{"id":328,"date":"2008-02-07T13:04:59","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T13:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/02\/going-out-like-a-culture-warri.html"},"modified":"2008-02-07T13:04:59","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T13:04:59","slug":"going-out-like-a-culture-warri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/going-out-like-a-culture-warri.html","title":{"rendered":"Going Out Like a Culture Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"romney11.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/romney11.jpg\" width=\"130\" height=\"92\" style=\"float:right;margin: 5px\" \/>In announcing he&#8217;s suspending his candidacy, Mitt Romney sounded every bit the Focus on the Family spokesman that he he&#8217;s sounded like throughout his campaign:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;.Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture.<br \/>\nOver the years, my business has taken me to many countries. I have been struck by the enormous differences in the wealth and well-being of people of different nations. I have read a number of scholarly explanations for the disparities. I found the most convincing was that written by David Landes, a professor emeritus from Harvard University. I presume he\u2019s a liberal&#8211;I guess that\u2019s redundant. His work traces the coming and going of great civilizations throughout history. After hundreds of pages of analysis, he concludes with this:<br \/>\nIf we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference.<br \/>\nWhat is it about American culture that has led us to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world? We believe in hard work and education. We love opportunity: almost all of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who came here for opportunity\u2014opportunity is in our DNA. Americans love God, and those who don\u2019t have faith, typically believe in something greater than themselves\u2014a \u201cPurpose Driven Life.\u201d And we sacrifice everything we have, even our lives, for our families, our freedoms and our country. The values and beliefs of the free American people are the source of our nation\u2019s strength and they always will be!<br \/>\nThe threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960\u2019s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven\u2019t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug\u2014we have got to fight it like the poison it is!<br \/>\nThe attack on faith and religion is no less relentless. And tolerance for pornography\u2014even celebration of it\u2014and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare programs have led to today\u2019s grim realities: 68% of African American children are born out-of-wedlock, 45% of Hispanic children, and 25% of White children. How much harder it is for these children to succeed in school\u2014and in life. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot long stand when its children are raised without fathers in the home.<br \/>\nThe development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it!<br \/>\nEurope is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America\u2019s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength.  And we are not dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values, and morality, and culture.  We will always be honored to stand on principle and to stand for principle.<br \/>\nThe attack on our culture is not our sole challenge&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In announcing he&#8217;s suspending his candidacy, Mitt Romney sounded every bit the Focus on the Family spokesman that he he&#8217;s sounded like throughout his campaign: &#8230;.Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture. Over the years, my business has taken me to many countries. I have been struck by the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitt-romney"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Going Out Like a Culture Warrior - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/going-out-like-a-culture-warri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Going Out Like a Culture Warrior - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In announcing he&#8217;s suspending his candidacy, Mitt Romney sounded every bit the Focus on the Family spokesman that he he&#8217;s sounded like throughout his campaign: &#8230;.Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture. Over the years, my business has taken me to many countries. I have been struck by the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/going-out-like-a-culture-warri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-07T13:04:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney11.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Going Out Like a Culture Warrior - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/going-out-like-a-culture-warri.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Going Out Like a Culture Warrior - God-O-Meter","og_description":"In announcing he&#8217;s suspending his candidacy, Mitt Romney sounded every bit the Focus on the Family spokesman that he he&#8217;s sounded like throughout his campaign: &#8230;.Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture. 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