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. 

America is a much weaker nation today than it used to be

Many of us living today were born at a time when a family most often consisted of a mother, a father, and one or more children. The father — and sometimes the mother, also — worked to support the family. The children grew up in an atmosphere where things like a basic education, a close-knit family that survived on love for each other and respect for others, preparing to get a job and probably getting married and having a family of their own, were normal. And children were then prepared to repeat the cycle.

This age-old process produced a stable, mature society that helped America, which was brilliantly designed, develop into the leading nation in our world. And today there are still many people who are raised that way and will continue to live that way.

But through recent decades, this process has been weakened, and some of the influences that weakened it have come directly from our federal government. 

Today, America is a much weaker nation than it used to be, in many ways. Many people seem to be unaware of that, and others are unconcerned with the state of things. Will America follow the same path as Rome? Will it be destroyed from within because its people do not know, or have abandoned the governmental and social structures that made it great?

In addition to the Roman Empire, Babylon and Greece fell. Many of us watched as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Soviet Union, or USSR) fell apart. These once-great nations did themselves in. They were careless with their strength and glory, and they abandoned what helped them grow, and destroyed themselves.

There is a story from the early days of the United States. In Philadelphia in 1787, as delegates to the Constitutional Convention were leaving Independence Hall, from the crowd of interested onlookers a woman approached Benjamin Franklin. She asked, “well, Doctor, what do we have, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Great nations evolve. They start from meager, often negative beginnings; they gradually grow to a level of freedom, security and comfort.

But then devolution begins. After time, comfort leads to forgetting the past struggles and the need to conserve what made them what they are. Seeking abundance takes control. With abundance comes an attitude of superiority, accompanied by greater apathy for the processes that brought development and success. That leads to selfishness. Selfishness leads to societal division and discord. And eventually, discord brings collapse. 

How far down that road has America traveled? What are the signs? Here are some.

A. Government is too big, costs too much and is too involved in our daily lives.

The federal government website tells us that “There are roughly 2 million civilian government jobs at more than 120 federal departments and agencies, not including the U.S. Postal Service.”

A federal department rules over education, which should be a local and state responsibility. Government inserts itself in other areas where it is not needed, wanted, or supposed to be. Ten thousand new IRS employees, they say, are “needed” to process tax returns, or for whatever purpose the government may direct.

Many government agencies are encouraged to put into effect rules with the force of law. But in America, only Congress can make laws. And then government agencies are sometimes ordered not to enforce the law, like on the southern border, allowing illegal entry of people, drugs and gangs. And at the state and local level, district attorneys in several states are not prosecuting some or many crimes.

In a Gallup poll last September, 52 percent said government is doing too many things, and prefer lower taxes and fewer government services.

B. Some military leaders think “equity” among races is more important than having the most qualified people functioning in the most effective military possible. Shifting attention from readiness to identity equity is dangerous. Mortars, bombs and bullets do not seek targets evenly by race, they seek available targets, perhaps made easier by this new wokeness. Military personnel must be united against a common enemy, not against those in other sub-groups because of race or other irrelevant differences.

C. One political party is straying from, and working to be rid of, some of the principles established more than 200 years ago. Members of Congress have discussed doing away with the filibuster and the Electoral College, which protect minority interests and the interests of smaller states from the tyranny of the majority; and stacking the Supreme Court to achieve dominance through law-making by judges and justices. 

On that subject Justice Clarence Thomas said in Utah Friday, “Are we leaving [our children] a mess or are we leaving them a country? Are we leaving them chaos or are we going to leave them a court?”

D. Social media companies believe they have the power to censor speech that does not toe the line of their preferred set of ideals. Large corporations buy up competitors, making life easier and more profitable for themselves, but not necessarily better for the people.

The signs are there, if we just honestly look for them. And then work to reverse them.

What in the world is happening to the United States of America?

 

Who among us that has been alive for more than five decades would believe what is happening today? Long-standing traditions — the things upon which the nation was created and that allowed it to thrive — are crumbling around us.

 

Once highly regarded qualities like righteousness, integrity and professionalism, have taken a beating over the last number of years. Career fields like education and journalism are now home to many who are willing to abandon their personal integrity, honesty, and professional ethics to indulge in indoctrination of students and the public at large for destabilizing political purposes.

 

Recent news reports told us that our gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 32.9 percent in the second quarter. Whether this “news” was a deliberate attempt to misinform in order to cast further negativity on President Donald Trump, or the result of ignorance on the part of these so-called journalists, is difficult to determine.

 

But what actually occurred was that the GDP actually shrank by much less, only 9.5 percent, in the second quarter, and 4.8 percent in the first quarter. If this trend continues through the rest of the year, the “annualized decline” will reach 32.9 percent.

 

We see the effects of miseducation as people who never learned about their country reject their access to the broadest set of opportunities to achieve success on the planet, favoring instead the fairytale of equality of outcomes.

 

Colleges, where people are supposed to learn much more about general studies and their chosen area of interest, have produced the “woke” movement which, in addition to being ineptly named, is a destructive force to which its practitioners are totally blind.

 

“Wokeness” was aptly described as “pervasive trends under the guise of equality [that] makes diversity training in government, and corporate America, and schools, destructive, divisive, and harmful,” by Angela Sailor, vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Professional sports and similar activities —where people with high skills in a very narrow and unimportant area of life, like throwing, catching, hitting or “shooting” some sort of ball or other object — make millions of dollars, are now decaying organizations where many or most members proudly dishonor the flag and National Anthem of the country that allowed them to be the wealthy and celebrated individuals that they have become. And they do so with the blessing of their team and league.

 

Politics and such off-shoots as political correctness, and the new fad of hypersensitivity over small or years-old irritants now are the focus of many education and news folk.

 

The selfish desires of a relative few now are expected to be accepted by everyone else, whether or not they see any value in those desires. If you do not automatically cow-tow to them, you may be the target of physical and other violence.

 

And the relatively recent advent of social media adds to the problem. Social media to an increasing degree control what political information we can see on their platforms, and what cannot be seen. That is called “censorship,” which is not among the valued characteristics of our free country.

 

One example: Twitter removed the Star of David from several tweets, calling it a hateful image.

 

Another is that certain discussions about fighting the coronavirus are deemed inappropriate for you to see. Twitter has been identified as having taken down some tweets about a drug, hydroxychloroquine, that is favored by many physicians who have used the drug, and say it is effective against the virus.

 

In addition to Twitter, social media platforms Facebook and Google, and website hosting service Squarespace banned video from a group of physicians known as America's Frontline Doctors about hydroxychloroquine.

 

A doctor in Tampa, Florida, who is lead physician at a medical office that has 8,000 patients, created a video about how she and other physicians were precluded from prescribing hydroxychloroquine for their patients, despite their previous experience with that medicine.

 

The brilliant constitutional attorney and author Mark Levin said that the Frontline Doctors’ video was “not about the overthrow of America, not about anti-Semitism, not promoting terrorism — but talking about experience, science, medical knowledge about hydroxychloroquine."

 

Apparently, Twitter, Facebook and Google know more about medicine than doctors. And furthermore, they think you shouldn’t be able to get information on certain subjects without their guidance, which means providing only what they want you to know.

 

When someone is triggered by something — virtually anything, these days — suddenly there arises a movement to remove or replace that “something” without even a superficial attempt to understand that something's complete nature. If one out a hundred things is bad, to the dump with it.

 

Through the decades, we learned to generally trust our teachers and news organizations. We expect school subjects to be presented wholly and without bias. Likewise, news is supposed to tell us the what, where, when, why and who of events, without opinion or bias.

 

When those rules are deliberately broken in order to control what the public knows, or how the public should think about things, then the result is what we see happening so often today: the sabotage of our country; the freest and most wonderful nation in history.

The United States is being torn apart … from the inside!

The good news is that there is a large, strong faction of Americans that recognizes the superior nature of our republic’s original and unique design that is fighting to keep it intact.

But there is another faction that is working to disassemble the republic, and turn it into a totally different nation. Some in that faction are doing this deliberately, while others may not even realize that what they are doing will negatively affect the country.

No nation ever was or ever will be perfect, and the United States isn’t perfect. But a major transformation would be magnificently foolish. The United States must simply work to continue to improve itself, and watch for and combat efforts at fundamental change. One such problem is the education system.

A new report on the state of public education shows that schools are performing poorly on basic educational goals. The results of testing on a representative sample of 42,700 eighth grade students from nearly 800 schools in 2018 showed that students are deficient in learning U.S. history, civics and geography.

Test scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for geography and U.S. history declined, and civics scores are unchanged from the last test in 2014.

Only 25 percent were “proficient” in geography. In civics, only 24 percent performed at or above the “proficient” level. And worse, only 15 percent scored “proficient” or above in U.S. history. At least 25 percent of the entire group are classified by the NAEP as “below basic” in all three testing areas, and have an inadequate level of understanding of civics, historical issues, and geography.

These kids have a generally poor understanding of their country, how and why it is designed as it is, and why that is important. They are therefore ripe for political indoctrination.

Columnist Michael Barone recently discussed the sad state of affairs among giant Internet companies that want to censor “inappropriate” speech.

Two law professors, of all people, say controlling speech on Internet platforms is necessary. Jack Goldsmith from Harvard University, and Keane Woods from the University of Arizona, writing in The Atlantic, stated the following: "Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society's norms and values."

So, in the age of the Internet the First Amendment is no longer important. And if free speech is suspended by online platforms in order to be “compatible with a society's norms and values," how long before that dark cloud of censorship covers all speech in America?

The “old ways” are under attack. Because something was utilized a century ago, it is considered invalid because of its age and the current social climate. Under such a system, nothing can be thought of as eternally good, or even eternally bad.

What was accepted as good in the 1800s is useless today. What we replace the old ways with today will be useless in 2080. Stability is becoming non-existent.

Today, some want to force “clean” energy on the nation in the name of a pure environment, even though clean energy sources are not capable of satisfactorily replacing fossil fuels, and the U.S. leads the world in carbon reduction.

Making some things free, like a college education, is thought to be useful to establish equality. But free things are not necessarily better than costly things, and not everyone who will avail themselves of a free college education needs to, or should go to college.

There is a move to devalue success, because celebrating success supposedly belittles those who didn’t win the race or become the valedictorian. Everyone gets a participation trophy, so they won’t feel bad. So, what’s the point of working to achieve?

Also, let’s put more of our lives under control of the government, which always knows best what we need.

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened and killed thousands and struck fear into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. In trying to protect people and stop the spread of the virus, businesses have been closed and people confined to their homes.

Fear is a great motivator. The more the people are made to fear things — going to work or school, going to the grocery store or other commercial establishments, any activity that puts them too near other people — the fewer of us will dare to restart living our lives as we used to.

Some governors and mayors have imposed overly-restrictive rules on things people want and need to do. People are fined, arrested and jailed for not abiding by the imposed guidelines.

Does a governor or mayor have the unilateral authority to implement rules and penalties with the force of law that deny people their Constitutionally guaranteed rights in an emergency?

If so, perhaps we will see a rash of emergencies develop, as the element of control becomes more popular among office holders.

If you don’t do anything else while you are keeping yourself safe at home, give some thought about who is being hurt by this shutting down of society, and also about exactly who it is that benefits from it.

Did the Founders ever imagine our culture crumbling as it is today?

The year was 1492. The month was August. The mission was to find, at the behest of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, the riches of Asia. Lacking the magic of GPS, Waze and Google Maps that we know, the challenge was a daunting one. Instead of arriving in Asia, navigation by the stars led Italian explorer Christopher Columbus to the Americas two months later, opening an entire New World for mankind to explore.

Centuries later, the discovery of the New World was observed and honored by the creation of Columbus Day on October 12 each year. What has happened to how some Americans view Columbus and his discovery, and to so many of the traditional values and standards of our country in recent years, evidences the degradation of the culture that America was built on.

Many of us senior citizens remember the time when a family consisted of two parents — a mother and a father — and usually some children. While divorces were not unheard of, they were not common. The family unit usually remained intact throughout the life of the parents, children were taught personal responsibility, and the children carried that family structure forward.

A more conservative idea of appropriate sexual behavior kept unwanted pregnancies at a low number. And those children were generally raised in the family, or occasionally given up for adoption. Abortion was a murky, immoral and not-widely-known concept that carried great risks.

Religion was a strong and positive influence on the culture, and even those who were not religious, including atheists, generally had a solid moral center. People knew right from wrong, and most lived within the cultural and legal boundaries.

People had an appreciation for their country, understanding the great benefits provided for them by the nation’s brilliant Founders. They designed a superior form of government that allowed for maximum personal freedom and that guaranteed certain important rights. Most Americans understood that each person was responsible for taking care of themselves and their family, except for those who had some significant incapacity that prevented them from doing so.

They understood that they were to go to school and learn the basics of communications, mathematics, history, civics, science, and literature, get or stay fit in gym class, and avail themselves of instruction in the arts and trades if they so desired. It was expected that people prepare themselves for adulthood, and be able to support themselves and their family.

Life always dealt challenges. Sometimes people were able to rise to meet them, and sometimes not. But they knew that it was up to them to live their lives within the boundaries set by the culture and laws of the land, and to make the most of their situation and circumstances.

In a recent column, Victor Davis Hanson compared today’s Americans to those of the past: “Our ancestors were builders and pioneers and mostly fearless. We are regulators, auditors, bureaucrats, adjudicators, censors, critics, plaintiffs, defendants, social media junkies and thin-skinned scolds. A distant generation created; we mostly delay, idle and gripe.”

Our once self-reliant and responsible culture now takes great offense at things once regarded as mere unpleasantries. So many now believe that if something offends them, they have the right to condemn it so they will not be offended any more. There is little if any regard for the person who is responsible for what offends them, and that person’s rights that are equal to theirs.

Free speech and the importance of being able to say, hear and consider other opinions is no longer valued, as it was for more than two centuries. Unpopular speech often spurs violence by those who disagree. Violence against those they disagree with has become a common tactic among the increasing numbers of the disgruntled. Someone saying something or doing something that others dislike is often considered an excuse for his/her enemies to attack them.

Because one in a hundred, or a thousand, instances of action by police finds a police officer responsible for doing something wrong, many Americans now view the police as enemies. Some even attack them, sometimes violently, when they are peacefully doing their job, such as when they are on the scene of a protest.

We have become a nation that has large numbers of easily-offended people who believe their concerns are more important than those of others. America’s new most abundant product is “victimhood.”

In contests, all young people now must get the same award as the person who actually won, just so they won’t feel bad.

Politically-correct control fanatics now insist that in order for churches to keep their non-profit status, they must forego their religious beliefs and accept politically-correct ideas that run counter to those beliefs.

Our Founders, who sacrificed so much to escape the bondage imposed by Great Britain, must be smacking their heads in bewilderment at what has happened to their marvelous creation. As Ben Franklin said to a woman asking what the Constitutional Convention had produced, he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Our once-strong culture is collapsing; narrow self-interest rules. And Franklin’s doubt of our ability to sustain the republic has become reality.

Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas to all, and to all “please lighten up!”

Christmas, as most of us know, is an observance celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. It was a joyous and very special event from which Christian religions grew. Wise men came from afar to give the baby gifts, and over time that spirit of giving gradually evolved from a religious observance to include the giving of gifts between family and friends that occurs in many countries across the globe. 

The giving of gifts to children is an aspect that came to include the Jolly Old Elf, Santa Claus, or some other “bringer of gifts,” who delivers presents to the “good little girls and boys.” 

The celebration of Christmas is both a religious observance with annual programs in churches, and a wondrous display of lights and other decorations, benevolent giving, and good will. 

For centuries in the U.S. and elsewhere the religious and secular observances existed together in perfect harmony. Everyone enjoyed Christmas for what it meant to them and those that observed the birth of Jesus were also most often eagerly involved in the giving and receiving of gifts, putting up the tree and decorations, and the gathering of family.

But as the evolution progressed, more and more Christmas observers honored the secular aspects of the day more than its religious origins, and a lot of folks who celebrate Christmas today are not Christians and do not celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th.

And now in this, the Age of Hypersensitivity, Christmas religious traditions have become unpopular with many people, and instead of quietly and politely leaving alone those who celebrate the religious meaning of the day to enjoy it as they have for so long, a faction now has determined that religious elements are offensive to them and demand their removal so they will not be made uncomfortable by their presence.

This now widespread Christmas discomfort is not quite to the level of full-scale protests, but headed in that direction, particularly where public displays are concerned. 

Religious symbols are becoming, or perhaps are already, as unpopular as symbols of the Civil War, despite the historical value of those symbols of our past. For example, a 34-foot cross that was erected nearly 50 years ago at Pensacola, Florida’s Bayview Park has been ordered removed by a federal judge after 4 people started an action because they saw the cross when visiting the park and were unable to cope with that experience.

A federal appeals court ordered another large cross to be removed last year. Constructed in 1925 at a busy intersection in Bladensburg, MD to memorialize soldiers who died in World War I, it was deemed offensive because some saw “religion” when driving through the intersection, rather than the purpose for which the monument was privately financed and constructed.

A three-judge panel heard the case, which was decided by a two-to-one vote. Chief Judge Roger Gregory dissented, noting that the government is not required by the First Amendment to “purge from the public sphere any reference to religion.” This point no doubt will zoom past the complainers, who see only their personal displeasure and discomfort, which, of course, is more important than anything else.

The First Liberty Institute, which supports religious freedom, and represented the American Legion in the matter, said the decision “sets dangerous precedent by completely ignoring history.”

Where Christmas is concerned, the fact that without the growth of the observance of the birth of Jesus there would be no Christmas for people to enjoy with gifts, parties and decorations. Despite this, the offended masses think that reminders of Jesus’ birth, like nativity scenes with the baby, mother Mary and father Joseph, and the three wise men, send them into a panic, even as they open their presents under the tree.

This penchant for manic criticism of Christmas has come to include complaining about seasonal songs. Some in their imagination see sexual impropriety in the decades-old Christmas song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and think that because some relatively small number of people believe this, that the larger number who see it for what it is – a flirty song that they have liked all their lives – should be banned, denying pleasure to the many because of the objections of a few.

“Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” is seen as encouraging bullying, rather than a song describing how Rudolph became the leader of Santa’s crew.

In what may be a sign of “things to come,” the iconic gingerbread man has been attacked by a coffee shop at the Parliament of Scotland. The political body has now demanded they be referred to as “gingerbread persons.”

Some people think that anything that makes them uncomfortable or that they don’t like for whatever reason should be immediately and permanently removed, without any consideration given to the thousands or millions who value and appreciate those things.

And what on this Earth cannot be found offensive by some small group?

However, all that has been said before must not be interpreted as a “Bah, humbug” recitation from Mr. Scrooge.

To those who celebrate Christmas: Merry Christmas!

For those who do not: Happy Holidays!