Can America’s traditional cultural possibly be restored?

 

September 2, 2025

A kindergarten teacher posted some comments on Facebook about her experience with some youngsters on their first days at her school.

“It broke my heart these past 4 days to see how many kindergarteners showed up to school with NO previous exposure to almost anything. It was so overwhelming for them to understand the concept of staying in line, wiping themselves, buttoning their own pants, opening a milk container, holding a pencil correctly.

“I had one who didn’t understand how to unzip his lunchbox so he could eat. Some can’t tell you their name, or don’t KNOW their actual given name that is on the roster. So many had never held a pencil at all, couldn’t sing the alphabet song (let alone recognize any letters/numbers), couldn’t count to ten or recognize shapes/colors.”

She expressed the frustration others show her, saying things like: “Isn’t that what school is for??” Or, “Why should parents have to do YOUR job for you?”

“Yes, school is for learning,” she said, “But when they come in SO far behind right off the bat, it is so defeating and frustrating for these babies. Even at the age of five, they recognize when they don’t know things other kids know. If a child knows who Pennywise the clown is and can recite every word (including the explicit ones) to the latest Cardi B song, but can’t recite the alphabet, count to ten, or open a ketchup packet, we got probs.” 

Now to be realistic, there probably have been some young people like this for as long as there have been humans on the Earth. But apparently, the proportion of this type of unpreparedness for life’s basics has grown enormously.

In the old days, things that previously occurred at home started the learning process. Learning to dress ourselves, feed ourselves, follow rules and procedures, doing simple tasks. And when we got to kindergarten or first grade, or whatever the first “school” experience was, we had a functional basis to begin learning our ABCs, numbers and the other subjects that schools help us learn.

But the nuclear family that has been such an important part of America since its founding is dwindling away. Far too many single-parent families exist today, with many children growing up in a family with no father, or perhaps only a part-time dad.

And there seems to be a lack of understanding among adults about true parenting, the importance of proper and traditional child rearing. And, there is a substantial lack of knowledge about America’s story, and the culture upon which our country was built that parents would pass on to their children by interaction.

And so, we now find that many in the younger generations — Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Alpha, for example — have less and less of an understanding of the background that the older generations have always had. And with the decreased understanding of our founding and our development, we find a country with an ever-weakening sense of itself. 

Our traditional values, institutions, arts, and morality are weakening. More and more we see family instability, materialism, entertainment saturation, and political division. We are losing our identity, our soul. We are committing cultural suicide.

Not only have we as a people failed to maintain our standards, but the ridiculous and dangerous virtual open border of the Biden administration, which invited millions of people — we still do not actually know how many — to enter the country illegally, has compounded the problem. This was done without having any idea of who these people were, or what their intent was.

Some of them were good people looking for a better life. But many others were drug and child traffickers, robbers, rapists, terrorists and murderers. And even those illegals who sought a better life were not oriented to the core values of America, which further diluted our cultural values.

Feelings about a cultural decline are not new. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett noted in an article in Education Week back in 1993 the following: “When the late Walker Percy was asked what concerned him the most about America’s future, he answered: ‘Probably the fear of seeing America, with all its great strength and beauty and freedom ... gradually subside into decay through default and be defeated, not by the Communist movement, demonstrably a bankrupt system, but from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed, and in the end helplessness before its great problems.’”

At the end of the article, Bennett offers this: “The social regression of the past 30 years is due in large part to the enfeebled state of our social institutions and their failure to carry out their critical and time-honored tasks.”

Thirty-plus years past Bennett’s dire observations we find the country even further down the path to cultural collapse. Whether that direction can be reversed is a question yet to be answered. 

Democrats can’t achieve their extremist goals with system our Founders created

May 24, 2022

A recent newspaper column did a wonderful job of illustrating the lengths to which the Left will go in trying to achieve its goals. The writer’s name is not important, because the writer is not the topic here. The topic is the dreadful thought process used by the writer in creating this misrepresentation of U.S. Senator Steve Daines’ comment. 

Such shenanigans are pretty common. The Left often does similar things to shift the focus away from actual issues.

The column began: “Sen. Steve Daines from Montana compared women to reptiles, pregnant sea turtles to be exact. No, seriously.”

Quoting Daines, the writer continued. “’Why do we have laws in place to protect the eggs of sea turtles, or the eggs of eagles?’ he thundered. ‘Because when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a pre-born baby sea turtle.’”

The writer then explains the process sea turtles follow to travel to the proper place to lay their eggs, where they will mature and hatch in 60 days. The writer then noted that women do not have to go through such a protracted process, as if that has anything to do with Daines’ point.

The writer exhibits several significant issues. First and foremost, he/she missed — or more likely, deliberately avoided — Daines’ point, then spent a lot of time writing about the wrong topic. 

Daines did not compare women to reptiles. He contrasted the degree to which turtle and other animal progeny are protected by law with the lack of that protection for not-yet-born human babies.

What Daines did do was pose the matter of why unborn sea turtles are protected by law from interference by people, but unborn children are not.

The writer most likely could not provide a sensible defense of the concern Daines’ brought up, so he/she spent time trying to focus readers’ attention away from that issue. The true purpose of this article was nothing more than to ridicule Daines’ defense of the unborn. Shameful.

                                                                   * * *

What we often find as tools of the Left are such things as outrage; claims of racism, white privilege, and/or white supremacy; defensiveness; and threats of protest or violence. These tactics are designed to affect the emotions of those on both sides of an issue, and they deliberately avoid using logic.

The white 18-year-old accused killer of 10 people at a mostly black retail outlet was termed a “racist.” That is totally appropriate in this case. He was also called a “white supremacist” by the President of the United States, and others.

What is a “white supremacist?”  “A person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races,” according to Merriam-Webster. And recent stories about the accused murderer show that he actually holds white supremacist views. 

No doubt he is not the only such person in the country. But is white supremacy really a threat? Or, is that just a Leftist effort to fire up their crowd by exaggerating a relatively small number of people into a real threat?

Calling someone a racist works. It often arouses negative emotions toward that person, as well as others who look like or hold similar beliefs as the targeted person. Throwing around the term “white supremacy” serves the same purpose.

Some of the far Left’s tactics are extremely radical, and some even un-American. That’s because they are unable to easily achieve their extremist goals using the system our Founders created. Because they can’t muster enough support to get their nation transforming goals accomplished through proper methods, they are forced to use other means.

They want to stack the Supreme Court with like-thinking justices so that the Court will support their agenda. The “stacking” process will put the current conservative — or non-activist — justices in the minority. They want to end the Senate filibuster so that the minority party — in this case, Republicans — will no longer have a way to protect the country from their radical ideas.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, when Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion regarding Roe v. Wade was improperly leaked, the Left immediately flew into a rage. They believed that if the Court voted to overturn this previous decision, it would mean the end of abortions in America. 

That’s wrong. It would not end abortion, it would merely move the decisions on abortion to the individual states, where it belongs, and away from the Supreme Court, where it does not belong.

Nevertheless, the Left then decided to try to “persuade” those justices who were expected to vote to overturn a faulty ruling to change their minds by having organized protests at their homes. 

It is highly improper to attempt to influence a Supreme Court justice or a judge in doing his/her job. But more importantly, it is against federal law. 

Yet, those with the authority and responsibility to enforce the laws against intimidating the justices, such as U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice, have failed to do the job.

There is a great deal of failure to enforce laws these days. And that, too, is a feature of Leftist/“progressive” politics.