a deeper decay; one that doesn’t lend itself so easily to quantitative analysis. There is a coarseness, a callousness, a cynicism, a banality and a vulgarity to our time. There are too many signs of a civilization gone rotten. The worst of it has to do with our children: We live in a culture that at times almost seems dedicated to the corruption of the young. The real crisis of our times is spiritual. The ancients called it “acedia” – the spiritual sloth or deadening, an undue concern to external affairs and an absence of zeal for divine things. It eventually leads to a hatred of the good altogether. Only when we turn our affections and desires toward the right things – toward enduring, noble, spiritual things – will our problems get better.
The Index of Leading Culture Indicators, William J. Bennett, New
York, Simon and Schuster, 1994
The 1990’s closed with a tragedy at Thurston High School, Springfield, Oregon, May 21, 1998. Fifteen year old Kipland Kinkel, murdered his parents and went to the high school from which he was to be expelled and murdered two students and shot twenty-five others.
Then on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors at Columbine High School, Columbine, Colorado, murdered twelve students and one teacher, before committing suicide.
The Institute for American Values published a report in 1995, for the Council on Families in America, Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation in which it quoted The National Commission on the Role of the School and Community in Improving Adolescent Heath, Code Blue: Uniting for Healthier Youth (Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Boards of Education, 1990).
In that report they stated, “…never before has one generation of American teenagers been less healthy, less cared for, or less prepared for life than their parents were at the same age.”
2000 opened with a national scare Y2K might be the end of the world as we have known. It passed without a blip on the screen.
However, the new Millennium opened with the worst terror attack since Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of New York City were struck by two commercial airliners that had been seized by terrorists.
A third plane seized by terrorist struck the western face of the Pentagon.
A fourth terrorist attack was thwarted by brave passengers on a commercial flight that crashed on a field in Pennsylvania. A total of 2,997 people lost their lives on that terrible day, not including the 19 terrorists who participated in taking over the four airplanes.
The first two decades of the new millennium have been marked by twenty-year War on Terror at the cost of 7, 057 United State military lives.
An economic downturn in 2008 caused many to see half of their retirement disappear.
The greatest tragedy of these twenty-three years has been the moral decay and leadership vacuum plaguing the American culture.
The Gay Pride parades of the 1990’s have turned into Drag Queen story hours at libraries and elementary schools. Homosexuals “coming out of the closet” have become legalized same-sex marriages.
Sociologist, psychiatrist, and medical professionals now declare a person with male genitalia may be a woman and a person with female genitalia may be a man.
Nudity in movies and on television have given rise to middle school and high school girls attending class dressed as if they were “street walkers.” Social engineering has given way to poverty, violence, and crime in pandemic proportions. Many of the inner cities have become war zones where police will not enter.
Rationalism and relativism has created a leadership vacuum that allows men and women to be elected to the Congress who plagiarize their resume’s; lie with staggering proportions; are known associates with terrorist organizations; and suffer severe mental limitations from a stroke.
Who would have believed one suffering from dementia would be elected President of the United States?
What has happened to the Great Society?
Exactly what William J. Bennett wrote.
A culture totally founded upon a materialist, rationalist, pragmatic philosophy, banishing the guidance and influence of spiritual truth will not produce better human beings. It will only educate men and women in better ways to commit sin and do evil and raise narcissistic individuals pursuing their own gratification.
A Great Society without the Great Truth will self-destruct.
In the next blog we will look at how a failed Great Society gives way to a Great Reset.
More Podcasts on The Great Reset:
Foundational U Podcast: Ep. 22 – Jesus and the Great Reset
Foundational U Podcast: Ep. 23 – The Kingdom of Darkness and the Great Reset
Foundational U Podcast: Ep. 24 – The Kingdom of God -vs- The Kingdom of Lucifer
Pastor Dean Sermon Archives Episode 20 – How to Understand What Is Happening Right Now
Foundational U Podcast: Ep. 25 – The Kingdom of God’s Great Reset
What Happened to the Great Society?
A Failed Great Society and a Great Reset
Foundational U Podcast: Ep. 45 – Are the Events of Matthew 24 Happening Now?
