The Increasing Meaningless of Modern American Life

“We live in an empty culture. We have fled from God, from meaning, from purpose, and the suicide epidemic is a direct result. People are wallowing in despair, believing that there is no transcendent truth or beauty to be found in life.” – Matt Walsh

n America, we have separated sex from procreation. Increasingly, we’re spiritual, but not religious which means that we separate God from religion. Via social media, we separate friendship from personal contact. Marriage is no longer “til death do us part”—it’s until we get tired of it, get divorced and move on. A man without an education, but who’s willing to work hard can no longer support a family. Of course, it wouldn’t matter if he did since the government will just step in and take care of it if he doesn’t. Increasingly, work comes from large corporations where the employee is little more than a cog in someone else’s wheel.

What that means is many Americans live lives devoid of meaning. They don’t take pride in their work. They’re not very concerned with pleasing or living up to the standards God has set. Fewer and fewer of us are married and having kids, but of those who do, that marriage isn’t as permanent as it used to be. We may be constantly in contact with others online, but we see less of each other in person than ever before.

Thank you!

So-called "progressives" portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they are totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty.

Today's liberals, especially those who prefer the so-called term of, "progressives," with all of their domination of academia, Hollywood (DeNiro), and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:

"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)

Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their limited world view.

Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from crude hoes and axes to putting a man on the moon, and from oppression by King George to a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders.

If they were to be allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their posterity never will know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.

Now would be a good time for conservatives to read Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.

In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a strikinig resemblance to the players on the stage in American politics today who identify as "Progressives."

For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:

"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."

Yes, the pseudointellectuals and Hollywood types, as well as media, and much of Congress, fancy themselves "intellectuals."

By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, having no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.

America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for liberty.

It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).

Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of Progressives who recently had control of the Executive and Legislative branches of the government.

DeNiro and all of his fellows rely on what they must believe to be the ignorance of the American people when they make such ridiculous claims. They have been outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

1. It should read: ...till death us depart (i.e., ...till death depart us). The idiom has been garbled over time.

The word, us, is the objective case; if it were not, the phrase would be: ...till death we do part (i.e., we part, not, us part). Death is the subject of the verb depart, and us is the object, in the original phrase.

2. John Hawkins writes extensively about masculinity. While many of the issues raised are valid, his solutions are often lacking.

He recently posted a quiz to ostensibly determine if one were an Alpha or a Beta.

I took it and found it appallingly simplistic and stereotypic. To cut to the chase, by Hawkins’ estimation, the Lord Jesus Christ - as described in Scripture, and evaluated by this quiz - was a Beta male.

Absurd: The King of Kings is above all. But according to Hawkins, he just wasn’t enough of an arrogant, aggressive, kick-ass and take names, doesn’t give a shit what others think, kind of guy’s guy to be a Real Man.

Hawkins is what I call Three-Cee: a cookie-cutter conservative. I occasionally agree with some of his specific points, but I, as an ordained minister who has actually served in the church, bristle at his pretending ever to speak for conservative Christians.

Hawkins, like many so-called alpha males, is a jerk. (Matt Barber is another.) And I saw many of such refuse to do the moral, ethical thing in the church - because they were (despite pretense) afraid of potential damage to their reputations, because it required personal sacrifice, and because there was nothing in it for them. I frequently had to oppose them in good conscience.

The current concept of the alpha male focuses on physical courage, not moral courage.

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