Paradocracy

The modern idea of ‘America’ starkly contrasts with its prior identity, just as the conventional ‘wisdom’ of the modern age betrays the wisdom of old. Indeed, the data bear this out in a multitude of ways.

First and foremost, the United States has undergone parallel shifts in religion and family structure over a relatively short period of time: whereas Christian identification was extraordinarily high in the mid-twentieth century (about 96 percent in the 1950s, per Gallup), it declined to roughly 90 percent by the early 1990s, falling to 78 percent in 2007, and dropping to about 62 percent by 2024, while the religiously unaffiliated rose to nearly 30 percent of adults (Pew Research Center; Gallup). Over the same period, divorce — which was rare before 1900 — rose steadily through the twentieth century, accelerated after the 1960s, and ultimately affected roughly one-third of ever-married Americans, before stabilizing somewhat more recently (U.S. Census Bureau; National Center for Family & Marriage Research).

Family structure also changed profoundly: whereas approximately 88 percent of children lived with two married biological parents in 1960, today only about two-thirds do, and when children living with a single parent or a parent and stepparent (i.e., blended families formed after divorce or remarriage) are combined, less than three-fourths of U.S. children now live in a household where both biological parents are married (U.S. Census Bureau; Pew Research Center).

In parallel, births outside of marriage rose from under 5 percent in 1960 to about 40 percent in recent decades (CDC National Center for Health Statistics). Taken together, long-run data from Pew, Gallup, the Census Bureau, and the CDC show a century-scale pattern in which declining Christian affiliation coincides with major increases in divorce, blended and single-parent family arrangements, and nonmarital childbearing in the United States — and all of this came at the same time that gang and ‘hip-hop’ culture began to redefine a significant part of American culture, just as media and technology have served to combine with ‘pop culture’ to form the basis of the dominant culture and to stand in where strong parents once did in transmitting values and instructing the youth. 

All of this, at least in part, has its roots in Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and, as we have seen, the emergence of gang and hip-hop culture which has, since that time, come to influence people’s attitudes, the public square, and the styles, demeanors, and decorum (or lack thereof) ubiquitous in public schools — where the infection metastasizes in a secular setting rife with moral corruption and moral relativism. 

Indeed, it is impossible to deny that hip-hop and gang culture have played a significant role in reshaping American norms — not merely reflecting social change, but actively directing it. What began as a genre has matured into a comprehensive cultural force: one which influences language, values, conduct, and identity. Its impact cannot be dismissed as marginal or symbolic; it has become formative. 

At the center of this influence is a systematic degradation of language. The routine use of slurs, profanity, dehumanizing expressions, and descriptions of violence is not accidental, nor is it inconsequential. Language is the medium through which moral boundaries are drawn and maintained; it is the means by which we view and make sense of the world and our circumstances. When speech becomes relentlessly coarse and contemptuous, it trains its users to think in equally crude terms. This erosion of linguistic discipline corresponds directly to an erosion of ethical restraint. A culture that abandons dignified speech cannot reasonably expect dignified behavior, and the escalation of violent crime attributable to these groups and the cultural decline of America’s urban centers tell the tale; outcomes specifically attributable to a culture under the influence of a genre and a kind of warped thought process which, absent strong father figures, comes to guide and cement the philosophies of the youth. 

Likewise, another equally significant aspect of this relatively new ‘culture’ is its glorification of criminality and violence. In much of hip-hop’s dominant messaging, violence is aestheticized and criminal behavior is elevated to a marker of power, authority, and authenticity. This is a kind of signaling by which the youth, and a whole culture, are brought together under a new ‘religion’ led by ‘artists’ who have an axe to grind — artists who have themselves done little more than to combine rhyme and rhythm with punchy lyrics, who have come to represent the new ‘wisdom’ of a demographic departing from its traditions and otherwise lacking instruction; a demographic that mistakes the coarseness and bravado for masculinity, and thus latches onto it as a substitute for the father figures they lack in their lives.

By repeatedly associating status, success, and respect with lawlessness, the culture normalizes behaviors that destabilize civil society. The predictable outcome is not empowerment, but fragmentation — rising crime, weakened communities, and an ever-deepening mistrust between citizens. The cultural dismissal of faith, education, and self-discipline further compounds the damage. These institutions historically functioned as mechanisms of moral formation and social continuity. Their replacement with a value system centered on impulse, image, and confrontation has produced neither liberation nor equality, but further division, disorientation and discontent. 

When education is ridiculed, faith is caricatured, and restraint is treated as weakness or submission, individuals are left without enduring frameworks for meaning or responsibility. The decline in manners and public conduct is not incidental; it is symptomatic. Civility requires self-restraint and a willingness to subordinate ego to truth, virtue, and order. Gang and hip-hop culture, by contrast, elevate performative dominance and perpetual confrontation, and a general coldness and indifference toward matters of intellect — those of truth, virtue, respect, and responsibility. The result is a public sphere marked by volatility rather than cooperation, aggression rather than discourse, crime rather than curiosity. 

As a consequence, these cultural dynamics have been etched into the physical and social landscape of America’s cities and urban centers, just like the graffiti that marks its progress; and they have, likewise, gradually crept into the lives and cultures of virtually all Americans, who cannot escape the consequences and the constant barrage of immoral messaging. 

Neighborhood deterioration, the collapse of trust, and the  decline of community are not mysteries. They follow logically from a culture that prizes intimidation over accountability and reputation over responsibility. When such values prevail, stability becomes impossible. 

Despite decades of political rhetoric celebrating “progress”, the results speak for themselves. Social cohesion has weakened, family structures have eroded, public safety has declined, and cultural standards have been lowered rather than elevated. To acknowledge this is not reactionary; it is empirical. A culture that normalizes degradation, excuses violence, and mocks virtue cannot sustain a healthy society. 

As a result, we have this mandate, for the sake of preserving what’s left of civilization and with the hope of restoring it: hip-hop and gang culture must be understood not as peripheral subcultures, but as central contributors to the infection and distortion of American cultural life. Political advances mean little — or nothing — when the underlying moral and cultural fabric continues to unravel. Progress in name, absent progress in character and conduct, has (as we have seen) produced outcomes that can only be described as catastrophic.

So, it is true: the ‘American identity’ has changed dramatically, along with its ideas, institutions, and ideologies. Modern-day America is, thus, a far cry from the genuine American values, traditions, and wisdom of the past — when men and women were more educated in practical affairs, family values, and useful trades (despite being less formally credentialed than modern counterparts), and when credentialism was not viewed as a substitute for virtue and wisdom.

The wisdom underlying ‘American liberty’ did not require every citizen to be a scholar, just as abstract philosophical understanding is not a prerequisite to wisdom; it was built cumulatively from centuries of knowledge, experimentation, and shared values, and applied effectively by pioneers, tinkerers, and polymaths of diverse backgrounds. Indeed, the very wisdom in the American form of government was in its appreciation of sovereignty and independence at the local level (and at the personal level, where the “consent of the governed” is derived), and what became the American form of limited and ‘republican’ government derived from a long list of lessons and concepts from throughout history: from ancient philosophers and English common law, to the scientific and learned perspectives of men from the Enlightenment era, from men like Locke and Montesquieu and Jefferson and simply some of the greatest minds and polymaths of their time. And yet, wisdom is not necessarily limited to the abstract, the scholastic, or the worldly; indeed, in the past, where such intangibles as ‘wisdom’ and ‘sacred honor’ remained a priority, much of it was practical, domestic, and learned through experience — used by people in managing their own families, farms, households, trades, and communities. Even the contentious institution of slavery touches this point: only a small percentage of American families ever owned slaves, and the vast majority of Americans had little to no direct contact with it, and with the distance between communities, most Americans focused on their own immediate needs, their own families, their own faiths, and that which remained in their proximity and pertained to their own livelihood. The presence of slavery (an institution practiced worldwide and not itself unique to Americans) does not negate the fact that ordinary Americans still exercised practical wisdom in their lives, in ways essential to the functioning of their families and communities; and all of this is worth mentioning precisely because it is brought up everywhere to disparage America and to discredit ‘Americans’ who are proud of their country’s history (and who have good reason to be), but (of course) they are disparaged primarily because America has proved itself so successful, so abundant, and so appealing to all the people of the world — to the extent that it remains home to the largest number immigrants the world over. 

The irony in modern talking points is striking: America and its patriotic citizenry are often (erroneously) labeled as ‘racist’, ‘nationalistic’ or even ‘fascist’, yet America remains the number one destination for immigrants worldwide. In the United States, immigrants can become full citizens, enjoying every right enjoyed by those citizens born in America: they can own property and even hold public office. Meanwhile, many of the countries people are leaving explicitly prioritize native-born citizens in their constitutions and restrict land ownership or political power to those born there. If anything, America is one of the most inclusive countries on earth — despite the narrative constantly suggesting otherwise.

As for the wisdom once practiced and once held in high regard, it may even be said that their practical wisdom was tested more consistently, and that ignorance (or one’s betrayal of said wisdom) often came at a more direct and immediate cost. America has since departed from wisdom to instead raise children not as enterprising thinkers or tinkerers, not as pious or devoted members of family or community, but in the new form of the collective and in the new practice of public schooling; and it is a country which has since lost its identity to political propaganda, at the altar of that which is termed ‘multiculturalism’, ‘tolerance’ and ‘political correctness’.

Whereas men and women in modern times live cushy lives insulated or otherwise distanced from the consequences of their ignorance (where they even concern themselves at all with such remote and academic matters as ‘wisdom’), those of the past often paid noticeable and steep prices for any lack of discipline or lapse of judgment; for those of the past, ‘wisdom’ was far more than lofty abstractions or a matter of preference or status, but rather took the form of useful, tested, and often hard-won lessons applied not only as a matter of principle, but for predictable results. It is in the departure from nature and from rural life into the cities and into the purely academic that we have seen such a stark contrast between forms of ‘wisdom’, and such a rapid departure of the first into the second; and it is through this same trend that there has developed a distinct inability of so many modern academics and city dwellers to appreciate the ‘wisdom’ of the past, or the ‘wisdom’ of more ‘simple’ living.

Modern trends and social changes — whether in religion, family, education, or social norms — do not erase historical realities, nor do they necessarily overrule the merits of once-cherished bits of wisdom; and they do not negate the great achievements of prior generations (often underestimated, overlooked, misunderstood, and under-appreciated) that were doubtless achieved through the wisdom and resources of each person in his time. Where any scoffs at those of the past, he slanders them with the benefit of all that he has inherited because of them; he likewise spits on them as he stands on their shoulders.

Additionally, historical patterns of immigration illustrate the difference between past and present immigration to America — another key distinction in the identity of ‘Americans’. Many immigrants of previous generations became self-reliant ‘architects of their own future’, learning trades, integrating into communities, and contributing significantly to American economic and civic life without reliance on public assistance. There was such a noted urge to assimilate among prior generations that stories abound of splendid patriotic feelings, of migrants crying at the sight of the Statue of Liberty, of men seeking to ‘serve their country’ upon stepping foot upon their new homeland.

Modern immigrants, on the other hand, distinctly lack this quality and more often refuse to assimilate. What’s more, far from the prior state of coming ashore as the ‘architects of their own future’ to harness the American mindset of the ‘rugged individual’, data indicate that modern immigrants are statistically more likely to participate in welfare programs and oppose traditional American values through their voting preferences, and they are far less likely to assimilate than prior waves of immigrants — a measurable contrast to the self-sufficient and assimilating immigrants of earlier generations. This is not necessarily a judgment of each individual, as there are rare exceptions, but it is a factual observation relevant to understanding the changing social and civic landscape, and one which is particularly relevant and useful when judging the wisdom of a people on the whole (or on balance).

These are among the social changes shaping modern America, and part of what has come to define the idea of the ‘modern American’, in stark contrast to what is otherwise regarded as the true or traditional ‘American’, who is either a relic of a bygone era or a specimen today being squeezed out of existence.

What so few Americans realize is that all of this has been part of the program for generations. Quite literally, this squeezing out of American culture — and the destruction of “the cause of mankind” — has been underway in earnest for decades, under various names purporting to advance numerous causes, but ultimately bringing about the collapse of America, the erasure of its identity and the burial of its wisdom. 

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For instance, the average Leftist points to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (one facet of the program) as if it marked some kind of achievement; and for the Leftist, it does. He or she points to it with satisfaction or, otherwise, complete obliviousness to the fact that the greatest problems in America today — problems that are specifically measurable — can be traced directly back to the reforms that took place under the banner of the Great Society. It is no mere coincidence that the nuclear family, America’s great cities, and the economy suffered enormously as a consequence. It is refreshing to see, over time, the precious few faces of people understanding and courageous enough to speak plainly of this. The others who are criticizing America are generally only criticizing a narrow set of problems, and ones framed just so, almost always to the advantage of the establishment, or the state; they are the ones who are following orders, parroting other sources, and piling on where they know they are unlikely to be met with much resistance. After all, it’s been shown to be a safe strategy, as Americans — specifically Christians, who are called to “love thy enemy” — have time and again been proven to be among the most tolerant and self-critical of people in the world: attitudes carried by the ones who fled persecution, and attitudes transcribed onto the pages of the people’s Bill of Rights. That is why we seldom see the malcontents dealing with the fact that North Africa’s Barbary Coast pirates alone captured and enslaved at least a million Europeans from 1500 to 1800, carrying more Europeans into bondage in North Africa than there were Africans brought into bondage to the United States and to the American colonies from which the United States formed. “Moreover,” writes Thomas Sowell in his 2007 work Economic Facts and Fallacies, “Europeans were still being bought and sold in the slave markets of the Islamic world, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”

Ultimately, Sowell captured the truth of the matter:

“Despite widespread misconceptions in the United States today that the institution of slavery was based on race, for most of the thousands of years in which slavery existed around the world, it was based on whoever was vulnerable to enslavement and within striking distance. Thus Europeans enslaved other Europeans, just as Asians enslaved other Asians and Africans enslaved other Africans, while Polynesians enslaved other Polynesians and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The very word ‘slave’ derived from the word for Slavs, who were enslaved by fellow Europeans for centuries before Africans began to be brought in chains to the Western Hemisphere. Africans were not singled out by a race for ownership by Europeans, they were resorted to after the rise of nation-states with armies and navies in other parts of the world which reduced the number of places that could be raided for slaves without great costs and risks. Slave-raiding continued in Africa, primarily by Africans enslaving other Africans and then, in West Africa, selling some of their slaves to whites to take to the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the growing range of ships and the growing wealth of nations eventually made economically feasible the transportation of vast numbers of slaves from one continent to another, creating racial differences between the enslaved and their owners as a dominant pattern in the Western Hemisphere. Such a pattern was by no means limited to Europeans owning non-Europeans, however. There were many examples of the reverse, quite aside from vast regions of the earth where neither the slaves nor their owners were either black or white.” 

Despite these facts, we seldom see the malcontents acknowledging the context or admonishing any of the other countries across the globe, much less attacking countries where institutions like slavery are alive and well: countries primarily African or Muslim which are not so welcoming, receptive, self-critical, or tolerant, which elude scrutiny as the activists continue burning the American flag and spitting on the graves — or toppling the monuments — of those who helped to build the country that is home to the largest number of immigrants in the entire world; the country that established the precedent by which human rights are regarded as having been inherited by God, not granted by government. And remember, a country is found in its people, not in the government that they tolerate or suffer; and a true patriot is always prepared to defend his country against his government, especially where that government foments division and invites newcomers (and sponsors or subsidizes their causes) at the expense of the citizens, their culture, their heritage, their way of life, and the congenial qualities that otherwise maintain harmony and trust in any society. 

As for the people who condemn America as a country of the unwise, they apparently don’t see what they are actually condemning — not just an immigrant society but the failure of their own preferred political programs and policies. 

As for judging a people based on the misconduct of their government, the truth is that the federal government has grown so large and so powerful that it is generally unrestrained by and unaccountable to the public whom it purports to represent. In fact, most Americans have come to feel disconnected from and distrusting of their government; they have likewise grown numb to politics and generally aim to steer clear of the morass, knowing that they are highly unlikely to succeed in their efforts to reason with the clamorous mob or the institutions that have the backing of the establishment, the status quo, and near-infinite resources on their side. 

For this reason, the relative few who create the noise often do so with the approval (and sponsorship) of some segment of the establishment, and they are met with precious little resistance and instead are met with fellow noise-makers; and in this way the noise-makers come to believe that they are right where they are, in fact, left alone (for the most part) because reasonable people simply elect to avoid them. They, in this case, are willing to say outright, or to otherwise support others suggesting or stating it, that America is a country of imbeciles — all without a shred of evidence, all sweeping generalizations, and all oblivious to the fact that to denounce as unwise a country of hundreds of millions is to forget the fact that America is an immigrant society, that significant differences in IQ are observable between groups, and that such a broad generalization about such a massive country is like claiming that every member of the Manhattan Project was a certified genius, or that every person conscripted into service or hired to serve ends unknown within that project was likewise culpable in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

America being home to the largest number of immigrants, home to some of the greatest ideas, institutions, inventions and innovations the world has ever seen, and home to the mapmakers of the vision which birthed the modern incarnation of Western civilization, it is a country worth celebrating; and while America has been a country long in decline because of the abuse it has suffered and the ideas and institutions that have distorted it, it has nonetheless been a country that has done more for the cause of individual liberty, for economic opportunity and mobility, and for the welfare of mankind, than any other country in the world. 

Those who don’t appreciate that fact, or who refuse to do so, are either uneducated on the matter or compromised, serving an ulterior motive — in most cases, they are bored, unsatisfied with their lives, and voicing their discontent with their stations in life, hoping and praying for destruction so that still others will share in their misery. It is true: one of the most important and insightful aspects of any person is his worldview. It is confession by projection. Never underestimate the will or want of others to bring misery or destruction upon their fellow man; never underestimate the fact that some people desperately want the world to end, and the end of Western civilization might as well be just that.