As a young boy there was peace in our community. We never locked our house, nobody did. We carried guns in our pick-up trucks, nobody thought it was a big deal. We hunted, ordered our guns from the Sears Roebuck catalogue, and we fished and enjoyed our land.

Going to church and enjoying community church potluck dinners was a custom in our community. When television arrived my sister and I would enjoy Saturday morning cartoons. It was the old black and white TV picture and we got 3 local channels.

My uncle was a very strong Catholic, never missed Mass and also supported a political party that did not protect the unborn. As a young person I did not understand this. I told my uncle I did not understand how we cannot protect the unborn when the Pope said it was wrong to take their life. My uncle did not have an answer to this dilemma. But it did bother me. Oh well, I was young with a full life before me, let the mature grownups figure it out.

As a child we played baseball in an open field next to our house. We played basketball each day after school. We also played football when it was in season. We enjoyed our childhood, worked on the farm and enjoyed the great outdoors.

When I was 14 I was very busy riding my motor bike with my friends. It was the greatest thing to have as a young boy.

In the 1960's the TV commercials were saying, "See the USA in your Chevrolet!" It was a time of rest, prosperity and national pride. The dollar was strong and we could buy a lot of things with a dollar.

I bought my first new motorcycle, a Yamaha 80cc for $364. A new 1965 Ford Mustang sold for $2600. The national debt was practically nothing compared to our national debt today. At one time our dollar was backed by gold, instead of paper. Most young people reading this article will never know, nor conceive the USA that I grew up in.

Some of the TV shows in the 60's and 70's were The Flintstones, Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Little House on the Prairie. A few decades later things started changing with shows like Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and Ghosts.

Fifty years ago Grandma and Grandpa sat on the porch, read Bible stories to the children and neighbors visited each other in the evenings. Today our children have graduated to violent video games that practice shooting people as the object of their targets.

The Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Breyer, who was replaced because of retirement, stated, "It is yet to be seen if democracy will really work." I was stunned by his statement. After thinking it over, I agreed. Democracy is the rule of the people. If the people have no standards of right and wrong, no moral ethics and are lawless then you will see a lot of what we are seeing today.

The Apostle Paul told Timothy,
If our nation is governed by the masses, and the masses no longer have Biblical ethics, what kind of nation will we have? What kind of nation will we be?

God said,