by Treadstone (Contributor)
The battle for the soul of our country is not between Republicans and Democrats, not between Conservatives and Liberals, but between Traditionalists and so-called Progressives; in broad terms, the “Right” and the “Left”.
First of all, Progressives aren’t progressive. Just listen to any of the Democrat presidential candidates for 2020, all of whom wrap themselves in the “Progressive” label, and you’ll hear a mish-mash of old, tired, recycled Marxist/Socialist drivel dressed in inflammatory and headline-grabbing, 7 second soundbites and catchy phrases. It’s lipstick on a pig. It’s regressive, not progressive.
Look up “Traditionalists” and you’ll see a variety of definitions and descriptions. Some equate Traditionalists with religious conservatives, some with people born before 1945, some call Traditionalists the “silent generation”.
We characterize Traditionalists as those who espouse many or most of the Core Values listed in our About Page. In shorthand, we us the term “The Right” even though that term itself has many connotations. We use The Left as the opposing side in the culture war.
We Traditionals on The Right look around us and are appalled, perhaps even frightened by what we see happening before our eyes. We know we live in the greatest country in the world, but we see the light-shining-on-the-hill dimming, perhaps not precipitously, but as in a death by a thousand cuts, slowly but surely.
At its core, our society is still more traditional than not, but the megaphones the Internet and social media have put in the hands of Progressives: “victims”, takers, losers, indolent, faithless and statists gives them undue influence and exposure.
We recently came across a really good essay by John Hawkins on Town Hall that nails what’s happening to our culture. We suggest reading the whole article, but here are the bullet points:
- We treat success as an accident or a cheat while defending people who make bad decisions, who won’t educate themselves or who won’t work.
- We’ve allowed pornography to become so accessible that it’s practically universally viewed, even among teenagers.
- We love victims so much that people actually fake hate crimes to claim victim status.
- We celebrate losers and deviants by giving them their own reality shows. Meanwhile, Hollywood regularly portrays businessmen, Christians and soldiers as the worst people on earth.
- More children have died because of Roe v. Wade than were killed during the Holocaust.
- Marriage is falling apart and we’re encouraging that by pushing gay marriage.
- Our universities reward Communists, terrorists and blatant anti-American sentiment with professorships. Those are the last people who should be teaching impressionable young Americans.
- There’s a whole grievance industry full of people who make a living claiming to be “offended” by things.
- Religion and morality are denigrated while nihilism and immorality are considered cool.
- Legalism has superseded morality and what’s “right” and “wrong” has become secondary to what’s “legal” and “illegal.”
- We’re the greatest, most powerful, most prosperous and most virtuous nation that has ever existed and despite all of that, we obsess over our nations faults instead of our achievements.
- Americans across the spectrum are being encouraged to separate themselves off from the larger culture and nurse grievances that barely would have been given a thought a few decades ago.
- In practice, our society focuses almost exclusively on the short term without thinking about the long-term consequences of our actions.
- We have a higher moral standard for the NFL than we do for our own leaders in Washington.
- We have a political party dedicated to the idea taking things from people who’ve worked for it and giving it to people who haven’t.
- We make little effort to assimilate immigrants into our society and instead, encourage them to embrace the culture they fled for the United States.
- We’ve stopped acting as if we have to pay back the money we borrow.
- We treat the rule of law as optional, depending on who’s impacted by it.
- We believe our children can grow up in a moral sewer and still turn out to be fine, upstanding citizens regardless.
Hawkins’ conclusion is both devastating as well as prescriptive:
“ We’ve become so divided, so antagonistic, so morally separated that for the first time in over a century there are people asking hard questions about how much we really have in common with other Americans. If you’re comparing let’s say a conservative from South Carolina to a liberal from California, the honest answer is “not much that matters.” Perhaps not even enough to hold a country together over the long haul if one group or the other ever became politically dominant.
There’s only one way to change that and it’s to address the real sickness at the heart of American culture. That sickness is our newfound reluctance to address the moral health of our society. Over the long haul, we can’t thrive and we may not even be able to survive as a divided, degenerate society full of people who reward failure, resent success and live for the moment. Morality matters and if we forget that, our nation is doomed to descend into decadence, decay and perhaps one day, even dissolution.”
Quite simply, we agree. In other articles we attempt to answer the question, “So how do we revive basic morality in our country?” Stay tuned.
