  MERICA, HOW'S IT working for you?
Who wants to know? Dr. Phil. That's who.
Over 20 shows a month, 12 months a year, three and a half years ... you can purchase transcripts of over 840 Dr. Phil shows where America gets psychoanalyzed, diagnosed, challenged, prodded, pushed, and changed.
Nasty Custody Battles ... "I'm a Slave to My Spouse" ... Infidelity Aftermath ... Family Chaos ... Love, Lies and the Law ... Cheaters ... and more ....
MUCH more! Each night on public television Americans reveal troubled relationships, enduring exposure of laundry lists of personal secrets, faults, and blemishes. Why?
Because, after the show wraps up, and everyone goes home, we all cherish the hope that we will find what the human heart hungers for. Enduring, honoring, forgiving love.
There is a tragic irony in all of this. We have just traveled through a 40-year time warp of promises sold to us by feminists, humanists, psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, and sexologists ... all of these "professionals" cultivated and nurtured by the "higher learning" institutions of our country. If we just listen to them, liberate ourselves from the bondage of biological and cultural traps, and enter into a new age of self-fulfillment, we will be ... well ... fulfilled.
Then why are so many of us showing up on Dr. Phil? America, how's it working for you?
All this social re-engineering? Replacing husbands and wives, fathers married to mothers, replacing all of these with cohabitors? Sexualizing every human transaction? Fulfilling every fantasy, dragging each bizarre behavior onto a new "reality show"? Are we having fun yet?
Watching Dr. Phil for even one week, it is clear that the cultural reconstructionists of the past four decades have more work ahead of them. Because in spite of their best efforts to convince us that we can restructure life to exclude marriage and embrace diversity of every imaginable ... and unimaginable ... combination, Americans are having a hard time of it. How's it working for us?
Single-parent homes are on the financial edge. Children go to bed at night without a hug from their father. And sex offered to the latest "object of my affection" results in babies, abortions, and STDs that cause Mr. Right to vanish in a puff of smoke faster than magician Lance Burton can snap his fingers.
We don't need to have "higher education" gurus to research us. We don't need reassurances that re-engineering the culture will work if we just give it more time. We don't need feminists to fix men, sociologists to fix families, or humanists to convince us we are happy in spite of what ails us.
How's it working for us, America? We are searching for love. And we are ending up on Dr. Phil's psycho-drama.
A former elementary school teacher, Jane Jimenez (speakout@fromthehomefront.org) is now a freelance writer dedicated to issues of importance to women and the family. She writes a regular column titled "From the Home Front." Her work has appeared in both Christian and secular publications. Jane and her husband Victor live in Phoenix and have two children.More columns by Jane Jimenez
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