Let me point to just one area where we need some people to “yell” a little. That is in the field of entertainment. By the time a child enters the first grade, he has spent more hours in front of a TV set than he will spend in a college classroom, and much of what he sees is filth. Can anyone deny that movies, TV, and books are dirtier than ever? But we don’t call it dirt any more. Today we call it realism. We need to look more closely at this matter of realism.
I like to think of it this way. The shrub in front of our house is just as real as the garbage can at the back. I think it is a sound instinct that the garbage ought to be kept at the back of the house, with a lid on it. I don’t think doing this is narrow minded, naïve, old hat, provincial, or square. It is a piece of progress that to my mind makes our century more pleasant and certainly more healthful than previous ones. The streets of our cities were once almost like cesspools, and that was real enough. Now we have learned to clean up the streets, and that is real too.
It may be that we have sat in the dark so long that our eyes are used to it. We do get used to the dark, you know. We need to put the lid on some of this garbage and seal it good. But we cannot do it unless there is a rebirth of moral courage among academic, political, and religious leaders.
Of course there are dangers with this kind of courage. You will incur the wrath of many. Federal Judge Thomas Griffith aptly warns us not to walk into the “barracuda waters” if we don’t expect to get chewed on. And President Harry Truman once noted, “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
There is a price to be paid, but I believe it is worth the cost.