Fast-Food Mayhem Signals Need for 'Religion'
Recently, total strangers have been fighting each other, usually in fast food restaurants. These tragic incidents have been caught on video, have been posted on the Internet, and “have gone viral.”
This has happened at McDonald’s, at Burger King, at IHOP, at Denny’s. Even on the subway (not the restaurant-not yet at least-but the underground railway system), total strangers have been fighting each other.
Some of these seem to be racially motivated. Others not.
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The ancient Christians used to talk about the Seven Deadly Sins-one of which was anger. Now, this deadly sin is proving deadly or nearly deadly.
Recently, two female teenage patrons of McDonald’s in Baltimore County allegedly beat up a stranger until she was apparently having epileptic seizures. She was rushed to the hospital.
In Panama City, Florida, a patron had it her way at Burger King-and that was precisely the problem.
Her way was a way of uncontrolled anger, mayhem, hitting people, and destruction of property.
Apparently, she had had some sort of conflict with an employee, while she was in the drive-through.
So she reportedly came storming in and began throwing things around, striking an employee or two, and even breaking some things-like a $3,800 LED screen.
All of this was caught on video tape, probably from another customer with a cell phone.
The video of the rampage has become quite a hit on YouTube. The tragedy is that these types of incidents are becoming more and more common in America, as we descend into incivility.
Are these brawls becoming so common because of the omnipresence of cell phones with the capability to capture video? Or are they becoming common because of the total breakdown of morality? Or is it all of the above?
Whatever the case, there is no doubt that we’re seeing a total breakdown of morality in our culture.
What went wrong?
Our nation’s founders said that our freedoms are predicated on an ability to remain virtuous. And they said that morality was predicated on religion. “Religion” as the founders understood it, was a synonym for Christianity. Why do I say that? Because at the outset of the Revolution, 99.8% of the colonists claimed to be Christians. Religion, in turn, was to be on a voluntary basis.
John Adams, our second president, said famously: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Another founding father, Gouverneur Morris, is not well known today. But he spoke at the Constitutional Convention more than any other framer. He even wrote major portions of the Constitution, including the preamble (“We the people”). Morris noted the source of morality, which is religion: “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God.”
Of course, all of these aspects of our true history have been jettisoned by the politically correct elites who run the major institutions of today. After some fifty years of the elites in our country driving out any vestige of religion in the public schools, we’re reaping what we’ve sown.
Through groups like the ACLU which has made sure that no sneaky vestige of religion (well, actually Christianity) is allowed in the public realm, we’ve been having it the ACLU’s way in America. And that’s precisely the problem.
Tragically, as God and religious principles are driven out further and further from the schools, we can likely expect more incidents like those at McDonald’s or Burger King.
Robert C. Winthrop, Speaker of the House of Representatives, once told the Massachusetts Bible Society in the 1840s something we would do well to remember in modern America. He basically said that people have to control themselves, but if they don’t, then we need more government to control them. We need to take our pick between “stringent State Government” or “individual self-government.”
He went on to say, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”
We know that the Bible is no longer welcomed in the public arena (based on a faulty reading of the Constitution). I think we’re beginning to see how ugly life is without its positive influence, as America descends into incivility.
