If the person is addicted to drugs, sex or alcohol, are the paparazzi making it worse due to constant intrusion and coverage? Probably. Are the studios or networks enabling addictive behavior by treating these poor souls as profit centers rather than people? You bet. Are outlets such as TMZ and Radar Online willing to make money off the wreckage of people's lives while hiding behind a free press or necessary competition, telling us if they don't cover it someone else will? Of course. The popular media point of view can be summarized pretty quickly. If actors had not wanted their lives to be under constant scrutiny, then why did they become actors? All's fair in media and money.

Treating actors as money machines goes back a long way to Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and most tragically Marilyn Monroe. During Charlie Sheen's current bender, CBS president Les Moonves could only comment that he wished Sheen, who was engaging in copious interviews at the time, "would have worked this hard to promote himself for an Emmy." Moonves went on to comment that Sheen's television show, "Two and a Half Men" being taken off the air was "actually a gainer for us." What Moonves meant was that CBS could air reruns at a fraction of the cost. For CBS, the descent of a human soul seemed to be mostly business. While Sheen himself has continued to use booze, sex and drugs addictively, there seemed to be little public response in the Hollywood "community" except "there goes Charlie again. I wonder if he will ever get the help he needs to stop." Please understand. I am not blaming Sheen's employers for his long-standing addiction problems.Sheen began this and it will probaly end in an abstinent recovery or an early death. But I am blaming CBS for hindering his cure by failing to exercise a tough love that might diminish their own bottom line and focus their attention on a human being in trouble rather than on the cash he generates.

Meanwhile, two other stories broke which seemed to shock America. First, Brigham Young University, ranked in the top ten in the nation in basketball and expecting a high seed in the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament, kicked star Bandon Davies off the basketball team for engaging in pre-marital sex. Davies violated BYU's honor code which outlines clear violations in advance, so he will miss the rest of the season. NBC considered this strange enough to run it on NBC Nightly News. It was the buzz on sports talk radio for much of the week. Not since Bill Clinton's escapade with Monica Lewinski was idiotically caricatured in the media as "just about sex," when the former president was denying Paula Jones her civil rights by lying to a grand jury, has the media distorted the truth about personal behavior so radically. Davies knew the rule and consequences in advance, yet NBC was content to say Davies was "kicked off the team for sex." Along with breathing and eating, sex to the media seems like normal activity no matter what the context.

Another even more bizarre story concerned a top academic school, Northwestern University, where a visiting professor was conducting a human sexuality class. He invited those who were interested to stay for a "provocative demonstration"' after class. Using the words "provocative" and 'demonstration" in any sentence to a room full of college students is bound to increase attendance. Sure enough, a man and a woman proceeded to walk into the classroom and conduct a sex act in front of the class. At first, Northwestern officials appeared to wonder whether any "university policy had been violated." But before the usual committees could be convened to investigate, University president Morty Schapiro found himself faced with a large and negative alumni reaction. What were they thinking?

Meanwhile, writing an article in defense of gay marriage, Jennifer Wright Knust, a young woman who considers herself a "bible scholar and pastor," claims that the book of Genesis can be interpreted "any number of ways." Watch her try it. By the way, why is it only liberals who say when their argument is baseless "people of good will see this differently?" Knust claims that "God's original intent (mark this down as the only time a leftist commended the term "original intent") for humanity was androgyny, not sexual differentiation." She goes on to say that the "first humans possessed the genetalia of both sexes" and that Paul sees our glorified bodies as "both male and female." In fact, there is not one reference to sexual differentiation or the lack thereof in our glorified bodies in the New Testament and Knust is clearly confusing the arguments of Galatians 3:28 where in the church there is neither "male nor female" with I Corinthians 15's teaching on our glorified future with Christ. She finishes off all possibility of logic and research by claiming that "Paul urged followers of Christ to blame their poor sexual behavior on the Gentiles." Apparently she has not read I Corinthians 5-7. Liberals are committed to their belief that "you can interpret the Bible any way you want to." Boy do they want to. Listening to them do it makes you realize the futility of their claim. For an honest debate between Knust and Pittsburgh theologian Robert Gagnon who takes a contra point of view, click here: http://tinyurl.com/4oc7m87

So, what is going on in America? Is it something other than approaching spring 2011? Since when did human beings stand by and abet the collapse of one of their fellows just because he makes $2 million a week? Since when is a human soul a business? Well, you say, "Haug, don't you know that you cannot help an addict unless he wants help?" Yes, I know that. I also know that the only way to help an addict is to refuse to separate him from his consequences, like CBS is apparently content to do. Let's prop up the talent no matter what. Few addicts will seek help unless the pain is great. It appears to me that Sheen's employers would rather have him addicted, rich and employed than healthy and unemployed. They may not be able to get Sheen into recovery. But they can certainly stop hindering it. It's time everyone involved got in a room and started to do what is best for Charlie, painful though it may be, instead of what is best for them before its too late. I'm not holding my breath.

The BYU incident is shocking because it is old school. It speaks of integrity, which in athletics, whether it is blood doping in the Tour de France, steroids in baseball, or misbehaviors, violence off the field, impending strikes in the NFL, is in short supply. The Brandon Davies incident at BYU should not have even made the news and would not have, except for one big fact. Liberals have told us that everyone is going to have sex all the time, so you better get a condom or have an abortion or expect it to happen. Well, they are wrong. A study conducted by the CDC came out this week saying that teens are having less sex than in the past. Despite the fact that in one generation, teens have gone from knowing that premarital sex is wrong to feeling as outcasts if they didn't "just do it," apparently some are discovering that sex is not only optional. They are discovering that the healthy choice is to abstain before marriage for a whole host of reasons self-evident to our parents but completely lost on today's liberal elites, who possess many urges they ought to resist but don't.

And what of Northwestern? Just as it was said that the only people left in the world who actually believed in communism were on American college campuses, so apparently the only place where the distinction between discussing sex and engaging in it publicly is lost is in academia. The defense by Professor John Michael Biley was as follows: "I think these after class events are quite valuable. Why? One reason is that it helps us understand sexual diversity." Huh? Apparently 'diversity' has become such a beloved word for liberals that it now has no meaning. But it does have a purpose. The word diversity has become nothing but a shibboleth invoked for the sole purpose of stopping any objection to what takes place. Another student, quoted in the Daily Northwestern defended the practice and encouraged students who were offended to "not take the course."

What then connects all these events, Charlie Sheen, the strange reaction to Brandon Davies, the sex demonstration at Northwestern and the agenda filled Bible rantings of the left? It is this: the liberal mind has become nihilistic, unhinged from any historical standards, and possesses a focused interest in tearing down the enduring values of western culture. Worse yet, what they advocate is nothing less than an ongoing revisionism that will leave the great works and ideas of western culture burnt to a crisp, beyond recognition. Some day our children and grandchildren will ask why. Why did you surrender the treasure without a fight? Knowing the liberal assault is at the gates is one thing. But watching it triumph in the salons and bastions of liberalism can be very painful to watch. If all this is endemic to the progressive vision, then it must be exposed, opposed and shown to harmful and false. Like the left tells us, do it for the kids.

---Jay Haug is a member of Redeemer Anglican Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a former Episcopal priest and radio talk show host and current financial advisor. You may e-mail him at cjcwguy@gmail.com