Morally bankrupt?

CNN’s Jack Cafferty is exercised about a poll that shows that Americans think our level of moral rectitude is lousy and getting worse:

The U.S. isn't only headed for bankruptcy when it comes to our finances... it looks like we could be going morally bankrupt too.
A new Gallup poll paints a depressing picture of the state of our moral values in the U.S.
45 percent of those surveyed describe morality in this country as "poor"... only 15 percent -- fewer than one in five -- say "excellent or good."
These numbers rank among the worst in this poll over the last decade.
The survey also shows 76 percent of Americans say moral values in the U.S. are getting worse... only 14 percent say they're getting better.
So what's wrong with us?

Read full story here.

Oh, come on. In the first place, this is a poll that measures what people think about morality; it doesn’t actually query behaviors. And every generation thinks that the younger generation is going to hell in a hand basket. Why, in MY day...

I’m with commentator Sarah, who reminds us “that 150 years ago we kept human beings as slaves, 100 years ago American workers worked in terrible conditions for low wages with no safety net, and 50 years ago African Americans were still being lynched. I think we've come a long way and I'd much rather live into today's society than the world of the past.”

As a passionate lover of history, there are lots of historical periods I’d love to visit, but it’s really foolish to believe that things were better in the good ol’ days.

It’s only recently that Western Civilization has accorded women equal status with men. I know that some people see that as an element of moral decay, but I don’t think you’d convince many women, even the most conservative ones, that they would be better off if it was still okay for their husband to rape them and no problem at all if they have few if any independent legal rights.

I think a lot of people confuse manners with morality. You can make a pretty good case that our manners have declined — people in general are much less polite to each other than they used to be and the celebrity media culture that is now so ubiquitous rewards atrocious behavior. And people’s communication on the Internet can be really ugly.

It is now common to hear F-bombs in public, but people frown on smoking cigarettes. Sixty years ago, even 20 years ago or less, that equation was reversed.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are less “moral.”

Some think that you can traces the “decline in morality” to the loss of “sir and “ma’am” in the language. But plenty of good boys grew up saying sir and ma’am and still visited Madame Flossie’s whorehouse.

I don’t believe for a minute that more people cheat on their wives now than at any other time in history. It’s all just that much more public. Was John F. Kennedy’s White House a greater moral beacon than Barak Obama’s?

It’s tempting to think that people were better back in the old days, but the historical record just doesn’t show it. Political corruption was much more rife in the century spanning 1870s-1970s than it is now. (Not saying it’s disappeared by any means).

Another factor is that what some people see as “immorality” others see as greater freedom and justice. Some might see the acceptance of homosexuality as a sign of moral decay; others might see it as increased tolerance and thus a virtue.

There’s plenty of room for improvement in the nature of humankind — and all gains in virtue are fragile and easily lost in the face of war, economic strain resource scarcity. As Aldo Leopold once observed, “ethics start after breakfast.”

But self-flagellation over our supposed moral decline is just a fretful waste of energy. It’s probably a sign of a decadent civilization.

Jim Cornelius, Editor