It’s not “culture war stuff”, as if that’s some trivial distraction. There is nothing more important than the moral character of the populace. All of the other issues flow from the national character. I keep having to repeat this for some reason, but this is precisely why John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Without a populace who are largely self-restrained by a moral code that is external to their own personal desire and whims, the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution become nothing more than a license for debauchery and evil. Nothing else matters if we don’t get the “culture war stuff” right, because the country will fail if the people don’t have the right moral character.
To try to trivialize national moral character and toss it aside, while instead focusing only on pragmatic issues is the epitome of “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” The country is sinking fast, not because tax rates are too high or because immigration policy is a wreck. Those are merely the symptoms. The disease is a populace that is so morally bankrupt that they can no longer govern themselves. All of the other pragmatic issues have occurred BECAUSE of that moral decline. If you want to fix taxes, or out of control spending, or wide open borders, etc., the only long term solution is to straighten out the people, whose out of whack values have caused all of those other problems.
To try to trivialize national moral character and toss it aside, while instead focusing only on pragmatic issues is the epitome of “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” The country is sinking fast, not because tax rates are too high or because immigration policy is a wreck. Those are merely the symptoms. The disease is a populace that is so morally bankrupt that they can no longer govern themselves. All of the other pragmatic issues have occurred BECAUSE of that moral decline. If you want to fix taxes, or out of control spending, or wide open borders, etc., the only long term solution is to straighten out the people, whose out of whack values have caused all of those other problems.
Great post. Thank you.
This is a great point, but in a political context it is completely backwards. Adams’ point holds up because the morality of the populace was the foundation of the law, not the other way around. People back then didn’t need the law or a political process to make them moral and upstanding. The law and political institutions reflected moral standards that already existed.
They don’t exist anymore, for the vast majority of our population. That’s why using a political process to fight these battles is futile.
Control the border, stop the inflation, get the oil pumping, and put people back to work, and you’ve started the country on the right track. If the Republicans take office again, they’ll move against wokeness, but the concern is that they’ll just shadowbox against it and not bother to fix other things. No politician is going to make us John Adams’s America again.