In my third Toastmaster speech given to my Talk of the Town Toastmaster club on August 15, 2006 I asked this question. How do you change a culture? Here's the text. I'd like to know what you think.

My speech this evening has two purposes. My general purpose is to inspire a change in character and principles that were once considered a common way of living. My specific purpose is to inspire you to consider ways to influence moral change in 21^st century America. To that end my topic for the evening, “How Do You Change A Culture?”. Tonight I will propose two practical methods of lifting the country out of moral mediocrity within three generations.

If you are more than thirty five years old you have noticed a continuous slip in morals through out American society. Since the 1970’s divorce has increased consistently and in related fashion so have cohabitation – better known as shacking, out of wedlock childbirths, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases. The last three of these despite the increase in sex education and supposedly safe sex practices.

On another front in the decades prior to the 60’s and 70’s parents actually sent their children to school to be educated - not babysat - during the work day. The expectation from home was one of respect for teachers and administrators and being sure to learn something new by the end of the day. Today teachers are the enemy instead of the law and parents don’t show up at school for PTA meetings or any other reason until a problem with their child has gone too long to correct.

For the African American community, in the absence of Jim Crow laws and random rapes and lynchings at the hands of others, our only true fear as a people today is black on black crime. Strange, that we’ve become our own worst enemy in less than half a century. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am fully convinced that a lack of individual responsibility is much worse than and has had a far greater negative impact on us than the worst of any backwards racial laws or social practices. I consider this to be an irrefragable fact.

With the death of moralist public figures, most notably Dr. Martin Luther King, the country was overtaken by the free-living attitudes of the late 60’s and early to mid 70’s that have created the America of today. It’s all about me and what I want without the consequences. Today of course the consequences are obvious as previously stated. Selfish motives reign and the greater good is completely irrelevant. By my count, 1968 to 2006 covers three broadly defined generations directly impacted and shaped by these forces. The Baby Boomers are the generation born from 1946 to 1964 that formed the free love, free living movement. My own Generation X covers the years 1961 to 1981 and has played on some of those same wild and loose themes. My children’s generation, Generation Y spans 1977 to 2003 and they are currently responding to what they have learned from and are observing from those of us who have brought them into the world.

So, how is the situation turned back in the right direction? First, I believe that a change is slowly taking place. The initial front on which we can create change is a renewed focus on spiritual and moral discipline along with the encouragement of and reinforcement of traditional families that come along with it. The evidence is in the statistics showing the growth in church attendance. It really shows in the growth of the mega churches across the country. People are anxious to renew their spirits and they, like us, want to be around like minded people who believe in the same things. Other efforts include people of faith getting out of the church building, evangelizing the community directly, effecting moral and behavioral change on purpose and not just hoping that it happens by accident. This is something that we are definitely doing here at Greater Peace with our prison ministry and evangelism teams.

The second method is a return to other general life practices that encouraged good citizenship and behavior including character and morals training in schools. It also includes such basic things as saying the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day. I remember doing that in first and second grade. It includes relearning and regularly singing the traditional patriotic songs like God Bless America, America the Beautiful, and My Country 'Tis of Thee. Its activities of this sort that encourage our commonalities and not just our differences. In fact an appreciation of our cultural differences could better serve to bring us together as a nation if we could, at the same time, keep our eye on the larger goal.

Since it took roughly three generations to get to this point there’s no reason that with an aggressive focus on spiritual and moral renewal that by year 2040 we can’t return to the point, integrity wise, where we were in the 1960’s. History shows that great societies have, in fact, corrected and redirected themselves in the past and there’s no reason America can’t do it today.

So, what is the point of it all? Just this one thing. I’m ready for a change and I want you to be ready too. Are we ready?

It starts with asset building. You have to focus on fiscal management issues like distinguishing between needs vs. wants and controling consumption and debt. Personal investing is key. You should have a financial planner and start your investing during the formative work years. It is not an income dependent activity but it is a conscious and intentional act.

One should seriously consider the benefits of entrepreneurship. Business creation is the cornerstone of the economy. There are many avenues like real estate, franchising, or something involving a personal skill or interest.

On a final note give due diligence to estate planning. Insurance planning is the cornerstone here. Call your insurance agent and make an appointment to do a needs analysis (burial, mortgage payoff, debt elimination, income replacement, education expense) in case you die too soon and your family has to continue without you and your income. And last but not least have a lawyer prepare a will for you. Your family will avoid estate court costs which is way cheaper than the lawyer's fee to draw it up even if it is contested.

No good thing in life happens by accident. It's always by design so sit down today and plan out the details.

All the kinks have been worked out and MartyBLOG is ready for the world. Tonight I'm going to kick things off talking about one of my favorite organizations, Toastmasters International. I'll give you a synopsis of my first speech from March 22nd of 2005. I called it "Base Ball, Boy Scouts and Ice Cream Trucks".

I based it on some of my favorite childhood memories growing up on the north side of town in St. Louis, Missouri. Baseball was pretty much a consistent lifeline for me. Nobody called a major league baseball game better than the late great Jack Buck. He was the voice of the Cardinals for all of my life up until the time he died a few years ago. I played a couple of years of little league ball for Matthews Dickey Boys Club and then again for my high school, the Academy of Math & Science.

I was a Boy Scout because of my brother. He was a Scout in Troop 145 at our home church, Antioch Baptist. I'm not sure if he was a Cub Scout or not. Tagging along with those guys when my mother helped to carpool them to summer camp was my inspiration to join in when I was old enough. Naturally I wanted to be like the big boys and I hated going home when we left them at Camp Beaumont for the weekend camps and Camp S-bar-F for the weeklong summer camps. I was a Cub Scout in Pack 263 and a Boy Scout in Troop 263 at a church closer to home in my neighborhood. Our unit was based at All Saints Episcopal church just a few blocks from our house.

The other great memory from that period is the ice cream truck. "Ding-ding, ding-ding-ding, ding-ding, ding, ding-ding!!!" If you thought LL Cool J could rock the bells, he couldn't hold a candle to an ice cream truck guy who had some rhythm. Kids would come flying out of front doors following the ice cream pied piper down the street. I remember bomb pops, fudge bars and those orange push ups in all their stickey glory. Ah, childhood.

Of course now I'm passing the torch to my little guy. Soccer (I played one year of that too) and baseball are his thing so far. He has a mild interest in basketball and football. On occassion we'll go fishing. We really need to get back on a consistent schedule with that though. And of course we always keep some type of frozen treat in the frezer.

After all, what responsible father wouldn't try to pass on some of his favorite childhood past times to his kids, like baseball, Boy Scouts and ice cream trucks?

Thanks to my web jockey Nathan Pendleton for getting the blog up and running. We're spending this week fine tuning the operation so you can be ready to participate with responses by Thursday or Friday. I'm going to spend the next day or two posting some musings before we get to the serious stuff.

Today was a half day for me at the bank. I'm going to church this afternoon and do a couple of runthru's for my eighth speech at Toastmasters later this evening. Then I'm going to go accross the way and play some basketball in the new gym. We just opened our new family life center in January. We're very proud of it and happy about it. It's definitely going to be a blessing and a benefit to our church neighborhood in particular and our town in general. 

I'm going to start the serious part of the blog with personal finance so be thinking about some things you need insight on or would like to share with the rest of us.

Have a great rest of the Tuesday.

Martin