The Corruption of Culture
A couple of guys in first class on flight from New York to Los Angeles.
Kinda makin’ small talk, killing time, flirting with the flight attendants.
Thirty thousand feet above, could be Oklahoma.
Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms, man it all looks the same.
Miles and miles of back roads and highways connecting towns with funny names.
Who’d want to live down there, in the middle of nowhere….?
They’ve never drove through Indiana.
Met the man who plowed that earth, planted that seed, busted his ass for you and me.
Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas.
They’d understand, why God made those fly over states.”
Fly Over States - Jason Aldean
…..
As part of her successful effort to take the majority back in the House of Representatives in 2006 after 12 years in Republican control, then minority leader Nancy Pelosi used the tagline “culture of corruption” to describe why the voters needed to vote for change. It worked.
Today, those same Democratic leftists have corrupted the culture of America. They have been winning the “culture war” for 50 years. They have won the war, but the changes they have wrought have meant disaster to so many.
This past week we heard about another mass killing. This time in Nashville at a small Christian school. How does someone look an innocent 9-year-old girl in the face and then shoot them? It is evil. Pure evil.
Predictably, the leftists in elected office and media ramped up their calls for more gun control. It can’t be said enough that these mass killings have increased dramatically in the last 30 years. Such tragedies happened in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but they were far, far fewer in number. There was virtually no gun control then. If gun control were effective, there should be fewer of these shootings, not more. You can look at the statistics and conclude that more gun control means more mass killings. I don’t believe that is a correct conclusion. But it is clear that gun control does not reduce them at all.
So why are these hideous events becoming more and more frequent? I would argue that it is cultural. I have long believed that the actions of any group of humans, be it a family, a business, a military platoon or a country, can be predicted by looking at the culture in which that group operates. If the culture, for example, is one of dishonesty, then even normally honest people will be tempted to follow the lead of the group. The culture in America has changed over this time period, and not for the better.
Literally the day after the tragedy in Nashville, the Wall Street Journal published the results of a poll done on what Americans value and how those have changed in the last 25 years. In 1998, 70% of people valued American Patriotism. Today, that is only 38%. 62% valued religion 25 years ago. That has dropped to 39%. People who see having children as a good thing has dropped by 30%. The value of community involvement has dropped in half and just a few years.
So, what do Americans value more now? Money and fame.
If you think that is a good thing, you are part of the problem. I just don’t see how people can think that money and fame are more important than God, children, your neighbors and this great country. But many do. They have been taught this. They have been taught it in leftist universities and schools, by a corrupt media with corporate America tagging along for the ride with their Democratic friends. When you ask these people to name someone they admire, they will pick LeBron James and Taylor Swift over George Washington and Thomas Edison.
Now I am not going to draw a direct line between this most recent act of evil and these cultural changes, although I think a connection is there. But as all these changes have been going on, mass killings are up; suicides, particularly amongst young people are way up; homelessness is up; crime is up; children raised without 2 parents of each gender are up; feelings of desperation and despair are up. And why wouldn’t they be? If a white or Asian boy is taught that they really are a girl and that they live in a country with a history of evil and they should hate themselves for all the undeserved benefits they have had and of course, that there is no God, I can see why desperation might set in. If there is no God, then there are no consequences to evil. If there is no God, you can make up your own rules about right and wrong and who is to say those rules are bad? If there is no God, and your one parent is busy, where do you look for solace in bad times?
I understand that the 50s and 60s were far from perfect societies. We had a lot of warts. But we have replaced those warts with gaping, open wounds gushing the very blood of our being. The left has long pulled away from the “traditional values” articulated by the greatest minds of the last 2000 years. But now, the stuff they are promoting is sick. Downright sick. There are no two ways about it.
This blog is about politics, economics, international affairs and culture. But culture is upstream from all of those. Culture dictates where politics will go. If our culture is corrupt, our economics will see more and more SVBs and FTXs because the culture accommodates them. And, an attack from China will be meaningless if we destroy ourselves from within. We will then be like China and they will have won without firing a shot.
I will continue to write about all four of these dimensions. But if American culture continues in the direction it is headed, the other three won’t matter. We will be weak, sick and directionless. Fight back. Speak up. Don’t be muzzled by what NBC news wants you to think and tells you that you may not speak.
Literally everything depends on it.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast and Live Free