I suggested a few days ago that traditional Western culture as a whole is based on and is informed almost exclusively by the Judeo-Christian mindset. The result of the effort to move us away from that foundation and toward what I will call “Cultural Secularism” is quite predictable and is now certainly visible all around us.
For whatever else it does, Cultural Secularism separates us not only from religion (which is not the thrust of this article) but also from our societal and cultural sense of right and wrong; from our cultural perception of the nature of truth.
Now, understand me clearly: It’s not my intent to argue from a religious point of view, but from a societal and cultural point of view. When you remove the basis of a cultural way of thinking, all kinds of things pop up that tend to damage, if not outright destroy, that culture and all the things attached to it, both bad and good. Rights, regular meals, jobs, families, personal relationships, everything. All of it gets redefined to match the new reality.
Modern-day examples:
The “Religion of peace," the “mostly peaceful” protest, etc. It's interesting how, as we move more towards cultural secularism in this country, tearing down everything about Western society and its foundations in right and wrong, those foundations get replaced, all while ignoring the overt violence attached to those doing the replacing.
We increasingly find ourselves in what has been called an "assassination culture." Charlie Kirk is an all-too-obvious example, though the number of such events keeps piling up. The incident at the ICE HQ in DFW the other day comes to mind. I could fill an entire column with the list of such happenings, but you get the idea.
Private property is no longer sacrosanct. Someone has more money than me? Let’s get government to tax it away from them. Absent governmental involvement in that process, we’d call it “theft." With the new leftist definition, it’s called “social justice”.
Yet, these same folks tell us that profit is immoral. People sip their $8 coffees and bang away on Bluesky on their $800 iPhones, telling us all about how the capitalism that provides both those things in abundance is an evil to be overcome. These folks can never explain how “the rich” keeping their money is greed, but the socialist mobs wanting to take it by whatever means they can isn’t.
Thing is, such folks invariably, and with cannibalistic zeal, start attacking their fellow leftists. It’s nothing new, of course. Let’s consider the leftist activists in a historical perspective. Ponder the words of GK Chesterton:
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.’ (G.K. Chesterton,Orthodoxy, 1909)
Chesterton was talking about the then-building Russian Revolution, which, in true Marxist fashion, was all about ripping up the existing Russian culture. But then, as now, those with governmental power and/or the power of arms rewrote the ideas of right and wrong, of the individual versus the whims of the herd. Interestingly, in both cases, they reserved these as governmental powers for themselves.
I suggest this is where we find ourselves in America today. And strange as it sounds, we’re in the same situation for precisely the same reason. The whole concept of socialism overrules the value of the rights and the responsibilities of the individual. It also seeks to remove from society religion and the ideas which it conveys in terms of the value of the individual, etc., precisely because religion recognizes the value of the individual in a way that socialism cannot.
With those foundations ripped away, some will latch onto anything that sounds good and then be perpetually disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Witness the supporters of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden.
This brings us to Donald Trump and his supporters. Trump’s supporters recognize that there’s something fundamentally wrong with what’s been happening to our country over the last 30 years or so, and they are calling for the issue to be solved. The problem is that the far left recognizes the danger posed to its hold on power by a return to traditional American values.
One of the major effects of this shift of the foundation of Western Society towards cultural secularism is that many within our society are becoming increasingly devoid of any hope for the future. The result of that can be counted in gunfire and blood.
I will close with these comments.
First, the recognition that our traditional culture is in danger of being lost forever is not unique to America. A look at the huge protests in Germany and the UK, as two examples, suggests this is turning into a worldwide recognition.
Second, where we are currently has been decades in the making, and it’s not going to disappear overnight, if indeed it ever does. Trump and his people are doing their best, and bless them for it, but the work won’t be done in four years. The move toward cultural secularism and away from traditional American culture is far too deeply ingrained for any solution that we might apply to be a quick one, or even a painless one, but it is a necessary one.
Finally, let me stress that at no time during this discussion have I brought up the religious or spiritual aspects of this argument. The reason that I have separated the two aspects is very simple. I think the message that I’m sending here is clear: Even for the non-believer, removing the foundation of the culture is too disastrous to ignore.
Returning to those values is the remedy that we must apply, and soon, because if we don’t, we’re going to lose our country and our culture.
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