What Evidence Shows the Progressive Attack on Essential American Values?

             The liberty principle for this week is the fight to protect essential American values of faith and family from the relentless attacks by the progressive left. These two basic values are “essential pillars that serve as true stabilizing factors in any society” according to Timothy Goeglein and Craig Osten at The Daily Signal. 

            The nuclear family has been under attack for many years. The attacks started in the late 1950s and increased in the 1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed The Great Society on the American people. Possibly the most devastating part of this program was the government usurping the responsibility of fathers to provide for their children. When mothers could receive more money from the government if they had no husband in the home, women were less motivated to marry. This led to generation after generation of families on welfare and children reared without a father in the home. Legalized abortion and no-fault divorce further devastated the family. The attack continued with the fight for and the passing of the same-sex marriage law. We recently learned that part of the mission of the Black Lives Matter movement is to destroy the nuclear family.

            The attacks on faith came out in the open during the COVID-19 crises. Mayors that banned drive through church meetings but allowed drive through restaurants and bars made the news. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has been relentless in his attacks on churches. He even told church members that they could not sing during their worship services. Nevada allows casinos to open but keeps churches shuttered. Rioters in Portland, Oregon, started burning Bibles along with American flags last week. Black Lives Matter spokespersons say that white churches must go. Medical personnel are persecuted for refusing to perform abortions, while florists, bakers, and others are sued for not providing services for same-sex marriages because of religious objections.

            So, why is the attack on faith and family so devastating? When social justice is substituted for absolute truth, it “left a spiritual vacuum” the progressives filled with governmental solutions. Society could no longer thrive because it lost “the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.” Goeglein and Osten explained as follows.

Thus, once the pillars of faith and the family were weakened, the rest of the house started to collapse, just as Abraham Lincoln warned the nation in 1858 that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

With the gap that was left by the removal of these two pillars of faith and family, progressives were able to introduce policies that destabilized rather than stabilized society. One such policy: encouraging single parenting, which has led to the tragic loss of fathers – an essential individual in every child’s life – in ever-increasing numbers.

Progressives attacked religious freedom and the role churches play in creating a “safety net” that government never could – by feeding both the body and the soul.

Much of the current out-of-control government spending is tied to government takeover and destruction of both these institutions, which taught self-reliance and personal responsibility….

The breakdown of the family has been a primary factor in the societal chaos we are experiencing. It has led to massive government spending that enables the very behaviors that continue a cycle of despair and destabilization.

The decreased role of faith has led to the breakdown of community, neighbors helping neighbors, and the other societal supports that government cannot recreate but tries to – again through more massive spending, which only perpetuates problems instead of solving them.

The disregard for – and eventual mocking of – religious faith and the values of selflessness and personal responsibility it instills have led to a nation that values its privileges over its principles….

… [B]oth family and faith go to the essence of what makes a healthy society. A functional, healthy family provides for and equips the next generation to be self-reliant citizens, not dependent upon government programs for their sustenance. It provides the next generation with the tools and the confidence to succeed in life.

            In a healthy family, boys grow up “with a strong father as a role model – a father who leads by example of how to love his wife, shepherd his children, and make sacrifices that benefit both.” In such a family, girls grow up knowing “what it is to be valued and loved by a man [who] will make good decisions regarding future relationships.” Such families teach children how to be self-reliant and without need for “government intrusion and taxpayer support.”

            The family and the church “provide a moral framework that teaches that all people are worthy of dignity and respect” because they are created “in the image of God.” Our Founding Fathers knew and wrote that “only a moral, righteous, and virtuous people can be free.” The authors close their article with this note of hope and instruction.

If future generations are going to enjoy the freedoms we have cherished, we must return to the moral framework that made these freedoms possible in the first place. Once that moral foundation is rebuilt, America’s house once again can stand strong, united against any storm it may face.

            I would very much like to rebuild the moral foundation of America because I want my grandchildren to live in a land of freedom and opportunity. However, I do not have much hope that it can be accomplished. I recognize that there are many forces in the nation seeking to bring down our constitutional and American way of life, and I know that some of those forces are in the educational institutions of our country. From the time the rising generation enters kindergarten until they graduate from the university, they are inundated with progressive ideas. These ideas build on one another until parents wake up one day to realize that their child has become a socialist or communist.

My children graduated from high school 15-30 years ago, and I believe that they had somewhat “normal” teachers. Yet, I am often shocked at some of the things that I hear from them. It seems that most of them would rather vote for socialism than for Donald Trump. If children are hearing socialistic ideas from their parents as well as from teachers and professors, there is no hope for rebuilding the moral foundation of America.

My hope for my grandchildren is the fact that they are all being reared in homes where they are taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, self-reliance, and personal responsibility. I hope that they are also learning about the Constitution and constitutional principles. I encourage all parents to help in the rebuilding of a moral America by teaching their children about the American way of life and how to safeguard it. Without faith, family, and freedom, America will continue circling the slippery slope until there is no return to the America that I love.