Patriotism, religious faith, family, wanting children, have all taken a backseat to the divisive identity affiliations of multiculturalism, and a love of money. There has been a stark increase in deaths of despair, particularly among white men. The intentional racial and gender identity divisions are implemented by the elite classes, creating an America that hates itself and roots for its own failure.
Public schools teach our children that they can never hope to relate to each other across skin color, that we are divided by our race-based cultures. Educators think it's their job to make sure students know, starting in pre-school, that they may have been born the wrong sex and that they can change it. They teach that America is a horrible place founded on horrible values, that we can never recover from the legacy of slavery.
Children learn that sex isn't about reproduction, but pleasure, that raising a family is so abhorrent that babies can be terminated in the womb to ensure the independence of the adults who created that baby. Our culture teaches that hard work is a racist value, that there is no value to earning a living.
The lesson to white kids is that they can never compensate for the sins of racism and slavery, the lesson to black kids is that they can never succeed due to these past sins. The lesson to straight kids is that they are oppressive and simply just not interesting enough. The lesson to all American kids is that the country is against them.
And now we look at the results: Americans hate America.
The survey, the Journal reports, "also finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in businesses and the use of gender-neutral pronouns."
The last poll on these topics from the Journal was in 1998, where in each of these key categories, Americans had a more favorable view. In 1998, 70 percent of respondents said patriotism was important to them, now it's 30 percent. 62 percent said religion was very important, that's down to 39 percent. We already saw that during the pandemic, church attendance, already down, continued to decline, with many stepping out of church doors for the very last time, never to return.
There's also a decline in what are called "third spaces," those places that are not work, school, or home, where people gather, where friendships are made and communities formed. Back in the 90s, when these questions were asked, church attendance was higher, teens and college students hung out at coffee shops, there were places where people gathered to pursue similar interests, such as hobby clubs.
Now, that third space has been eaten up by screen time, social media, and these activities, while they may have all the feels of comaraderie, or community, are entirely solitary. Participation in a virtual community can give a shallow representation of the feelings engendered by actual in-person time with friends.
We simulate reality and pretend it's good enough while our society and culture disingtegrates as quickly as if they were doused with hydrochloric acid.
The poll finds, too, that Americans don't want children, only 23 percent of those under 30 believe that having children is important to them.
And they don't want to work, they don't want to be tolerant of others. The only value that has risen is the importance of money, and it's hard not to think of the words of Christ, as told in the gospel of Matthew, that one cannot serve two masters. If love of money is more important than faith, family, and community, then those other values will tumble and the shiny coin will take their place. This rose from 31 percent in 1998, to 43 percent now.
The Journal quoted a man who works as a commercial and residential painter in Oregon, who said that "he thought that patriotism is declining as a civic value in tandem with rising individualism, a sense of entitlement among many people and a decline in community involvement, possibly because of people focusing on their own racial or cultural backgrounds rather than what Americans have in common."
But what is missed in this analysis is that identity politics, or multiculturalism, isn't about individuality at all, it's about factionalism. Instead of American society being a collection of individuals who agree on basic values, such as the importance of faith—whatever faith that is—the importance of family, creating safe places for children to grow up, caring about our nation, we are a collection of factions.
Those factions, often with handy acronyms such as BLM, or LGBTQIA+, or AAPI, do not share the same values. Instead, they make it their business not to.
Abraham Lincoln, whom we all recently learned from Disney+ did not free the slaves, spoke at the Illinois Republican State Convention in 1858, and said famously: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Our America is divided against itself. And my guess is none of us needed the Wall Street Journal to tell us so.
Yet, we are not divided by race or class, we are not divided by gender or sex or gender identity, we are divided by an elite group of over-educated coastal pundits, academics, foundation heads, universities, and politicians, who seek to entrench and capitalize on these divisions so that they can remake society into one where each of us is maneagable, maleable, and do what we're told.
If our schools and universities had not been co-opted by this divisive, power-hungry progressive class, if our citizens had not been bludgeoned so mercilessly by the demand for compliance, we would know, and our children would know, that this is not the American way.
At its best, America is a collection of indiviuals who love our nation, who pray for her future, who believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. We must know this, or the failure of America will be lasting for whatever remnants of a future generation may come, and the great experiment of freedom will collapse under the weight of self-hate.
