Commentary
Trust in America is near an all-time low, and so is the rule of law. That’s no coincidence. It’s part of a long, downward trajectory in American politics and culture that started with the premise that there is no truth.
When Trust Was High, Crime Was Low
There once was a time in America when most communities were pretty safe. People didn’t always lock their doors at night or turn off their cars while they popped into a convenience store for a six-pack of Coke. You looked after your neighbors’ kids just as they looked after yours.This was, in large measure, because people rightly assumed that they shared most, if not all, of the same values as their community. Kids were all raised with prayer in class and the Ten Commandments on the wall—in public schools. The result was that on a broad societal level, people largely trusted each other to do the right thing. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited every morning, reinforcing the national identity of Americans, which was, literally, “One nation under God.” Those who didn’t believe in a deity still benefitted from the generally held premises of law and order and the relative goodness of America.
Kids were taught right from wrong in school and in the neighborhood, and they generally internalized those values—at least until they entered college. That’s not to say that it was a perfect world; it certainly wasn’t. There was crime, of course, but the degree and level of social acceptance of criminal behavior 40 or 50 years ago was a mere fraction of what it is today.
The Rise of Lawlessness
Nowadays, in any given urban or even suburban area, groups of people routinely walk into stores, fill their arms—if not shopping carts—full of merchandise, and walk out the door without paying for any of it. If an employee tries to stop a theft, likely as not, that employee will be disciplined or even fired for their effort. In some instances, the offenders—and those in office who support them—even justify their theft by portraying it as an act of getting what they’re owed by society for grievances of the past.What’s going on in American society, and why is it happening now? What’s behind the lawlessness that we’re seeing throughout the country?
The Fractured States of America
The short answer is that American society is breaking, fracturing into something less than it was before. We’re seeing the disassembling of the peoples of the formerly United States of America play out before our very eyes every day.That’s because the norms of our society are now upside down. What were once commonly held values are now viewed as a threat to society. What used to be called psychopathic behavior, also known as lawlessness, is becoming commonplace in America. As a result, trust in our institutions, in our leaders, in the media, and in our fellow Americans is lower than in living memory.
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Why is that?
Without Truth, There’s No Trust
The reason is largely attributable to the rejection of any sort of transcendental truth by our academic, political, and cultural institutions. The leftists who dominate those institutions have replaced the source of truth of the Founding Fathers, i.e., the Bible, with a relativist paradigm based on Marx’s concepts of power and class struggle. The story of America as a nation built by people with a hunger for freedom, individualism, and a belief in God has been replaced with the false narrative that anyone who has succeeded did so at the expense of those who have less.That transition alone goes a long way in explaining and encouraging the lawlessness that we’re now witnessing in every large city in the country. For example, California law all but eliminates the prosecution of theft if the losses don’t exceed $950. This puts the law in favor of the criminals and puts the law-abiding citizens at their mercy, of which there is none.
The Zero-Trust Society
But it’s not just conservatives who see the zero-trust society that’s emerging in America.Leftist observers point out that “the destruction of the common good” is rapidly leading to a zero-trust society. Even hardcore leftists such as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a professor at Berkeley, in his book, “The Common Good,” talks about the “trust crisis” in America.
The great irony is that Mr. Reich and his cohorts blame the destruction of trust in America on Richard Nixon’s Watergate escapades and fail to place the blame where it firmly belongs: with leftists in academia and, of course, in the White House and Congress. They used whatever abuses President Nixon may or may not have committed as a reason to discredit, debase, and discard traditional American conservative values in the national culture.
Their prescription for “saving” the common good is to prioritize it over the individual good and to replace or co-opt big corporations with an even bigger government, with greater power over every citizen, which is really Marxism dressed in a nice suit.
Traditional Values Now a Threat
Furthermore, Mr. Reich’s perspective of the trust crisis is from the other side of the trust chasm. It’s apparent to him that much of America is now alienated from the very government that is supposed to serve us.Today, it’s those Americans with traditional values who are considered the radicals. It’s the “superstitious” religious Americans who supposedly don’t believe in science who are the threat to the country today.
But it was the “Neiman Marxists” in the halls of academia who deconstructed the values, beliefs, and traditions of American society and redefined them as all that was wrong, evil, and detestable about America. The institutionalization of critical race theory in our schools and universities is a great and terrible example of the left’s drive to redefine reality as a construct of white supremacy, among other falsehoods, just as the 1619 Project seeks to delegitimize the very foundations of America with its Marxist and racist re-contextualization of history.
It was and remains the Marxists in government and academia who have promoted and celebrated the rising power of the state over the liberty of the individual citizen, compelling them to accept the secular edicts and anti-religious diktats of a relatively small cluster of ideological zealots in places of power and influence—all for “the common good.” Again, Marxist collectivism by any other name.
As people see those in power enriching themselves without legal consequences, the public isn’t demanding a return to law and order. Rather, they’re demanding a piece of that action—and they’re getting it.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
