Back in those days our streets were safer, our homes and families more solid, our crime less violent and our moral standards higher. Sure, there were wrongs. But there was also a norm which could be used to address those wrongs.

Then came television -- and, unfortunately, a change in the attitude and values of those in the entertainment media. The old prohibitions were removed. The Playboy philosophy came to be the norm in Hollywood and at the network headquarters in New York. The old attitudes based on twenty centuries of practice were scorned.

Before long those who held contempt for the old values gathered new friends. They were small in number, but they were in very influential places. They held important positions in education, the media, the legal system and other areas of influence. These parts of a new culture are the liberal elite who embody the arrogant Hollywood industry and include self-righteous educators who pollute our children's minds rather than fill them with knowledge. No one of these is singularly at fault, but by combining their sleaze, they become lethal.

For nearly 40 years now our entertainment media and their friends have scorned, ridiculed, belittled and bashed those old values. And now our society is beginning to reap what they have sown.

These new values of freedom without responsibility, immediate gratification, materialism and sexual freedom have brought us an ever increasing amount of crime, drug use, break-down of the family, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, etc. The list goes on and on.²

This writing expresses very clearly the messages here:

Every week, as we cope with another headline about senseless, violent crime, we find ourselves groping anew with the same question: Why?

If we could stop and view the world through the eyes and ears of young people, many of whom are committing these crimes with apparently little or no remorse, we might find many answers. But one sticks out.

The entertainment industry cries out for some measure of societal constraint, which it is incapable of providing itself. Yes, Hollywood, I'm pointing at you.

Hollywood has long pandered to the teen-age appetite for anything that breaks the mold of authority. From the thought-provoking, relatively innocent rambunctiousness of James Dean, we've accelerated to the random, runaway violence of Terminator II. A generation has grown up awash in the idea that anything one does to defy authority or strike back at real or perceived enemies is not only OK, it's romantic and admirable. Kids are awash in action images. Pre-teens especially are vulnerable to anything that makes them feel grown up. And according to what they're seeing, getting even makes people bigger than they are. Committing adult violence makes one an adult.

Yes, there have always been death and violence in popular entertainment. In Shakespeare, everybody dies. But skilled storytellers do not have to dwell on gore.

Modern film technology has made available levels of realism never before imaginable. As a result, we have a generation of impressionable dim-wits that thinks leading cops on 100 m.p.h. chases is just another ride at Disneyland, only better if it gets them on the TV news. Carrying guns and knocking people off is what their heroes do, and even if they get incarcerated, they'll get out early.

Whenever anyone suggests that Hollywood take responsibility for cleaning up its act, we can count on the response that it's not their responsibility to provide moral leadership or censorship. They only cater to what the market wants. Parents, they say, should control what their kids are exposed to.

What parents? For a frightening percentage of kids on the street today, there are no functioning parents. And even in "good" homes, absolute control over what a child sees or hears is impossible.

Hollywood, like it or not, has become the prime harbinger of our society's value system. That mantle has passed, unfortunately, from our churches, schools and families.

Hollywood's influence is everywhere. All too often its message is one of violence, gore and unloving sex.

Nobody likes the idea of censorship, but in a vacuum, how else can society find protection from such excesses?

Parental and teacher authority has been watered down to a plateau that elevates children, in their self-centered view, to a point approaching parity with adults.

Actions have consequences. For every action there is a reaction. We do, indeed, reap what we sow.

We are at a very critical point in our history. Will we totally abandon those values that have made our nation strong for over two hundred years? Will we continue to pursue our current path and follow the Playboy philosophy until we reach our ruin. Do we become another "has been" civilization such as the Roman Empire.³

The answer to that question depends on what those of us who still believe in the old values do -- or fail to do. We can draw back when criticized. We can remain in our shell and refuse to get involved.

Or we can do what those who went before us did -- we can work to maintain and implant those old, time-proven values as the norm.

The decision is ours. And resting on that decision is the future of our nation.

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1. Tom Brokaw - an American television journalist. In December 1998 he authored "The Greatest Generation," an exquisitely written account of the generation of Americans born in the 1920s who came of age during the Great Depression, fought in the Second World War, and went on to build America. "The Greatest Generation" was also the subject of an NBC News documentary special that aired in January 1999.

2. Degeneration of the family was one of the factors central to the thesis of the English historian Edward Gibbon when he compiled his monumental The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire. Writing during the American Revolution of the 1770s, Gibbon said the empire crumbled because of high taxes; a mad craze of self-indulgence; the building of gigantic armaments while failing to recognize that the real enemy was the decadence of the people; the decay of religion in which faith faded into mere form and had no potency for guiding people's lives; and, the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home.

3. Arnold Joseph Toynbee, born 1889 - English historian whose 12-volume A Study of History (1934-61) put forward a philosophy of history, based on an analysis of the cyclical development and decline of civilizations.