August 26, 2021

Does America Still Work?

We are seeing the consequences of what happens when premodern tribalism absorbs Americans.

For nearly two years, Americans have engaged in a great woke experiment of cannibalizing themselves. American civilization has invested massive labor, capital and time in an effort to constantly flagellate itself for not being perfect.

Yet America’s resilience and its resources are not infinite. We are now beginning to see the consequences of what happens when premodern tribalism absorbs Americans.

There are repercussions when ideology governs policy or when we take for granted the basics of life to pursue its trappings.

Who cares whether the blow-dried media is woke if it cannot report the truth and keep politicians honest? Once journalists became progressive poodles rather than the watchdogs of government, the Biden administration had no fear of audit. It took for granted that its disasters, from the southern border to the chaos in Afghanistan, would be excused by toady reporters.

Government-engineered “equity” has replaced the goal of equal opportunity. But such utopianism births popular anger when personal initiative, excellence and performance do not count as much as virtue-signaling groupthink.

The United States just suffered a terrible and shameful defeat in Afghanistan. The catastrophe reminds us that the Biden administration had its politicized military and bureaucracy mostly fixate on diversity, equity and inclusion, and to root out supposed internal enemies.

So, our top brass and functionaries talked of redirecting the military to every possible woke agenda — except ensuring military superiority and the safety of the United States.

The result is the horrific mess of a premodern Taliban army routing the most sophisticated military in the history of civilization. We shudder when America begs premodern tribes not to murder our citizens whom we abandoned in full retreat.

Airline CEOs virtue-signal their wokeness by damning voter ID laws — though such identification is required to board their airplanes. The new normal for U.S. airlines is woke delays, woke cancellations, and woke anarchy in the skies.

Some universities now subject their admissions, their hiring and their research to race and gender directives. There is less concern about the collective student debt of $1.7 trillion. College students may graduate woke, but they do so with far less impressive reading and writing skills than their less politically correct predecessors a half-century ago.

Are college administrators really so virtuous when they boast of improving diversity, equity and inclusion? Why, then, do they ignore indebted and poorly educated graduates — veritable serfs who cannot afford homes, put off raising families and prolong their adolescence rather than becoming autonomous citizens?

We know from centuries past which policies ensure public safety and which guarantee crime. All laws must be enforced equally. Yet now, suicidal legal and critical race theories sometimes govern which laws are enforced and which are ignored.

If a state attorney prosecutes crimes — or chooses not to prosecute them — on the basis of ideology and race rather than on questions of impartial law, then who would obey, much less honor any of them?

The police must not just be monitored, but respected and supported. Today they are defamed and defunded. If those who commit crimes do not expect to be arrested and punished, then crime pays. And so we get more of it.

Cries to empty the jails and prisons and pull back on police might sound neat on Twitter. But lots of innocent Americans will suffer the deadly consequences of someone else’s virtue-signaling.

Before a country can conduct cancer research, explore outer space or defeat its enemies thousands of miles away, its citizens must have access to affordable fuel, food and shelter.

But ideologues now restrict irrigation water, gasoline supplies, power generation and timber production. They may seem woke and enlightened to each other, but they are indifferent to the exorbitant cost of living, the growing shortages of necessities, and the hundreds of thousands of homeless living amid filth, excrement and disease on the nation’s urban sidewalks.

Social media fights, the cancel culture wars between celebrities and elites, the virtue-signaling of academics and actors — all of it means nothing if Americans do not have safe roads; viable travel; affordable gas, food and housing; and safety in their homes.

Increasingly, they do not have these things. Woke leaders are losing the ability to do the hard and essential work of civilization, largely because they are obsessed with the dispensable.

We live in a world of cellphones, Skype and Zoom. But high tech has become a mere veneer pasted over medieval urban streets and Depression-era highways. It is more dangerous to walk the nighttime streets of Chicago than those of war-torn Kabul.

Until our officials can ensure a humane and sustainable standard of living, we have no business lecturing others abroad, much less conducting endless witch hunts of our own at home.

©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.