Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others. For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness. We might also add a sense of religious hope. These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly, being erased from our shared beliefs. It is unsettling.
Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution. The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people. Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us. Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.
We are losing our hopes.
Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof. Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities. Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing. In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are. How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?
Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.” Perfectly? Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally. Was it a miracle? Was it a set of millions of coincidences? Were children raised more perfectly then?
A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.
We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility. The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity. Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly. We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better. We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy. We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright. Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had. It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.
Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others. Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples. American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.” Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant. What have we done?
In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture. Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs. Today? Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms. Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children. What have we done?
As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs. Adults seem to have no valid response to this. Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER! We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors! What are we doing?
None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution. We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again. What are we going to do? God save us.