The movie “Scent of a Woman” (Scent of a Woman) nearly 30 years ago, for which Al Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor, played the cranky blind retired officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank. The most memorable part of the film is his impassioned speech in the auditorium of an aristocratic high school at the end of the film for a high school student, Charlie, who does not want to betray his classmates. Charlie overheard several students preparing to tease the principal, but refused to betray his friends, so he had to face the school’s suspension. In the auditorium, known as the “cradle of leadership,” Frank scolds the students who dare not act and the school authorities who threaten Charlie to give up his classmates, saying, “Leader-creators, beware of the kind of leaders you create. I can tell you that he (Charlie) will not betray anyone for his own future. That’s what people often call integrity, that’s courage, that’s the quality that future leaders should have. He has chosen a path that will make his character whole. He has a great future ahead of him. Don’t ruin him! Protect him! Support him! I promise that one day you will be proud of it.”
A remake of the 1974 film of the same name, “Scent of a Woman” embodies the tradition of integrity in which one person does what one person does and does not betray or inform.
The other day, an incident occurred in the United States where a hospital employee, Therese Duke, went to a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., and was caught on camera being swatted by an African-American woman with her face covered in blood. Her pro-Democrat daughter Helena Duke reposted the photo on social media and wrote: Mom, is that you? She also posted the names of her mother and the aunt and uncle who were present.
Helena’s posting went viral, prompting an investigation and condemnation by the hospital where Therese worked, and she lost her job as a result, even though she was a victim in the rally.
When her mother lost her job, Helena felt that her “righteousness” had caused her life to change. She raised money from the community to pay for her education and livelihood, and said she hopes to go to law school in the future to help bring justice to others. Many people donated to her and left messages thanking her for her sense of justice.
There was a subversive change in morality from the non-reporting of “Scent of a Woman” to Helena being thanked for reporting her own mother. Betrayal and whistle-blowing, which are anti-traditional moral actions, are now considered righteous acts under the pursuit of a hazy ideal of equality. The greatest evil in the world is not caused by the great evil-doers, but by countless people doing what they think is righteous.
Mou Zongsan, a master of Chinese studies, said, “Not believing in socialism before the age of thirty is unproductive, and if you still believe in socialism after the age of forty, you are uneducated.”
If young people are very realistic early on, unwilling to take risks, afraid of losses, indifferent in the face of social injustice and inequality, they are “world boys” before they grow up, that is, they have no talent. When they grow up and understand the social reality, if they still do not recognize the difference and still believe in the ideal of equality, they are “ignorant”. When you grow up and enter society, you will realize that human beings are so different that you can only prudently promote the equality of rules and restrain the leftist impulse to oppose differences. Overthrowing all traditions, morals and customs will inevitably lead to all kinds of behavior that violates common sense and ethics.
During the Cultural Revolution, everyone knew the great truths but discarded common sense, and everyone spoke of great morals but disregarded everyday morals. The great truth is to achieve the international proletarian revolution, common sense is that people have the desire to eat, drink, men and women, etc.; the great morality is to fight for life for the revolution without eating or sleeping, the daily morality is to love parents and respect teachers, to observe order and hygiene. One of the largest range of impact on the moral bottom line is to report parents, teachers and friends in the interests of the country and the revolution. The extreme development is that everyone is suspected, everyone reports, everyone is at risk. In the past, informers were dishonorable; nowadays, informing is an act of patriotic justice. This trend of fatherlessness and immorality did not disappear because of the passing of the Cultural Revolution, but led the whole society to a point of no return for sexual evil.
Thomas Sowell, the aforementioned black American scholar, warned on Jan. 10 that with the Democratic Party’s Biden in power and its control of the House and Senate, leading the radical left, America could be headed for “the point of no return. The Roman Empire, he said, has finally reached a point of reversal in its long history and can go no further. Democrats who promote the concept of systemic racism in the United States remind him of Nazi propaganda.
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