I believe our founders were inspired when they wrote those principles upon which our nation stands. They thought long and hard and worked wisely as they wrote down the words that would enable our country to become the freest nation on earth. I also believe they would be shocked at today’s interpretations of those ideas of freedom.

It’s much more difficult to write a short column of a serious nature than it is a light and, hopefully, humorous one. We’d much rather take flights of fancy than to be pulled to the ground by gravity.

At the same time, to simply let situations continue without acknowledgment is like burying one’s head in the sand. There is a condition that is becoming so common that it bothers me.

I have tried to write about it many times, but don’t want to be seen as someone who tells others what to say and how to think. Who am I to tell someone what words to use and which ones to not use? Our founders’ freedom of speech was not given to me alone.

In addition, I am a great believer in the “judge not” verses in the Bible and the part that talks about those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones. I might add that I need to sweep around my own stoop before I begin to point out the dust on another person’s.

Yet, I really am discouraged with the way our language has declined or devolved. I don’t watch a lot of television, mostly news, but when I do watch it, the words that are used are so angry and profane that it makes my ears hurt. One might say, “Well, don’t watch it.”

That’s a valid suggestion. A changing of the channel might get something better, but chances are it might get the same kind of talk in another setting. I could also ask, “What happened to the standards and when did those words become acceptable for public television?”

Is the day coming when nothing on television is worth watching? That day might have already arrived. That medium held such promise and, now, it really is the vast wasteland that was prophesied over five decades ago.

I mentioned my discouragement in our use of profanity to Donna Sue and she reminded me of the long ago use of soap to wash out a mouth that was saying disparaging things or using foul language. These days, if every mouth that needed washing out was actually washed out, the soap industry would be booming. I’d buy a few shares of Ivory if I could.

With all that we hear these days, it might be easy to think that it is a new phenomenon; that it started with our recently elected president. After all, he does get blamed for a lot of things and he is no shrinking violet. I don’t subscribe to that line of thinking although, if the shoe fits, wear it.

President Trump wasn’t the one speaking the profanity-laced comedy routine Saturday night in Washington. The President did not use a most vulgar word a dozen times in ten minutes on the morning show, The View. Nor did the President give as profane a speech as the teenager at a recent anti-gun rally.

We can’t blame this on any one person. And not everyone uses such language these days. I am around great people every day who know how to communicate without profanity. I don’t really know the answer to the problem. As they say, the horse is out of the barn and who knows how to get him back in?