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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
America is now well into a “Celebration of Irrationality.”
As I’ve noted earlier, America has lost its moral center. For a few decades now, we’ve discarded the Judeo-Christian values, drawn from the Bible, that guided American culture from its formative colonial period. We tossed aside the values that helped to develop—for all America’s fits and faults and sins—the freest, most prosperous, most aspirational country in history. Our forebears created and bequeathed to us a country, based upon a public morality defined objectively by God, or natural law as some described it, providing citizens with ordered liberty, rule of law, and a fabulous Bill of Rights, a country capable of endless opportunity and growth.
But since the late 1960s, my adult lifetime actually, Americans began rejecting the timeless verities the Founders entrusted to us, replacing these precious ideals with nothing other than moral relativism, which is the very definition of “nothing.”
Now, we have almost nothing left. There’s no longer any “there there,” no philosophic glue holding our culture together. The rationale and values undergirding E pluribus unum, making unum possible, are disappearing, so pluribus is unleashed, undisciplined, and undefined—hence our growing inability to appreciate our heritage or even to define American identity.
If there’s no God or at least no objective, outside-ourselves standard, nothing that provides meaning and direction, nothing that makes order out of chaos, nothing that defines “good” and “evil,” then how do we decide what is right or wrong?
Do we even care what is right and wrong? Surely, we do not when it comes to abortion-on-demand. No longer is abortion to be “safe, legal, rare” but “unlimited.” In abortion there is no right/wrong calculus, just convenience, preference, or a personal situational ethic determined by “might makes right,” which is to say the Mother is mightier than the baby, so she gets to decide what is “right”…for her.
We’ve offloaded not only morality but the inconvenient truth of reason and rationality. In fact, we now culturally believe there is no “truth” other than what we subjectively want to believe. Don’t tell me about truth. I will be my own church, my own religion, my own god, and I will decide what is truth. We live now in a post-truth culture. And if indeed there really is no truth, who cares?
We do what is right in our own eyes, the laws of nature be hanged. Surely, this is the case with respect to “gender fluidity,” a term itself that makes no biological or historical sense, that is patently irrational yet is now one of the new sacred norms of Woke Culture. Laws of nature be hanged. We’ve developed 58 and counting (on Facebook) gender identities. In the UK, Facebook apparently needs 71 gender categories. No matter; we’ll determine our own “sexual orientation” and pursue whatever one we might devise. And this is limitless because no one is allowed or can say, “This is it”—and don’t forget the catch-all category, “Other,” added to cover the new gender identity developed tomorrow. No, we have LGBTQQIAAP or LGBTQ++, the pluses indicating an ad infinitum sexual proclivity run amok.
The US Supreme Court case Bostock vs Clayton County (2020), defined biological sex as understood in the 1964 Civil Rights laws as including sexual orientation and gender identity, and in so doing, unleashed a new wave of social disruption upon American culture. This case will result in confusion, chaos, and more lawsuits. And while Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion attempted to dampen fears of a clash with religious convictions and liberty, history suggests he is naïve and wrong, for this case has set in motion a collision course between the newly reinforced, legally protected categories, sexual orientation and gender identity, and religious liberty.
If we’ve thrown off moral guidance, reason and rationality defined by God, or even nature, in favor of a brave new world of our own making, then how do we live? There’s no meaning, and since no human being can actually function in this manner—we are after all, not Zombies…at least I don’t think so—we must fill the vacuum with something. Historically, the something that enters the hole in our heart is, inevitably, angst > disillusionment > despair > hopelessness > hate. It is nihilism come alive.
Human beings were created by God to be rational, reasoning, and relational, with God and with others. Nihilism leaves human beings alone, bereft, and adrift. They have no recourse but to hate everything around them including themselves.
Nihilistic behavior is visible in American culture. The Left, where nihilism flourishes (not Liberals, the Left, there’s a difference) is currently on a rampage exercising intolerance in the name of tolerance, silencing in the name of expression, mobocracy in the name of democracy, defaming, defacing, and destruction in the name of respect, violence in the name of peace. Tear down while virtue signaling and shaming anyone who dares to question your aberrant actions.
Meanwhile, irrationally, police departments are attacked and “defunded” as somehow the only source of racial animus in society, a claim that cannot be demonstrated with data. Yes, there is police brutality. Yes, there should be police practice reform. But No, police are not the number one or most threatening force destroying Black culture or taking Black lives—abortion is, along with the broken family, and so are a list of other cultural pathologies.
Mobs—now only ostensibly connected with any real pursuance of racial justice—are presently more influential in some cities than elected leaders. These mobs are using the language of race, civil rights, justice, but they are using the tools of racism, violence, and injustice. Naked force, a kind of newly constituted gang, is ruling what happens in streets and neighborhoods and if you’re a citizen nearby, get out of the way.
Nationwide vandalization of historic monuments have moved way past concerns for racial justice. The latter can’t explain defacement or destruction of Matthias Baldwin’s, an abolitionist, statue in Philadelphia, or the defacement of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in Boston, an all-Black group of Civil War Union soldiers, or the toppling of General and President U.S. Grant’s statue in California, the man who helped defeat the Confederacy.
Meanwhile, elected political leaders charged with the safety and security of their state, district, or city, incredibly, order police departments to stand down and not protect citizens from larcenous vandals. Why have politicians on both sides of the aisle, who just a couple of months ago willingly dictated unconstitutional behavior restrictions to American citizens to preserve public health, suddenly become so feckless in the face of lawlessness?
Remember, history teaches us mob rule is but a half-step away from tyranny. This is, to say the least, enormously concerning for the future of American democracy.
American culture is off its rails, celebrating irrationality. The question now, is it too late to change? Are we a bridge too far?
For Christians, there is still and always hope, for we know the Lord and we know the end of his-story. We do not, however, work with guarantees regarding American culture, nor its future, and America’s future is imperiled.
Irrationality is the very definition of crisis.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
America has lost its moral center, what sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger once called its “sacred canopy.” This is the culture’s understanding of public morality, once defined in the United States by a Judeo-Christian consensus. It’s what gives the culture purpose, direction, meaning, and hope.
As Judeo-Christian values are jettisoned one after another, nothing other than a rejection of absolutes is being put in their place, or in other words, nothing substantive or objective at all. No moorings. No port in the storm. No guiding light and certainly no metanarrative that defines the culture.
This has been happening since at least the rise of the counterculture revolution in the 1960s. “Make love, not war.” “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” While some of the changes since the 1960s have been good, like the rise and effective adoption of the Civil Rights Movement, other aspects of the cultural march to “Everyone doing what’s right in their own eyes” has been anything but good.
Add to the counterculture the rise of Postmodernity with its penchant for “freedom from” rather than “freedom to” across the spectrum of the academy and culture, wholly embraced by America’s opinion elites, and you have a recipe for moral relativism run amok.
Sexual freedom inevitably meant more pregnancies, and for women to be truly “in control of their own bodies,” well, then one must have abortion, which was legalized in Roe vs Wade (1973), to be followed inexorably by the spate of abortion-on-demand bills passing state legislatures in the last couple of years. The drug culture has kept expanding until now we have problems not only with illegal, super-charged narcotics like heroine, methamphetamine or crystal meth, and crack cocaine but problems with prescription drugs like opioids as well. Gay Rights plowed the field for what now is LGBTQ+ and a never-ending redefinition of humanity as long as it rejects “the binary” and thus continues to emphasize invented privacy rights at the expense of social order. Meanwhile, divorce and fatherless homes, sexual abuse and violence take a toll on each generation. To make an understatement, women struggle with sexual harassment and minorities with racism.
With this loss of center our sense of purpose, our ability to agree on right/wrong are gone, as is increasingly our national identity as a people, which we’re watching as centrifugal forces now vie to spin American culture into chaos. There’s no “unum” in E Pluribus Unum.
One of the heartening things in the wake of the tragic police killing of George Floyd May 25, 2020, is the peaceful protests we’ve seen in support of rightful change. One of the disheartening things we’ve seen in the wake of this tipping point is the lawlessness, anarchy, vandalism, violence, larceny, and general demands of a new “woke” culture that self-righteously seeks to silence or shame all who might disagree. Sadly, the latter in its vicious steam-rolling approach has almost overwhelmed the former.
This disintegration of order and democratic process has been painful to watch. And there’s not much hope of a brighter tomorrow because the many voices do not agree on even the most basic values. We have no sense of a unity to which we can aspire. It’s all now about power, a zero-sum calculus to gore the other side’s ox.
This is not an easy piece to write. It feels hopeless, and yet I am not hopeless because I believe in our Sovereign God. I believe in the timeless verities upon which this country was founded, and I believe for all our fits and faults we still offer much that our children and the world need. But our beacon at the moment is severely obscured.
God grant that we rediscover the importance of centering moral values before centrifugal forces pull us apart.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
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Call-out Culture America
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
In the new, emerging “call-out culture,” those with whom you disagree, or those who somehow make you uncomfortable, are ipso facto labeled dangerous and must be silenced or otherwise banished. Call-out culture, and its cousin, “cancel culture,” are a new scourge on the Body Politic.
In the call-out culture people regularly and publicly proclaim their bona-fides, i.e., “virtue-signaling,” within a given ideologically righteous group by attacking (calling out) others within, by definition, an ideologically unrighteous, therefore dangerous, group.
Call-out culture suddenly is the way to behave on social media. Have offense, will travel, will call-out. And it seems everyone is offended by everything. While there may indeed be wrong, even needlessly offensive behavior to which one should respond, there are ways to do it that does not turn into social toxicity. But this is not call-out culture.
Call-out culture is not about tolerance, though this concept is constantly referenced, but intolerance, particularly toward any idea and person defined as unacceptable or unworthy in this new pop worldview. Call-out culture intolerance, especially when it morphs to cancel culture, can be wielded in authoritarian if not totalitarian fashion. Freedom is not the first priority. Removing all offense to anyone and everyone’s feelings is the absolute goal, which requires silencing “insensitive” ideas—Who gets to decide what idea is offensive?— and even getting offenders removed from, among other places, faculty positions and speakers’ daises.
This self-righteous idea is one reason young people are now suffering record mental issues and are fearful, anxious, and unhappy. They’ve been taught to be offended, to believe their personal well-being hinges upon what others might say or do. They’ve been sold a bill of goods by misguided ideological pied pipers.
These social developments now have a grip on academia, politics, and Hollywood and in their worst forms amount to a direct threat to Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech, America’s fundamental distinctives. It’s not paranoia to say this is scary. It’s not exaggeration or overstatement to say these ideas and associated actions undermine and put at risk America as a free society.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
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America At A Crossroads
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
A 29:07 min video in which Os Guinness speaks to the challenges of American culture today. Thought-provoking and well worth your time.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
A 2:09 min video I recently recorded with Manna Media. About our angst at living in the worst of times, that maybe the world is imploding, and what if it is, or isn't?
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
*This video may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
What people born after the 1960s don’t know: How much culture has changed, or I could say, indeed how much it has changed in just my lifetime.
For example, during the week before Christmas, my wife and I watched a Perry Como Christmas music program first aired in 1975. In the latter part of the program Como introduced the Christmas story narrative and read it in entirety from the biblical book of Luke, saying it was his favorite story of all time because its message blessed all mankind with peace and hope and “because it is true.”
Think about whether an artist today would read the Christmas story at all on national television, much less claim it is true, or whether any entertainer would even use the word “truth” in reference to anything religious. This change in itself is an amazing and far-reaching shift in the moral/spiritual presuppositions of cultural philosophy just in a generation.
Another small example comes from ESPN’s “Good Morning Football.” The panel participants were talking about players wearing down late in the football season and a commentator used a Scripture paraphrase, i.e., “Spirit has to be willing when the body is weak.” Three others on the panel reacted immediately, “Wow, what a great quote” with raised hands and Woo-Woo hoots. The commentator who made the reference actually chair-danced. None of the four panelists seem to have a clue the paraphrase originated in the Bible. It’s like history books crediting the great Abraham Lincoln with originating the observation “A house divided against itself cannot stand," a notion from the Gospels familiar to Lincoln's audience but lost on 21st Century scholars.
Still another example from the Christmas season: It amazes me how many Christmas cards feature nothing or next to it about Christmas, i.e., lots of snow and red and green but not much else. OK, it’s a free country. But the really amazing part to me is how many ostensibly or avowedly Christian or church-related nonprofit organizations mail what amount to secular cards. Their cards feature no references to Scripture, the Christmas story in the Gospels, no pictures of the babe in the manger—which some people still use even if they don’t make reference to other religious words or symbolism. When I see these cards it always strikes me that these “Christian” organizations are missing a messaging opportunity.
Now these are just a few examples from the past Christmas season. We could list much more, including dramatic shifts, as alluded to above, in understanding what is objective truth yielding moral relativism, since 1973 the legalization and now expansion of abortion, the normalization and public promotion of LGBTQ followed by paradigm shifts in acceptance, then legalization, of same-sex marriage, since 1988 a steady legalization of commercial gambling including sports gambling in 2018, increasing complacency about debt along with a growing sense of entitlement, fatherless children, along with a decline in the importance of church in daily life with a parallel increase in secularization. More fundamental changes could be listed.
Of course, some positive changes can be listed too: greater awareness of women’s rights and potential, sensitivity to the needs and prospects of the poor, increased attention to opportunities for all races and ethnicities.
Ideas have consequences.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.