Culture is synonomous with World System

Culture
"On its website, the American Psychological Association brags, 'Since 1975, the American Psychological Association has called on psychologists to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations.' It once considered such behavior otherwise and while even most conservatives no longer regard homosexuality as a mental illness, many still regard it as sinful. That theological diagnosis, too, has been discarded in our increasingly secular and anomalous society where everything is to be tolerated except those people who assert that, according to a standard higher than opinion polls, some things remain intolerable. ... What we tolerate and promote we get more of and what we discourage and reject we get less of. ... The message at Penn State was that we live in a culture that forbids almost nothing. ... In the last verse of the Old Testament's book of Judges, there is this: 'In those days Israel had no king; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.' That could have been the motto at Penn State. Increasingly, it appears to describe contemporary America as well." --columnist Cal Thomas

The nature of sin

Opinion in Brief...from the PatriotPost
This is how I see health care reform working: If you are a doctor who has spent a lot of money and time becoming a responsible and caring physician, the government will tell you how much to charge your patients and, in fact, whether you will be allowed to treat them at all. Bureaucrats, having given themselves the power of God, will decide whether a patient is worth the cost of treatment, thereby deciding who lives and who dies. Despite the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, somewhere down the line taxpayers will be forced to underwrite abortions in violation of the consciences and faith of the majority. This is the triumph of the humanistic, atheistic worldview. We are all to be regarded as products of evolution in which the fit and the powerful will decide our survival and worth. ... The new breast and ovarian cancer screening guidelines may soon become mandatory as health care rationing kicks in. The unwanted, the inconvenient and the 'burdensome' could soon be dispatched with a pill, or through neglect. Great horrors don't begin in gas chambers, killing fields, or forced famines. They begin when there is a philosophical shift in a nation's leadership about the value of human life. ... In our day, the consequences of government seizure of one-sixth of our economy and government's ability to decide how we run our lives (it won't stop with health care) are foreseen. They are just being ignored in our continued pursuit of personal peace, affluence and political power. ... Welcome to the U.S.S.A., the United Socialist States of America." --columnist Cal Thomas