Over the course of the past three years, we have witnessed an erosion of the values that many of us hold dear.

If one looked to only our national leaders, one might mistakenly conclude that values such as hard work, integrity, selfless service, courage and honesty are entirely missing from our national fabric. After all, arent these leaders elected to our nations highest level because they represent the best of us? But nowhere has this decline of decency been more patently noticeable than in the White House. How is it possible to hold these values dear and then elect someone we would not trust to be alone in a room with our daughters?

For those who have not been keeping track, the following is a brief timeline of examples we have seen on this crumbling road to perdition:

November 2015:

October 2016:

January 2018:

February 2018:

May 2018:

December 2018:

October 2019:

November 2019:

November 2019:

Any one of these actions is despicable. But, when taken in their entirety, a pattern emerges of a near complete absence of nearly every one of the values to which most of us aspire and hold so dear.

We claim to hold our highest of leaders to the highest of standards. So how is it that our nation has become so blind to the loss of what we purport to hold so dear? How did we get to a place where politics, favor-trading and fear mongering trump who we love, how we behave and when we stand up for all those around us? I can think of no other explanation for how we, as a fair and democratic nation, can continue to defend the illegal and amoral behavior that should be indefensible.

And perhaps you think it does not affect us; Washington is, after all, a nation away. Yet even in South Dakota, congressional members John Thune, Mike Rounds and Dusty Johnson leaders we elected to represent our values and way of life are supporting an agenda so far removed from that baseline one wonders where the loyalties really lay. What happened to those South Dakota values? How can any Christian or anyone guided by the Golden Rule treating others with love, fairness and compassion possibly behave as our president does? Moreover, how can others condone, let alone support, this?

This dichotomy is causing a gaping chasm in our nation. We are living in a new era, one marked by dishonesty, selfishness, infidelity, crudeness, bigotry, sexism, misogyny and homophobia an era in which all of this is accepted as the norm. In this new nation, the end always justify the means, and it matters little, if at all, whom we trample, cheat, abuse or belittle in order to achieve the desired end. However, these are not the values that represent me, and they are not the values I want taught to my children.

Alan L. Neville is a professor of education at Northern State University. The views are his and do not represent Northern State.

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Neville: Where have our values gone? | News - AberdeenNews.com