Sometimes I wonder about our culture.

Once upon a time in the Western World we were a civilized people. We went out of our way to help our neighbors. We thought that life was sacred and should be protected. And we controlled our anger and rages.

That has all changed.

Today, our young people have no respect for authority. Adult men and women feel that they have the right to do what they want as long as they don't get caught. And fear of punishment under the law has no deterence.

Just take a look at these examples:

Los Angeles police are looking for a man who beat up a 16-year-old girl at a McDonald's counter after she complained about him cutting in line.

Police announced their investigation Tuesday night and posted surveillance video online.

Police say the girl, her 5-year-old niece and a friend were standing in line on Sept. 14 at the McDonald's in South Los Angeles. The suspect and two young boys then approached the counter when the 16-year-old started arguing with the man over who was first in line.

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Or this one:

An elderly Florida man was beaten with a table leg, and a hunt is under way for the culprit.

Thomas Hickman, 77, was looking through a trash bin on Sunday when another man took a broken table leg and beat him with it, according to a police press release on the incident.

The man dragged Hickman, of Ocala, behind the dumpster and then fled in Hickman's car.

The vehicle was later found abandoned.

Hickman was taken to a hospital with non life-threatening injuries.

And of course this last one. It's a doozy!

Jeering onlookers goaded a teenager in Britain to jump to his death, undermining police efforts to talk him down, and then took pictures of the body.

Tuesday as 17-year-old Shaun Dykes prepared to jump from the top of a multi-storey carpark in Derby, northern England, spectators allegedly shouted to him: "How far can you bounce?," the U.K.'s MailOnline reported.

As Dykes hesitated for three hours on the ledge while police unsuccessfully tried to reason him out of taking his life, teenagers who had gathered below shouted "Jump" and "Get on with it," according to police and witnesses.

Then after Dykes lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement the same hecklers rushed out from behind the police cordon to take photos of the body.

Sickening isn't the word. Each and every person who encouraged Shaun Dykes to jump should be charged with murder in the 1st degree. They aided and abetted a young man to take his life. That makes them as guilty as if they had shot the poor boy to death.

I fear on the type of society that is developing from the youth these days. There is no compassion, no sense of right and wrong, no empathy for another person. Life has no meaning for this generation. Only what they can get as a cheap thrill. God help our nations, for these creatures will rule them one day.