“It’s Still the Culture, Stupid” Sydney Williams
http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com
Just over a year and a half ago, June 8, 2020, I wrote a TOTD, “It’s the Culture Stupid.” It was two weeks after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. I wrote: “…the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to confront and arrest violent rioters and looters was wrong.” It is that failure to distinguish between right and wrong – a failure to punish wrongdoers and to reward virtue – that haunts our nation and its people. Driven by a sanctimonious and intolerant “woke” community, the situation has worsened over the past twenty months.
In 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy had entered recession in July-August 1990 but had recovered by the end of the first quarter of 1991. However, job creation lagged, so the recovery became known as the “jobless recovery.” Unemployment continued to rise into mid-year 1992, which provided Mr. Carville the opportunity to conceive a phrase recalled thirty years later.
What we face is more onerous. Economies go through booms and busts, while cultures are fundamental to who we are. A self-important, moralizing wokeism offers a new and different threat. Traditionally, our culture has been embedded in families – passed down from one generation to the next. It is confirmed in civil behavior, in our schools, churches and communities. It is institutionalized in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and reflected in Constitutional amendments. It has been enhanced as our country absorbed immigrants from all over the world. But the underlying rules and customs that allowed this country to survive and to thrive should persist – that we are all, no matter our race, ethnicity or gender, created equal and have equal protection under the law, that private property is protected, that we live in a nation of laws not men, that we should be judged by our character, not the color of our skin or gender, and that success is a function of merit, ability, effort and diligence, and that civility, respect and tolerance are necessary for a free, civil and democratic society to exist.
Wokeism threatens to undo this glue that has bound our nation. In schools, universities, museums, charities, businesses and even selections for the Supreme Court, wokeism makes judgements based on identity – racial, gender, ethnic – not merit or character. Its goal is to destroy traditional American culture. It claims that our nation is fundamentally racist, that its people are either victims or victimizers. It says that our founding was in 1619, when these colonies were part of the British Empire. It dismisses the concept of the nuclear family. It has led to lawlessness and the destruction of private property. It asserts that our planet is doomed unless we obey the liturgy of climate zealots. It ignores biological distinctions between men and women. It promotes equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. It argues that traits like hard work and adherence to the Golden Rule, are characteristics of white, male oppressors, so should be abandoned. It feeds on social media. Like totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Communism to Nazism, wokeism “is,” as Thomas Klingenstein wrote recently in The American Mind, “self-righteous and intolerant, built on lies and the silencing of those who challenge the lies.”
Today, we face many problems: We know that fatherless children are disadvantaged and that crime-infested cities make life more difficult, especially for the poor, yet little is done to address the former or to fix the latter. The nation’s debt is $30 trillion, or $90,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, a number that does not include even larger unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Low interest rates have mitigated the cost of that debt. But the inflation we experience will be addressed with higher interest rates, which will impact the cost of all debt – personal, corporate and government – thereby adding to the nation’s deficits. According to an October 22, 2021 article in The New York Times, illegal immigration in 2021 was the highest since at least 1960. A country that cannot, or will not, control its border is no longer a sovereign nation. We need immigrants to grow. We need their youth, their brains, their energy and enthusiasm, their desire to make a better life for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. But we need immigrants to enter the country legally. When undocumented, unvaccinated hordes enter, legal immigration is reduced.
Our future rests on the young, yet American public schools are failing in international tests. While dollars spent per public school student in the U.S. are second only to Luxembourg, the nation ranks 13th in reading and 38th in math, among 79 countries surveyed. A focus on identity studies has meant less time devoted to the basics, and to understanding our unique history and government. Wokeism has co-opted teachers’ unions, depriving poor and middle-class families of school choice. Violent crime, especially in inner cities, has been on the rise, and it cannot be solely blamed on COVID restrictions and mandates, though those have not helped. Following George Floyd’s death, protests turned violent. In Seattle, Antifa-affiliated activists seized control of a city neighborhood and, once the police withdrew, declared an “autonomous zone.” U.S. murder rates in 2020 were up 30% and rose further in 2021. Over 300 people are killed or wounded every day by firearms. The left sees the culprit in a proliferation of guns and in a culture that permits the owning of weapons. The right sees the culprit in a culture of disrespect, incivility and intolerance, in a failure to enforce rules of behavior, whether at home, in schools, or on the street – that the problem lies not with the weapon but with he or she who pulls the trigger.
This attack on our culture by those who foster “diversity, equity and inclusion” is an insidious undermining of the values that allowed this country to become the freest, most productive, richest nation on earth. It recalls the quote by C.S. Lewis, which heads this essay – that totalitarianism often rises from those who profess to do good, but who are intent on showing their virtue and empowering themselves. Respecting and protecting our culture should be our priority, lest we fall victim to this totalitarianism of do-gooders.
The inability to distinguish truth reflects poorly on today’s molders of character – teachers, community leaders, ministers, journalists, politicians, but especially parents. We are a multicultural society, but that does not mean each race, ethnicity, creed or individual can define right and wrong according to their personal beliefs. Words like honor, respect, tolerance and civility have universally accepted definitions. They cannot be defined according to a claimed cultural tradition, else anarchy rules. The killing of a young girl for the shame brought to her family is not an “honor killing.” It is murder. Looters rampaging through a suburban Minneapolis Best Buy store is not “redistribution.” It is theft. Chaos has become the new normal. As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote: “A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land.”
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