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| Last Updated:
Nov 3, 2009 - 1:48:45 PM |
Not far from the town of Vassalboro, workers once hauled blocks of hard granite out of the dry earth. These massive blocks of stone were carved into monuments to express the very highest of human ideals. Like the granite, these ideals were meant to live forever.
Some of the granite was used to build schools, post offices and public buildings across the nation. The very best granite was used to build the monuments of Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The greatest and most impressive monuments of Plymouth are not of men, but of women. This is fitting, since the soul of a nation is best revealed in how it regards its women.
Not far from the monument at Plymouth Rock are a fountain and the statue of the Pilgrim Mother. Dressed in a modest cloak and bonnet, she wears an expression of humility, yet she is self-possessed and confident. In a word, her bearing is noble. She carries in her right hand a Bible.
Nearby, by a small spring and pool, is another statue, the Pilgrim Maiden. Her look is resolute and courageous, and she too carries a Bible.
To speak of America as it once was is to risk seeming outdated. Long gone are the days when a shopkeeper would gather his employees around a warm stove for a morning prayer.
We are no longer the same civilization. We live in a society in which the image of man and woman is no longer as elevated as the monuments of Plymouth.
We need only look to our young people to prove the truth of this assertion. The many tattoos, body-piercings and, worse, self-mutilations speak of a loss of faith and self-respect, and a deep spiritual crisis.
Just as the statues in Plymouth honor a people who were proud and free, we see in popular fashion today an image of self-contempt and servility. We can rightly say that the image of man and woman in modern-day America has been horribly abased.
The worst abasement is when a young woman cannot be offered the love and security that is due all women and chooses to expose herself -- for money -- to the leering eyes of strangers.
The commoditization of sex is nothing new in America. Advertisers make liberal use of women's bodies to sell autos, alcohol, tobacco and anything else that will bring a quick profit.
The coffee shop in Vassalboro is a form of crass exploitation, since it places those who should be given our highest regard -- our women -- much lower than the objects being sold.
Our pride and presumption lead us to call America "the Great Society," yet the best among us have rightly called our society a wasteland or a desert, precisely because we value what is barren and empty over what is noble and life-giving. Do we Americans now need the allurement of sexual immorality to enjoy our daily bread?
Some say that the men and women of Vassalboro should be free to patronize such an establishment. But many evils are committed in the name of freedom. An appeal to freedom can be used to justify any immoral or unethical act. If freedom in America means license to degrade the image of womanhood, perhaps it is time for us to stop calling on the world to emulate us.
The degradation of women in a town next to our state capital is no trivial matter. We have seen all too often how our leaders in government are swayed by venality. This is the natural outcome of a society that holds money and profit as the sole criterion for the good of society.
It is wrong to make all aspects of society subordinate to the profit motive. The first task of government is to preserve the health of society.
That is why the coffee shop in Vassalboro, along with the lingerie models on Water Street in Augusta, is such a powerful and dangerous symbol of the subjugation of our society to the wrong goals.
A practice that is unacceptable in any part of Maine is much worse when it occurs near the state capital, a place where the highest ideals should always be enshrined, not only in our public monuments, but in the daily life of our citizens as well.
Earlier generations were wise in choosing women to represent their highest ideals, since women are in the end, a fountain of life and our future. How we chose to treat our women reveals the deepest nature of our being.
Vassalboro needs to preserve a charitable view of womanhood, just as a parched and dying rose garden needs above all, a life-giving draft of water.
The column was published in the Waterville Sentinel.
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