Many responded with great alarm to a recent survey commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and NBC news. Among people aged 55 and older, nearly 80 percent said that patriotism was very important compared with 42 percent of those aged 18-38. The number that says religion is very important fell by more than 50 percent. Two-thirds of the older group cited religion as very important compared to fewer than one-third of the younger group. Among the older group, 54 percent said that having children is very important compared to only 32 percent of the younger generation. Hence the American fertility rate is at an all-time low: 1,764.5 births per 1000 women; the replacement rate is 2.1.
One commentator noted that this is the result of leftist indoctrination on the college campus where religious faith, especially Christianity, is discredited and disdained, and where the United States is not explained as a great nation founded on great principles but flawed and making progress. Instead, students are presented with a nation born in racism, sexism and homophobia. (Of course, one has to ask which cultures before modernity practiced women’s equality and treated women better than the Christian West, or which cultures embraced homosexual relationships. Did Islamic cultures do so? Do they now? Of course, that is not the point. The point is to discredit the Christian West for the most part and America in particular).
Young adults are the product of an educational system that is destroying the historic national consensus on these three values. This is a far cry from historic education in America when teachers believed they were the transmitters of the important cultural values that were the national consensus. These values produced a coherent national identity. These values made progress possible, for progress is measured by the fulfilling these values or ideals. The loss of these values is destructive in the extreme. However, we are not without hope. In such a vacuum of meaning, there is potential for great revival. People can begin to feel the emptiness of it all.
The religious consensus of the United States was Judeo-Christian. Will Herberg, many decades ago, wrote well about this in his book Protestant, Christian and Jew. He noted that these three agreed on values making up a national consensus. First that there is a God who holds all accountable. This is reflected in the movie The Ten Commandments and the intermission comments by Cecil B. Demille. Such values as treating every person as an end in themselves, valued as created in the image of God, and revering marriage and family as the building block of the society. The Church and Synagogue were respected as foundational in reinforcing values that were necessary to a good society. Patriotism arose from the belief that the country was worthy of the sacrifice of its citizens because it was birthed in unique values of human worth, justice and freedom.
As we have noted in the past, those in charge of culture formation, the educators, especially in the universities, but public schools as well, and in the media in both entertainment and information, have for many years been conveying a deconstruction of all three. Why have a family if it is likely that the earth will not be able to sustain a worthwhile human life? Why have children since career and personal well-being is more important? Of course, the potential of a positive outcome in raising children is potentially one of the most fulfilling aspects of life. There is now a self-centeredness and an orientation toward materialism that simply does not desire the personal sacrifice. Yet, relationships are the meaning of life. The loss of faith and hope for the future lead to increased suicide for those whose goals are thwarted. The famous columnist, Cal Thomas, wrote a piece on this survey that I reviewed while I was still in the process of writing this. He emphasized the constant presence of media with young adults that does not give any sense that the good life is tied to these historic values and bemoaned that this will be a disaster for the nation. Who will be willing to sacrifice in war for a nation that is tribal and that does not have a common patriotism based on the worth of the nation?
As if this was not sufficient commentary, former Defense Secretary General James Mattis decried the state of the country as breaking up into a kind of tribalism with opposing identities that despise one another. The survival of the nation is dependent on a common identity that was based on the historic values noted herein. And how does this apply in Israel? We as well struggle with the secular orientations of self, though less so. The ultra-religious despise the secular and vice versa. There is also a deconstructing narrative from the left that undercuts patriotism in Israel. On the matter of patriotism, I have always argued for a guarded and more humble patriotism, not a chauvinistic one. Yet respect for the nation’s values and ideals where they are right and believing in those values and ideals and seeking to form a more perfect nation is a valid motivation. When a Messianic Jew looks at all this, it is clear that only a return to a biblical world view can reverse these terrible trends.