In the children's story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a young boy is entrusted with the task of watching over sheep in the hills of a quintessential village. For whatever reason, the boy cries wolf several times when there really is no wolf. The day comes when the boy and the sheep are really being threatened by a wolf, but no one comes to help . In several of the versions I have heard over my life the boy is actually eaten by the wolf. The moral of the story is don't cry for help unless you really need it. Every person, after reading this post, should go outside and cry, "WOLF, WOLF, WOLF!"

Francis Shaeffer in his How Should We Then Live? (Not to be confused with Colson's How Now Shall We Live?) writes,

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end: first, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, affluence); second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor...; third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and ethusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.

1. An over emphasis on wealth
2. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer
3. An obsession with sex
4. Filth was being substituted for art
5. The Welfare state was getting out of control

Allow me to draw some comparisons if you haven't already.

1. Americans are obssessed with other people's bling bling. Shows like Cribs (think lifestyles of the rich and famous) serve to satify the viewers appetitie for seeing how the wealthy live. Let's not forget the ridiculous amount of magazines that line magazine racks. Magazines such as US provides glimpses into all the delights of those who spend idiodic amounts of money on things like lingerie (think Jessica Simpson).
2. If you have listened to the news in the last 10-20yrs you know #2 is a constant topic of discussion (no need to beat a dead horse).
3. Sex sells EVERYTHING in America. Sexual orientation is the new alleged civil rights issue. Sexual images bombard the average American everyday. Men seem to be the main targets. Men keep the ponography industry alive. A man's visuale appetite can be insatiable and today's society and culturaly acceptable advertisement feeds his imagination.
4. Art...humm....ponography, pictures of carcuses, crucifix in urine? (I could go on but I think I've painted a pretty good picture).

We really are in trouble as a nation. Just this morning I heard Rosie O'donnel declare that we are living in a new day where people should proudly wear shirts that promote shows such as Queer as Folk. She then went on to accuse the United States of being an invading force and not a liberating influence in Iraq. As to the justification of stem cell research, she summits that Christopher Reeves died without the hope of a cure. The bottom line is that she wants to sacrifice the unborn for the living. Sound familar? It was customary for Romans to discard thier unwanted children by leaving them stranded in forests and on mountains where predators could devour them. They discarded the unwanted children, i.e., unwanted females and the handicapped, for the betterment of their society. The Romans chose who would live based on a class system (e.g., male children were of highest priority). In America, some, like Rosie, want to extract stem cells from embryo's all for the betterment of society. They, like the Romans, have devided the human race into a class system, the living and the unborn. In turn, the unborn are left at the mercy of science and its processes.

If the unborn could speak, they would be crying, wolf!

What was important to me, I think, from the very beginning, from the very first treatment I wrote to the last screenplay was that there wasn’t a big royal wedding at the end, and it didn’t have a fairy tale ending where Paige walked away from her dream and her school and her degree to be a queen. And by her not doing that, I think it’s a very empowering movie for women and for young girls.