January 6, 2026
As we begin 2026, the 250th year of our country’s existence, and we look at the current state of affairs, we realize how far the country has moved away from our original values and traditions. Many wonder if the country can possibly move back to the traditions and values that made it great. And will it?
Quite a few troubling things have happened in recent years. One of the most recent is the election of Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City. He identifies as a Shia Muslim and a democratic socialist. And he took the oath of office on the Islamic Quran when he was sworn in early on January 1, not on the Bible, as is customary.
He is not the first Muslim to serve in public office, of course, but is the first one to serve as New York’s mayor. He ran on and was elected on a radical, non-traditional platform of socialist/communist concepts. Yet he had wide support in the election, showing that lots of New Yorkers are fully behind his heavy socialist/communist beliefs and intentions, which run contrary to the traditions of America.
We have seen this attitude of moving away from traditions creep into education, resulting in many students graduating from high school underprepared for college or life in general. School systems and teachers improperly made changes in curricula and grading standards, and that has produced students with lower abilities, and non-traditional, and often inaccurate, beliefs.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2025 showed some of the worst scores ever. As reported in Newsmax magazine, some of those results are:
* High school seniors reading comprehension is the worst since the early 1990s.
*More high school seniors were deficient in math and reading than in any previous NAEP assessment.
* High School seniors recorded their lowest scores ever.
* Only one in three U.S. high school seniors is adequately prepared for college math.
Perhaps as a result of these less well-prepared graduating seniors, many colleges and universities dropped using SAT or ACT scores for undergraduate admissions. Because so many students’ scores were below the acceptable level, admission requirements had to be eased, or students would not be admitted. Students were then admitted based on elements other than their academic abilities and learning level, such as the much loved, but dangerously foolish DEI concept — diversity, equity and inclusion.
Speaking to the change in the educational culture over recent years, Brian Mueller, president of Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona, noted that “It’s very dangerous when we have 20- and 21-year-olds in our country who don’t understand 20th-century Western civilization and its history.”
And, there is a generation gap where younger generations have different ideas about such things as work ethic, moral values, the respect they show others, political views, religious beliefs, free speech, and marriage and having children.
Where crime is concerned, people’s attitudes towards dealing with criminals is somewhat troublesome. A poll in 2025 asking about the best way to fight crime showed that only 25 percent of respondents thought tougher sentencing was the most effective way to reduce crime. More mental health and addiction services were preferred by 28 percent, 22 percent liked a greater police presence as the best approach, and 16 percent thought more community programs were best. Harsh punishment for serious crimes is a better support for law and order.
The high number of violent crimes — such as murder, rape, and assault — committed by persons previously convicted of crimes, but given light sentences, or no sentences, ought to be a wake-up call to the soft-on-crime prosecutors and judges in office, of which there are far too many. Hopefully, it will be.
During the Biden administration the Justice Department indicted Venezuelan “President” Maduro and his wife for crimes against America, offered a huge reward for his capture, but nothing happened. Last weekend, the Trump administration sent military and law enforcement personnel there and arrested the Maduros after those crimes continued in Trump’s first year of office, despite warnings and actions to stop the drug boats smuggling drugs into the U.S.
Venezuelans in Venezuela, America and all over the world, are thrilled and celebrating that the man who ruined their country and their lives has been arrested. But American leftists are outraged, either not knowing or not caring that similar actions have been legally and constitutionally taken by former presidents Biden, Obama, Clinton and both George Bushes.
There are some signs of returning to the better days. In higher education, for example, civics and traditional American values are showing up, again. Harvard, Brown and Princeton universities are tightening up acceptance requirements.
Law professor Jonathon Turley commented that those changes to lower standards was an “ill-conceived and poorly supported movement to achieve greater equity and diversity by eliminating standardized testing in higher education.” “In other words, test scores remain the best indicator for continued performance in college,” Turley added.
If our country is to remain strong and the leader of the world in individual freedom and sensible, productive ways of doing things, we must restore the traditional values that built the nation and successfully sustained it for more than 200 years.
