 "For
15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan.
I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play,
drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs, and human depravity. I
watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on
buildings, cars, trucks, buses, and school yards. Trash everywhere!"
Mr. Wooldridge went on to report several disturbing statistics:
"The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three
years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak
of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%." "Detroit plummeted
from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal
immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000.
Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit."
"High school flunk-out rates reached 76 percent last June according
to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries
than America. English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent
illiteracy rate and growing."
Mr. Wooldridge concluded by citing an article published in Time magazine's Oct. 4, 2009, issue, entitled "The Tragedy of Detroit:
How a great city fell, and how it can rise again."
"The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character
of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous
manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what
does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to
get up, what does that say about our future?"
I believe this is sobering for sure. I believe too, that there is
more involved in this process that goes beyond simply blaming
"multiculturalism" and white flight from the city. I believe it has
its roots in the very heart of man (mankind) who, for the most part,
has abandoned the moral standards established by God and has
attempted to disavow all knowledge or understanding of what God's
will for our lives should be. Rather than trying to live by the
principles of the Ten Commandments, we spend a lot of time and effort
seeking to diminish them or hide them behind the walls of the church. We constantly try to erase God from even being recognized as
part of the American heritage or founding history. Therefore, as a
substitute, we must rely solely upon each man's thinking in matters
of what is right or wrong. Aside from the moral perspective
introduced by God, we only look from the perspective of a fallen
mankind that can supply only the strength that can be derived from a
sin nature. Throughout history, mankind has not ascended upward, he
only tends to spiral downward.
There seems to almost always be a "mirror image" type of reaction to
the downfall of cities as described by Mr. Wooldridge. When cities
like Detroit have been strong and powerful with low unemployment,
high salaries, broad tax base and wealth ruling the city, with intact
neighborhoods, strong law enforcement, functional, productive
schools, and I might add, predominately Christian citizens,
something catastrophic has to happen for that to be so significantly
changed.
For sure the rising oil prices of the '70s slowed down the
production of the larger gas hogs Detroit produced. When that
slide begins, however, the producers and workers begin to move out
to look for ways to sustain their lifestyle. It creates a void that
is usually filled by those who cannot afford to maintain what is
there. So it begins to deteriorate and crumbles under the weight of
neglect, destruction, waste and war: war between neighbors. The
people who have had little get a taste of what they thought was a
good life, but fail to have the knowledge or experience to maintain
what they have inherited, and it begins to significantly decline.
Humanitarian forces, but mostly the government, move in to help prop
up those who have taken over. When a radical religion element is
added to the mix, like the Muslim radical groups whose aim is to
destroy, the result is the city, state or country will rust and rot
from the inside and topple over eventually from the sheer weight of
the structure.
[to top of second column] |
 Most people who watch with interest have seen it before, just as I
have. The Bible talks about a person's heart being where his/her
treasure is. Jesus said it plainly in what scholars call His "Sermon on the Mount," found in the Gospels:
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." —
Matthew
6:19-21 (KJV)
When a man's treasure gets shifted to another place, the man's heart
soon follows. The void that is established is filled by others whose
treasure becomes the carcasses of the materialism that was
left behind by the founders. Neither having the means nor the know-how to build or maintain, the new owners feed on the abandoned
treasure until it is completely gone. Not having the means to move
on themselves, they tend to stay and wait for another to come
bringing goods to sustain them. If there is a radical element
embedded in the new group, they organize and become scavengers and
believe it to be their "calling" to lay waste the riches of others.
They take on the mentality of "victims" to justify their actions of
destruction, believing they have a right to destroy those who have
the wealth, since the belief is that they likely stole it in the
first place from the rightful owners: those who currently engage in
the destruction. That is when they devise a tactic to advance their
cause by social change, or force when necessary, to "redistribute" the wealth from those who do not deserve it to those who want it.
I remember a time in the decade of the 1950s in my hometown. I knew
of kids who lived in a neighborhood a couple of streets over from my
house. There was a plot of land with trees growing all around it, a little stream flowing through it
and a small house in
the middle. There was an elderly man living in the house. He
subsequently died one day, leaving no or few heirs. The house stood
vacant for a long while, unattended and neglected by whoever owned
the property. Soon the neighbor kids began to explore the woods
surrounding the house. With each week there were no consequences to
their having penetrated the property, and they finally reached the
house. Over the next year or so, the house was completely destroyed
by neighborhood kids: kids from several blocks away. It became known
as "the old man's house" and was a playground for destruction. The
house was torn up, with even the windows taken out, floorboards torn up
and finally walls knocked down.
Not a single kid in those neighborhoods worked to produce that
property; they had no responsibility for upkeep and no respect for
the former property owner's memory. Without memories of living in
the house, it was nothing but an empty shell, useful only to be torn
up because nobody cared. I look back on that memory as a microcosm
of our society and how we treat what is not ours with such
disrespect. Those kids were not mean to start with; they were not
evil or bent on destruction in the beginning. The property and house
were just there with no personal investment, and with no investment,
it had no meaning except what it could provide for the neighborhood
kids: a place to have fun. And even as children, the sin nature, or
lower base instincts, took over to destroy the house and call it fun.
That is what happens when amoral behavior rules the hearts of men
(and children, for that matter). It is not enough to say that
multiculturalism is always to blame; civilizations of mankind can
come together in peace and prosper if they first accept the moral
standards of living that start with loving God and loving their
neighbors as they love themselves.
[By JIM KILLEBREW]
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