The Renaissance was a time of rebirth after the chaos of the Dark Ages. Science, the arts and the beginnings of an organized civilization with social mores, rose out of the ashes of decades of death and destruction. Libraries and lives had been destroyed by barbarians in search of conquest, in a world gone mad with religious persecution and rampant hedonism. From the rubble, what shattered pieces of the past were left, began to be used as a foundation for our modern society. Feudal systems began to crumble and those pieces were used to build the predecessors of our current representitive forms of government. Rudimentary socialism and dictatorship replaced monarchy, and finally the fledgling of democracy was born out of religious and ethical teachings, stressing the values of family and the morality of responsibility.

Perhaps central to this rise of civilizations surviving today, was the abandonment of selfishness and the adoption of strict moral codes with canons such as, " do unto others, as you would have them do unto you ". You may not be religious yourself ( hey, I may not be religious my self ), but one can still recognize the effect that the church had on our past. We are not Puritans, but their values do keep their own society free of most violence. The church realized early on, that the human spirit was easily corrupted by hedonism and selfishness. The drive of the search for power over others, would cause many a war, in the history of our planet.

You don't have to be religious or believe in a God, to adopt the values taught by most Western religions. Don't covet your neighbor's wife or kill your neighbor, are universally accepted as proper conduct, for instance. You don't have to believe in some extreme Puritanical system to live in harmony and not war, with your fellow human beings. All you have to do, is have respect for others. What all these things have in common, is an absolute set of rights and wrongs ( including the concept of true and false ).

Moral relativism may be taking us down the road to a New Dark Ages. If someone can twist and bend an occurence to fit their own version of what they believe is true, then truth is the casualty. When a lust for power, wealth and sexual gratification over powers one's sense of conscience and responsibility, the innocent law abiding citizen becomes both the victim and a pawn. As the percentage of out of wedlock births grows, and the single parent family becomes common place, the teaching of an absolute set of moral values disappears. The old phrase, " how many toes did you step on " on the way to the top, should possibly be updated to, " how many bodies did you leave in your wake "?

The Roman Empire did fall because of barbarian influence and hedonism, including rampant sexual depravity. If you have any doubts about this, read The Lives of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius ( preferably in the original Latin ). Hey, I really am no prude, but take a look at the local newstand for yourself, this trend may be happening here and now. Type in something vulgar using an Internet search engine and see how much pornography you come up with.

Our current promised " most ethical administration in history ", has seemed to be obsessed with putting forward an agenda which will undo all that has brought us to where our moral absolutes have in the past few centuries. Bill Clinton's " bridge to the new millenium " has it's building blocks made of immorality, greed and sexual perversion. This building material certainly would appear to be similar to what has brought down empires in the past. If one loosely looks at the Roman model, the ' influx of barbarians ' translates to our recent flood of illegal ( and legal ) immigration, or if you really use your imagination, rapid jet age travel between all the countries of the globe and even the Internet. The ' hedonism ' would be illustrated by the apparent legitimization of same sex marriages and affirmative action special privileges for what had been once thought of as strictly immoral. This has spelled the death of the traditional family structure, one of the building blocks that holds our society together. One must only look to the ' needle parks ' and open ' prostitution ' of some European countries and examine the high rate of AIDS infection and death, to see what our future may bring, should we continue down the road we are on unabated. The relentless pursuit of the almighty dollar by the current inhabitant of the Whitehouse, stamps him as a member of the generation of greed and not a " social reformer " of the 60s.

Lastly, our chief executive has increased the power of the Executive Branch through Executive Orders and the use of Cabinet secretaries to ' rule ' or control the private sectors of business ( not to mention raising lots of money ). He has annexed private lands ( Utah coal ) to further his own agenda, and even turned over U.S. property to the United Nations ( heritage sites ). Government agencies populated by Clinton appointees have sold seats on foreign trade missions for campaign dollars and shut down private farms because some endangered species of insect lives there? This is really some quite crazy stuff, but sadly, it is happening. Adding his expert use of the media in a ' wag the dog ' style, Bill Clinton has effectively gotten himself appointed dictator of our country!

Finally, through the bloating of Federal Entitlements programs, a society of people who want to know what the government will do for them and not what they can do for the country, has been born. Do you remember the old JFK quote, " Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country "? Our precious fearless leader has stood this one on it's head! In his own Fabian Socialist style, Bill Clinton has turned this into a country ruled by his Federal bureaucracy and not the people themselves. Every problem, including issues best dealt with on a local level, becomes one to throw a new Federal law or money at, in an effort to solve it. Washington D.C. has one hand on our wallets and the other hand around our throats. How much longer can we remain conscious? How long will it take before we are all reduced to serfs begging for our handouts from the Federal Feudal Bureaucracy?

- Bongo ( Martial law declared on New Years Eve of 2000? )