The “Fundamental Transformation” of America Started LONG Earlier than Obama — and Is Full?

There’s a funny thing about political battles under representative government.

They’re not actually won or lost in the political realm — not ultimately, anyway.

No, as the late Andrew Breitbart put it, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And because of our cultural malaise, says one commentator, America is downstream from her best days. In fact, Eric Utter did utter in no uncertain terms Wednesday:

“The left has taken over.”

This assertion may seem odd to some, with President Donald Trump heading the executive branch, his party controlling Congress, and the Supreme Court being better than it was a generation ago. But Utter is talking about something deeper:

Our culture is now, to frame it loosely, “leftist” in character.

Put differently, it is immoral. It thus provides a vice-forged substrate in which political leftism can flourish.

Fifty Shades of Grey Nation?

Utter begins by noting how the United States has changed markedly. This devolution has included politics, religion, philosophy, morality, and, as the commentator also mentions, demographics.

He then writes:

Section 15 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (a precursor to The Declaration of Independence) that was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776, states: “That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

Does that appear to be the case today?

Note here that the Virginia declaration’s proposition was a common one centuries ago. (The wonderful internet page “QUOTES ON LIBERTY AND VIRTUE” illustrates this.) For example, George Washington himself said, “[V]irtue, or morality, is a necessary spring of popular government.”

Utter then provides specificity:

Let’s go item by item. Clearly, many of us are not firmly adhered to justice. Those on The Left routinely take the side of arsonists, thieves, rapists and even murderers as opposed to law enforcement … or those who have been the victims of arsonists, thieves, rapists and even murderers.

Moreover, a two-tiered system of justice has taken hold nationally, in which members of certain groups are deliberately treated differently than others.

Moderation? There’s a cannabis dispensary on every street corner, liquor stores are open on Sundays, fentanyl kills scores of thousands annually, some states hand out free crack pipes, gambling is systemic and ubiquitous, most of us cannot stop looking at our smart phones, and many more are addicted to video games and/or porn.

Now for the Bad News….

To expand on this, it’s not just porn. We’ve long been in the grip of the Sexual Devolution, where anything goes, virtually, as long as it’s not virtue. People, from peons to princes, madams to media Machiavellians, jump through hoops to define deviancy downwards. Thus do we see articles about how “smart people curse” or pedophilia is just another “sexual orientation.” Science™ says so!

Utter then mentions frugality. Our national debt is moving toward $39 trillion — and this just mirrors our personal spending. Too many people, laments the writer, just must have the latest electronic toy. It’s no wonder that approximately 68 percent of Americans carry credit card debt.

The commentator then uses a word I just mentioned. “There is entirely too much virtue-signaling and not nearly enough actual virtue on display,” he writes. (Note that “virtue-signaling” is a misnomer; it doesn’t really reflect virtue, but vice.) More on this momentarily.

Finally, Utter observes that no longer in America is there a “frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” Apropos to this, though, note that moral relativism prevails today (most Americans subscribe to it). It is defined, too, by the notion that what we call “morality” is determined by the given time’s consensus values. Thus do relativists tend to be chronological chauvinists. And those worshiping today’s pseudo-principles won’t trouble much over yesterday’s actual ones. Those deifying the times will dismiss the timeless.

The Good News

Really, though, we must do more than just chronicle our cultural decay, as Utter and I have above. Diagnoses without prescriptions can be death sentences. As to this, something famed late architect Buckminster Fuller wrote is relevant here.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” he counseled. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The point: Replacing our corrupt cultural norms (what some call “wokeness”) requires the offering of something better. The good news: We don’t need a new model.

Just a tried-and-true eternal one: virtue — aka “that set of objectively good moral habits.”

After all, so many today complain about moral decay, or demoralization. Well, the remedy for this is moralization. And if morality came in a jar, on the ingredients label would be the virtues.

A comprehensive list would be: Faith, Hope, Honesty, Charity, Fortitude (Courage), Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Chastity, Diligence, Patience, Love, Kindness, Forgiveness, and Humility.

This understanding changes everything. To analogize it, if becoming proficient at tennis is the goal, you learn the game’s principles and then cultivate them. Likewise, the virtues could be characterized as the principles of morality. Therefore, if you want to become more moral, you learn those principles and cultivate them.

Note, too, this also works on the civilizational level.

It’s that simple — and that difficult.

Loving the Bad Boy

Unfortunately, for many decades now we’ve been doing just the opposite: displaying, modeling, and often teaching vice. And returning to politics, let’s clarify how this influences voting.

Imagine a girl grows up exposed to emotionally and ideologically corruptive entertainment and schooling. She’s sexualized young, loses her virginity at 13, engages in carnal experimentation, begins smoking and sometimes does drugs. By 18, she has defaced the temple of her soul with copious body-graffiti tats and piercings and multi-colored hair. Now, regarding a beau, would you expect her to choose the responsible “nerd” sometimes kneeling at an altar rail? Or might she find him “boring”?

There’s a reason she’ll “cast her ballot” for the biker thug with the bad attitude, associates, and breath.

To put it bluntly, trash attracts vermin.

So it is, too, with actual voting. Knowledge of health dangers doesn’t stop people from smoking because knowledge isn’t the issue; deep-seated, urge-based attachments are. Likewise, exposure to knowledge of political dangers often doesn’t stop people from voting for bad-habit candidates because, again, knowledge isn’t the issue; sense of virtue is.

And this is what Utter was addressing. Tomorrow’s political battles are won through the schools, TV, and internet today. He who controls the culture elects the leaders — and a civilization that imbibes turpitude, invites tyranny.