Last night after the show I checked my e-mail and found my first "Love Mail" since starting at WWNC.

This is truly a milestone!

Some background, first....

On Tuesday's show, we discussed whether the deputy shooting of a 17-year old driver seemed justified, based on the reports we've read.

I read the initial reporting from the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper, and opened the phone lines to hear your thoughts on the matter.  One caller named John started off the 5:00 hour of the show by arguing that the deputy did not have to shoot the 17-year old driver to get him to stop backing the Chevy Silverado into another cruiser.  John said the two deputies inside the cruiser could have escaped and he did not believe the police reports that the two deputies were pinned inside the vehicle (prompting the third deputy to open fire into the cabin of the truck).

You can listen to John's call here.  It starts at about the 02:00 mark.

Based on the response after his call, it seemed nobody agreed with John.

Until last night, when I got this e-mail:

I drafted a reply to Mr. Sneed, but thought I might want to get some more input before sending it off.  After all, he is a longtime local attorney and I am merely a lowly radio host.  So, any advice on how to respond to this?

 Thanks!

In case you can't read the e-mail, here is the transcription:

I was startled to read an article on Sunday about how illegitimacy has become the new norm in America.

According to the NY Times:

"After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage."

I thought to myself, "How has this come to pass?"

How can a nation that frowned upon divorce as recently as my childhood (the 1980s) have ended up with so many babies born out of wedlock?

" ... the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change."

It appears that the trend is largely due to changing attitudes among younger women - who see no little or no societal stigma to having children before marriage.

In fact, my wife and I were eating at Cracker Barrel Saturday and were seated next to a table of three women with four children. All of the women appeared under the age of 30 and all of the children appeared under age 4.  Not a woman was wearing a wedding band or engagement ring.

While pondering the cause-and-effect of this trend, I remembered a story I saw once called "The Stranger," and how our culture has coarsened, changed, and been cheapened over the last half-century.

Is "The Stranger" solely to blame?  Of course not.  But he has had an impact.

The Stranger

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee town.

From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.

As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God. Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures, mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening. He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.

The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up - while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places - and go to her room read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave.

You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house - not from us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.

My dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home - not even for cooking. But the stranger felt he needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were influenced by the stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents. Yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave.

More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?

We always called him TV.

(Told by Keith Currie; Author unknown)

Another Friday, and another open mic opportunity!

Is there a topic you want to see discussed on today's show?  Head over to the WWNC Facebook page, and post a topic, link, comments, etc.

I'll pick the best topic(s) and we'll kick them around on today's show!