By William Saunders
Reprinted from Human Events, 9/27/98
April 1999 – A cable television channel recently showed the Oscar-winning film A Man for All Seasons. The film is about Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), lord chancellor of England, and the dilemma he faced following the decision of King Henry VIII to divorce his wife and, after the Vatican’s refusal to acquiesce in this, to have himself declared head of the Catholic Church in England.
Thomas More resigned his office and refused to take an oath that had been designed to sanction the king’s actions. For More, as for nearly all of his contemporaries (including, as the film makes clear, King Henry VIII himself), an oath was not to be taken lightly, much less falsely, for “an oath is words we say to God.... When a man makes an oath, he holds his own self in his two hands like water. If he opens his fingers, he needn’t look to find himself again.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries, More could not take the oath, because he did not believe the king had the power or right to do as he claimed. However, More also refused to publicly state his reasons for refusing to take the oath, for he knew that if he openly and expressly denied the supremacy of the king, he would be executed for treason.
Ironically, he was eventually convicted and beheaded not for what he said or did or refused to say or do, but upon the perjured testimony of one Richard Rich, who was not so squeamish about lying under oath.
It is difficult not to think of Sir Thomas More and the dilemma he faced as Washington, D.C., and America beyond the Beltway, reels from the presidential scandals and the information in Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s report. One central issue the country and the Congress now face is presidential perjury and the subornation of perjury in others.
What I find most fascinating about the scandal is the tendency of others to excuse it. At least in the weeks immediately prior to the release of the Starr report, several respected media commentators were taking the position that, even if the President lied under oath and committed perjury, this was merely “lying about sex.” One must wonder from whence comes this distinction between “acceptable” lies and perjury, and those which are unacceptable.
Surprisingly, this attitude does not appear to be limited to media elites. Similar views regarding the Clinton scandals seem – at least before the release of the Starr report – widespread in America. So widespread, in fact, that several respected Christian leaders, such as James Dobson and Bishop James McHugh, have felt it necessary to wonder aloud whether the fundamental problem that the scandal has disclosed is one with America, with her citizens and their understanding of morality.
Has America lost the ability to tell right from wrong? Have we become a nation more likely to condone the actions of Richard Rich, than to admire – and seek to emulate those of Sir Thomas More?
Cultural Shift Away From Truth
Robert H. Knight, director of cultural studies at the Family Research Council, believes America has become untethered from the values upon which the country was founded and which long sustained us. In his new book, The Age of Consent, Knight depicts a cultural shift that has moved America away from a belief in truth and in objective standards of right and wrong to the deadly embrace of relativism, subjectivism and radical individualism.
In many ways a sustained lament in the manner of Jeremiah for a culture’s turning away from truth, the book describes an age in which anything – literally anything – goes so long as there is consent (hence, the book’s title).
Knight’s target is American popular culture. While the temptation to abandon moral standards is, he acknowledges, a perennial human problem, “our particular brand of poison” – what he calls collectively “relativism” – “was brewed over the past century.” It was born of a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, that is, from a belief that we are fundamentally good and should be “liberated” from oppressive institutions (such as the family and the church), while simultaneously undergoing unending “education” in ever better, ever more “progressive,” ever more enlightened views. According to Knight, moral relativism has seeped into, and has corrupted, American society through the “transmitters of culture – the arts, education, and the media – even through the churches.”
The opening chapters on relativism, materialism and the sexual revolution set the stage for Knight’s analysis of particular “transmitters of culture,” by identifying the ideas and protagonists leading the assault upon the traditional (and theistic) morality of the West.
While each of these chapters is important, and intertwined (for a culture that abandons God will seek to assuage its resulting emptiness through material things, and the only mysticism the materialist knows is sex), I found the chapter on the sexual revolution to be particularly powerful.
Therein Knight demonstrates that “the sex expert,” Dr. Alfred Kinsey, based his “findings” on fraudulent research; exposes the origins of Planned Parenthood in the racist and libertine views of its founder, Margaret Sanger; and in chilling detail, recounts the efforts of homosexual activists to distort scientific research to convince the world that homosexuality is “normal.”
Though these three topics are linked, as Knight shows, and are at the heart of current battles in America’s on-going culture war, many readers may still be unfamiliar with the evidence undermining popular misconceptions in each area. As Knight’s book makes clear, such ignorance is not a viable option. These forces are relentless, and must be actively resisted if they are not to undermine our society. These chapters are a good place to begin to educate yourself.
Having discussed the ideas and attitudes underlying the assault on traditional values, Knight begins a thorough, if often anecdotal, account of the shift to relativism within the “popular arts” – television, movies, art, architecture and music. It is Knight’s contention – one he abundantly documents – that elites in these areas, having imbibed the notions alluded to, became ceaseless advocates (sometimes covertly) for those notions through the organs of popular culture.
I found his discussion of television and of music particularly fascinating. It is impossible not to recognize the hostility the television industry feels for traditional values (and social conservatives) after reading the evidence Knight marshals (including their own words). Undoubtedly, parents will have to take an ever more active role in keeping harmful programs from their children.
Regarding music, I found quite interesting his point that the prophet of nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche, was a devotee of Richard Wagner’s music, which was itself aimed at liberating Germans from Christian “constraints.” (Of course, the views of these men heavily influenced the Nazis, with the horrific results we witnessed in the Holocaust.) Knight finds the “sensual revolt against restraint” that Wagner and Nietzsche championed to be a central component of contemporary rock music.
As I say, I found the analysis in these areas particularly interesting, but I encourage you to discover for yourself the various gems in these chapters. (I also must note that his critique of the National Endowment for the Arts is devastating.)
In the end, this book will be a sturdy aid both for the bewildered parent – who has stumbled upon a particular instance of “relativism” and worries about whether he or she is being “alarmist” – as well as the veteran culture warrior.
Its chief strength, perhaps, is to draw together the various criticisms of different aspects of popular culture and to demonstrate how they are related – thus, we see the forest as well as the trees. But it is a dark forest.
And we can only resist its influence if we take the full measure of the threat it poses. As Knight says, “Sometimes the best way to differentiate good from the bad is to stare directly into the face of evil.” 
