Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 3 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
Most agree our country races major problems. Beyond that, opinions differ greatly. To help you better understand the broad picture, think of our national problems in two categories: moral and economic.
The moral is the most important for our long term future. It is not the principal, or even a major, issue in this campaign. Indeed, many commentators make the incredible statement that the character of a candidate is not important - only the issues are! So, a quick look at some lessons of history.
Will and Ariel Durant’s lifetime work, “The Story of Civilization,” fills 10 volumes. In the books on Greece and Rome, Durant explains the decline and fall of those great cultures and states. About the moral aspects of Greece’s fall, Durant wrote:
“Moral disorder accompanied the growth of luxury and the enlightenment of the mind... The rising bourgeosi of Athens. . .had little use for the traditional faith; the patron gods of the city. . .no longer inspired them with moral scruples. ”
“As the state religion lost its hold upon the educated classes, the individual freed himself more and more from the old moral reatraints - the son from parental authority, the male from marriage,4 the woman from motherhood, the cttiten'ffrom* political responsibility. . .sexual and political morality continued to decline.”
Yet in our campaign of 1992 the moral foundations of a nation’s health are peripheral. Efforts to raise them are mocked by many media and entertainment personalities as intrusions by “fundamentalists and McCarthyites” in the area of individual freedom and civil rights. They are wrong.
On economic and politics, Durant again:
‘The death of Greek democracy was. . .a natural death, in which the fatal agents are the organic disorders of the system.”
Rome fell for the same reasons. The similarity, amazing at first, logical after thought, drives the lesson home. Morality is as important to the health of a state as to an individual.
Everyone agrees the election of 1992 will turn on economic issues: debts, especially the $4 trillion-plus federal debt, threaten everyone. The growing federal deficit, unless stopped and reversed, will destroy our already recession-plagued economy. Contenders differ on how to make the needed changes. Let’s sketch the parties’ approaches, using platforms and campaign speeches.
87.9%