It feels like America died yesterday. Dead on the Fourth of July.
That’s how it felt Monday when I learned a gunman killed six and injured at least three dozen more during an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
What was born on the Fourth of July – a system of governance predicated on the belief that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights – died on the Fourth of July. For 246 years, that belief united the states of America. That belief is gone now. It’s been eradicated from the minds of too many Americans for this country to remain whole.
The United States of America has been balkanized, polarized, and demonized to the point that we can no longer joyfully and unapologetically celebrate our birthday.
The New York Times, the nation’s alleged newspaper of record, claims the real founding of this country was in 1619 and the real motivation was slavery, not freedom. ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports, published a piece Monday denigrating the Fourth and arguing that a three-hour riot at the Capitol, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the demise of Colin Kaepernick’s NFL career, Jack Del Rio calling January 6 a “dust-up,” and Justice Clarence Thomas’ objection to same-sex marriage prove America’s irreparable wickedness.
Half the country sees the American flag as a symbol of oppression and pride as a virtue.
We’re dead. Dead on the Fourth of July.
Robert Crimo, a 22-year-old kid arrested for the Highland Park shooting, allegedly ended what 46-year-old Crispus Attucks started on March 5, 1770. Accurate historians won’t credit Crimo with America’s death. The autopsy will show that the greatest experiment in human history succumbed to the cancer of cultural rot and the rejection of biblical truth. Highland Park, Uvalde, Waukesha, the summer of George Floyd riots, the COVID lockdowns, the family-friendly drag queen grooming, the New York Times 1619 Project, Trump derangement, critical race theory, and the vilification of law enforcement are all byproducts of the cultural decay.
Those of you hoping midterm elections will save this country will be greatly disappointed. Politics cannot fix what’s wrong with America. There are no political solutions to spiritual problems.
America is in need of a resurrection, a miracle, a spiritual rebirth.
Our current culture will continue to manufacture Robert Crimos the same way factory assembly lines produce SUVs. American culture is narcissistic by any means necessary and views the right to kill as fundamental to freedom.
The alleged killer Crimo sought attention and worth through the celebration of death. Like the Waukesha alleged mass murderer, Darrell Brooks, Crimo fashioned himself a rapper. Using the name “Awake,” Crimo rapped inside a classroom and insinuated he might one day shoot schoolchildren. YouTube has taken down his content.
Why?
Crimo’s rap content is no different, no more demonic, than the standard commercialized and celebrated rap music. A rapper in Florida, YNW Melly, sits in jail today waiting to be tried this summer for two cases of premeditated murder. Melly’s most popular song, which has more than 500 million views on YouTube, is "Murder on My Mind." It’s every bit as wicked and demented as Crimo’s rap content.
Crimo and Melly simply mimic the content of rap music’s biggest stars. Watch Dr. Dre and Ice Cube’s "Natural Born Killaz" video. Watch Snoop Dogg’s "Murder Was the Case." It’s an ode celebrating the deal Snoop cut with Satan. Watch 50 Cent’s "Many Men." It celebrates a revenge killing.
American culture is sick and depraved.
Educators are fighting for the right to talk with 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds about sexuality and gender. An adult talking about sex with kids was considered perversion in my childhood. Now we’re bringing drag queens into schools and libraries to teach kids to read. The people who object to this perversion are deemed villains.
The rejection of religious faith has empowered a culture of fear. We shut down the country because of COVID, a bad version of the flu. We denied kids an education because of COVID. We forced kids to wear masks and avoid interaction because of fear of COVID. We stole two years of their childhood out of fear.
American culture is sick and depraved.
Elle Duncan, an ESPN broadcaster, released a video encouraging so-called “girl dads” to fight for abortion rights. She argued that women’s freedom is directly related to their access to abortion. Modern American culture is obsessed with murder. It’s reflected in our music, our TV shows, our perception of freedom.
We have rejected God’s natural order.
This nation’s founding documents were based on God’s natural order. This country was built for families. Family is at the center of a biblical worldview. The Founding Fathers could not predict that this country would abandon God’s prescribed family structure – man, woman, and children. How could they see that future?
In the 1700s, family was essential to survival. Men and women absolutely needed each other for survival. We still do. But we’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t. Technological advances have fooled us into believing that families are luxury items. Before the industrial revolution, when most work was backbreaking and hunting and farming were necessary for eating, women believed men were necessary and a force for good. The laws and customs established during that time frame reflected man’s essentialness to survival and woman’s essentialness to reproduction.
Two hundred years later, we look back and call those men and women unenlightened. Were they? I’m not so sure.
As it relates to family, we’re far more unenlightened than the founders. We don’t believe in family. We think it’s optional and unimportant. We think there’s no penalty for killing a child in the womb or walking away from a marriage when things turn difficult.
We think the Second Amendment, which grants us the ability to protect our rights, is destroying America. The destruction of family and the abandonment of God are destroying America.
The attack on God, family, and guns killed America.
Luther Campbell (aka “Uncle Luke”) recently started an important debate on the importance of voting when he asked the following question on Twitter:
“Give me five reasons why Black people should Vote in the next election. Give me five BLACK promises that has [sic] been fulfilled by politicians in the last election. MAYOR & PRESIDENT”
The former leader of the rap group 2 Live Crew received responses from several prominent public figures. Joy Reid listed access to abortion and voting rights among her reasons. Ana Navarro, a co-host on "The View," listed the names of the ten people shot and killed in the recent Buffalo mass shooting as her reasons. Jemele Hill responded to Luke’s tweet by asking how not voting would help black people.
Voting is one of the most important rights that comes with citizenship. The fight for equal citizenship for African-Americans was the result of over 300 years of political engagement and social agitation. Subsequent generations owe a debt of gratitude to those who risked life and limb to ensure black people could have legal access to every aspect of political and social life in this country.
They used the political process to achieve equal protection under the law. Black politicians, pundits, and intellectuals today talk about voting in life-and-death terms because they think social and economic progress can also be delivered through the ballot box.
Unlike them, I don’t believe the most intractable issues facing black people today can be fixed through electoral politics. At best, politicians can create policies and programs that provide access to opportunity and promote social mobility.
The growth of government in size and scope over the past 60 years has unfortunately been accompanied by a contraction in every other part of our culture. Americans of all backgrounds now look to the government to solve every problem, from drug addiction to obesity. That worldview takes responsibility away from families, religious institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.
An overemphasis on politics is often a convenient distraction from addressing important changes in culture. Regardless of race and ethnicity, family formation and the ordering of marriage before children has more to do with norms, values, and priorities than the size of child tax credits or the new interest rate. Every policy discussion today can ultimately be traced back to the state of the American family.
School choice is good public policy because it places education decisions in the hands of parents, but having more options is not the same as improving achievement. Successful students need good schools run by competent and caring teachers and administrators, parents who instill a love of learning and set high standards, and a sense of agency over their own education. Voting can have a direct impact on the schoolhouse, but it has little effect on whether I read to the children in my house.
The same goes for young men who turn city streets into shooting ranges. Children learn the boundaries of acceptable behavior in their homes, not the voting booth. Politicians can advocate for policies that punish criminals to protect law-abiding citizens, but they are not responsible for teaching children that carjacking strangers – or shooting innocent people in a grocery store – is wrong.
Politics matter, but so does culture.
The irony is that Luke is one of the most significant figures in turning rap music from a genre that reported on the gritty realities of urban life to one that celebrated the excesses of the high life. What started as a raw form of journalism was transformed into the neatly packaged promotion of hedonism.
The influence of media on culture is only questioned when it comes to hip-hop. The same black people who argue that "The Birth of a Nation," blackface, and minstrel shows from over 100 years ago still have significant effects on the self- and external perception of black people also argue that the images and lyrics Luke, Snoop Dogg, and their peers created have none.
No one would say the same if white artists in any genre constantly talked about killing black men and made videos with scantily clad black women twerking and simulating sex acts. Representation can’t matter only when it comes to children seeing black doctors, lawyers, and vice presidents. It is impossible to dismiss the impact of hip-hop culture on black boys and girls if we actually believe children emulate financially successful and culturally influential people with whom they identify.
I am not blaming hip-hop for the problems in black America. I am saying that rewarding the cultural norms promoted by hip-hop – particularly violence among men and the degradation of women – promotes those same norms to the people who most readily identify with artists. This is the difference between listening to music as art and consuming it as a lifestyle.
Why would a boy ever think of getting married and raising a family if he’s constantly being told women are for sexual conquest, not holy matrimony?
This is an important question that speaks to the current dynamic between Democrats and heterosexual black men. The left is clear about its intentions and priorities. Democrats, including the black elites who appear frequently on CNN and MSNBC, fight hard for abortion and gender ideology in classrooms because their two most important constituency groups are women and the LGBTQIA+ voters.
They see straight white men as the epitome of power and privilege and straight black men are not far behind. They frequently remind the nation that black women "saved democracy” in 2020, even though over 80% of black men also voted for the current president. Black pundits, professors, and activists are the ones saying that the nuclear family is obsolete, fathers are overrated, and the government – not men – is responsible for protecting and providing for women and children.
Black men must decide whether we want to be big or small when it comes to our roles in our homes and communities. Like all Americans, we should remember that we vote because we want politicians to serve our interests, not because we need heroes to save our lives.
One of the most fascinating developments over the past week has been watching political pundits and social commentators celebrate virtues in Ukraine, from armed resistance to national loyalty, that are frequently criticized in America.
My sense is that the ruling class assumes our citizens would have the same response to a hostile foreign invasion. They may be right, but the biblical principle of sowing and reaping suggests a very different outcome.
A recent tweet from NPR is one example of the type of seed that finds fertile ground in our culture.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine means there’s a stressful news cycle ahead of us. The reality of conflict is always a shock to the system. Here are 5 ways to cope.”
The entire thread was completely on-brand for NPR, from the thumbnail illustration of an androgynous person of color laying in the fetal position to the language of personal therapy emanating from the subsequent tweets.
It was an easy alley-oop for the conservatives on Twitter who shared the post to the followers, but the post was an important snapshot of the character traits being cultivated in our society.
We have become a fragile nation increasingly unable to deal with the realities of life. The 2016 election of Donald Trump made this crystal clear. Colleges across the country offered students play dough, coloring books, hot chocolate, and bubbles to cope with the stress of an election outcome.
Previous generations of young men between 18 and 22 stormed the beaches of Normandy, fought the Viet Cong in Da Nang, and were beaten during Freedom Rides for civil rights in America. Early adulthood now is characterized by safe spaces and comfort animals.
The NPR post wasn’t just a window into American fragility. It was also another example of our most popular faith – the cult of self. One Army recruitment ad in 2021 followed the story of “Emma,” a soldier who talked about being inspired to join the military after reflecting on the activism of her two moms and adventure-seeking sorority sisters.
The video is a perfect distillation of America in the 21st century – the ultimate act of self-sacrifice has been transformed into a personal vanity project of self-fulfillment. Recruitment ads from China and Russia show young men leaving their families, engaging in physically demanding training exercises, jumping out of planes, scaling walls, and driving tanks. The virtues being promoted in their ads – bravery, sacrifice, honor, discipline, patriotism, courage – transcend language and nationality.
What makes things even more difficult is the extent to which the left uses every organ of culture, from sports to movies, to sell the message that America is irredeemably racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic. Who would want to die for such an evil country? Alienating your citizens from their nation is not a wise move when our adversaries in other countries are willing to exploit every perceived weakness to expand their own power.
These weaknesses have been exacerbated by the left’s forward assault on manhood. A Christian professor named Karen Swallow Prior tweeted a video of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a small group of men who committed to stay and fight for their country. She said, “I doubt these guys tweet about ‘manliness.’” The subtext was that conservative evangelical American men talk about masculinity more than they embody it.
What she failed to mention is that American society has been grinding away at men and manhood for decades. A desire to help men get more in touch with their feelings has morphed into something much more ominous. Every few months a new man in a dress is being upheld as brave and courageous for pushing the boundaries of gender. Men who object to the fashion choices of Harry Styles, Billy Porter, or Kid Cudi are seen as toxic and regressive.
This erosion of masculinity extends into the home as well, and not just through depictions of bumbling, incompetent dads on television sitcoms. The one tactical advantage women have in the gender wars is their words. Women who berate and disrespect their husbands are doing untold damage to both their mates and children. We went from mothers saying, “I don’t need a man” to daughters saying, “I don’t want a man” to sons saying, “I don’t want to be a man.”
The domestic power struggle that feminism has been encouraging for decades has led to men who are less assertive and more indecisive than their forefathers. Women who reject male leadership in the home often fear the misuse of authority, but that abdication also removes responsibility. It’s a package deal, in the same way the sun provides both light and heat.
I know many women who object to rigid gender roles, whether in the home or broader society. I don’t know a single one who wants to take on the role of protecting men from harm or the responsibility of being the sole provider in a household that has an able-bodied man present.
This contradiction is captured by a famous quote from C.S. Lewis.
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
One historian’s new book claims that white evangelicals corrupted Christianity in America with the rugged masculinity embodied by John Wayne. Reading contemporary cultural norms into the Bible can certainly lead to bad doctrine, but the reason some pastors feel compelled to speak about biblical manhood is because they understand what happens to a culture that embraces the church of Jesus and Elton John.
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com
Progressivism Created the Militarization of Police | Guest: Thaddeus Russell | Ep 75