A few months ago, my mother said that Americans have too much freedom to do as they please. Actually, that wasn’t just a few months ago. She’s been hammering that message to me for over fifteen years.
Being the traditional Vietnamese matriarch that she is, she felt compelled to disparagingly tell me that these American women change their beau’s as frequently as they change their clothes, that Americans give no thought to the future but spend and borrow too much money they don’t have, that Americans don’t have any discipline or check on their excessive behaviors (if it feels good, do it)… in a word, they abuse the freedoms they have.
Our family fled the Communists as they overran Vietnam and arrived in the States in 1980. Since then my mother has been horrified at the level of indulgence and wantonness, and she felt it was incumbent upon her to lecture me on these ills once she saw that I was becoming Americanized.
I would counter that this wantonness has not always been the way America did things. I would explain that it wasn’t too long ago that American culture was very akin to the traditional Vietnamese culture in what it valued. Furthermore, I don’t think that it’s just American culture that is being corrupted. Look at the Vietnamese in Vietnam where drugs are running rampant and prostitution is commonplace and out in the open– they are just as wanton those in America.
We would have these kinds of exchanges about once a month, half spoken in Vietnamese, half in English. It has been a point of sadness to me for both America and Vietnam, that here at the end of the age, our cultures are disintegrating/ degenerating into something unworthy of their former glory.
I have hope still that Jesus will grant America a revival and a renewal. There are many positive signs to support my hope, but as for Vietnam… I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t live there and I am an American, not Vietnamese. At this point after all these years, I am as alien to Vietnam as Vietnam is alien to me.
What reminded me of this conversation with my mother an article in the UK’s Mail Online. It captured in an image the wantonness of our age.
Maybe she thinks it’s the drink that is preventing her from putting one foot in front of the other.
Or perhaps she knows the vulgar truth and is merely trying to impress her friends. Either way, the sight is certainly not an edifying one.
This shrieking ladette was photographed staggering through Cardiff city centre late on Friday night.
Such scenes are not uncommon, which is why Cardiff – one of the country’s worst cities for binge drinking – has just banned boozing on the streets.
What scene is this article talking about?
It’s of a drunken British woman trying to walk with her black panties strapped around her ankles… out in the center of the road!
It’s sad to see that the country that once ruled the oceans of the world is producing these kinds of behaviors out of their women. When I saw this picture I thought of what my mother would say about. Probably same thing she’s said for years.
I think we are witnessing the fall of the West. When they chucked their Protestant faith out the window, they chucked out their civilization as well. The virtues of self-discipline, self-restraint and moderation– well, that went out the window too.
It makes me think of the former communists from the Soviet bloc. What a shock it must be for them to have been lifted from the ground after decades of having the boot of tyranny in their face to a world of unrestricted decadence and moral depravity. I think of the Muslim who immigrated to Europe with dreams of freedom away from their oppressive, ethnic tribes only to find a world drunk in nihilistic despair.
Indeed, one Muslim commenter wrote:
ISLAM is the only solution and religion on this planet which prohibits drinking ,gambling. NO AGE BAR. From Cradle to Grave.
But this is not a European Muslim. This man hails from the city of our current President, Chicago. As this man points out, Islam is the antithesis of freedom. The problem is that many people would welcome this renewed oppression, this medievalism because it would absolve them of their responsibilities. Freedom and liberty demands that a man take responsibilities for his own actions and, with God guidance, chart his own course.
I think part of the the West’s disintegration is due to the refusal by many people to accept the burdens of freedom and by their action rejection of the God of their fathers.
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The Fall of the West
22 10 2009A few months ago, my mother said that Americans have too much freedom to do as they please. Actually, that wasn’t just a few months ago. She’s been hammering that message to me for over fifteen years.
Being the traditional Vietnamese matriarch that she is, she felt compelled to disparagingly tell me that these American women change their beau’s as frequently as they change their clothes, that Americans give no thought to the future but spend and borrow too much money they don’t have, that Americans don’t have any discipline or check on their excessive behaviors (if it feels good, do it)… in a word, they abuse the freedoms they have.
Our family fled the Communists as they overran Vietnam and arrived in the States in 1980. Since then my mother has been horrified at the level of indulgence and wantonness, and she felt it was incumbent upon her to lecture me on these ills once she saw that I was becoming Americanized.
I would counter that this wantonness has not always been the way America did things. I would explain that it wasn’t too long ago that American culture was very akin to the traditional Vietnamese culture in what it valued. Furthermore, I don’t think that it’s just American culture that is being corrupted. Look at the Vietnamese in Vietnam where drugs are running rampant and prostitution is commonplace and out in the open– they are just as wanton those in America.
We would have these kinds of exchanges about once a month, half spoken in Vietnamese, half in English. It has been a point of sadness to me for both America and Vietnam, that here at the end of the age, our cultures are disintegrating/ degenerating into something unworthy of their former glory.
I have hope still that Jesus will grant America a revival and a renewal. There are many positive signs to support my hope, but as for Vietnam… I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t live there and I am an American, not Vietnamese. At this point after all these years, I am as alien to Vietnam as Vietnam is alien to me.
What reminded me of this conversation with my mother an article in the UK’s Mail Online. It captured in an image the wantonness of our age.
What scene is this article talking about?
It’s of a drunken British woman trying to walk with her black panties strapped around her ankles… out in the center of the road!
It’s sad to see that the country that once ruled the oceans of the world is producing these kinds of behaviors out of their women. When I saw this picture I thought of what my mother would say about. Probably same thing she’s said for years.
I think we are witnessing the fall of the West. When they chucked their Protestant faith out the window, they chucked out their civilization as well. The virtues of self-discipline, self-restraint and moderation– well, that went out the window too.
It makes me think of the former communists from the Soviet bloc. What a shock it must be for them to have been lifted from the ground after decades of having the boot of tyranny in their face to a world of unrestricted decadence and moral depravity. I think of the Muslim who immigrated to Europe with dreams of freedom away from their oppressive, ethnic tribes only to find a world drunk in nihilistic despair.
Indeed, one Muslim commenter wrote:
But this is not a European Muslim. This man hails from the city of our current President, Chicago. As this man points out, Islam is the antithesis of freedom. The problem is that many people would welcome this renewed oppression, this medievalism because it would absolve them of their responsibilities. Freedom and liberty demands that a man take responsibilities for his own actions and, with God guidance, chart his own course.
I think part of the the West’s disintegration is due to the refusal by many people to accept the burdens of freedom and by their action rejection of the God of their fathers.
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