America is the greatest country on earth.
That is thankfully still true. But instead of comparing it with other nations, what if we compare it to its own ideals or history? I say this not to spoil the party but to help explain how it is that a boisterous MAGA movement can coincide with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
It seems incongruent until you look at the simultaneous rise of these polar opposites as the consequence of a bipartisan failure to address the concerns of Americans of all stripes.
Those of us with more yesterdays than tomorrows recall America’s bicentennial in 1976. I was a young man playing amateur baseball in small-town Iowa on a 100-degree Independence Day back then. Yet in so many ways it was a more refreshing, peaceful and (despite two years removed from a presidential resignation) cohesive-driven country than the one celebrating its semiquincentennial this July 4th.
Leaders of a “uniparty” can whistle by the graveyard all they want, but most folks know something’s amiss. Indeed, a more brutal assessment would analogize Nero — fiddling as the country burns.
Government schools indoctrinate — not educate — our children. Students are taught how to apologize for their heritage as NAEP test scores for reading and math hit all-time lows.
Our largest cities are doubling down on the same anarchist radicals who turned them into cesspools of homelessness, drug abuse, pollution and crime. Places once considered immune are now struggling for survival, “Denver has emptiest downtown in US and the rot is spreading,” according to a recent report.
Even beautiful Del Coronado beach in San Diego had to be abandoned due to the cross-border flow of 30 millions gallons a day of sewage from Tijuana.
When it comes to the “culture wars,” things look more like a nihilistic freak show. The unhinged orgy that is Pride Month celebrates with drag shows at City Hall while a gang of angry black lesbians target Caitlin Clark in a WNBA that has little regard for straight white woman.
The authorities do nothing, even though we’ve seen how dangerous the “identity politics” self-righteousness can get. Whether aimed at presidents or elementary students on the Annunciation Catholic School campus in Minneapolis.
It’s true, most Americans still cast ballots based on their own economic well-being. But the news there isn’t much better. We still enjoy a standard of living above that of our European World Cup visitors unaccustomed to air conditioning. But a skyrocketing cost of living has already priced the next generation out of the American Dream.
Nothing right now seems affordable in America 250. Not housing; not groceries; not health care or automobiles — let alone the cost to insure both. Even the price of the mobile device we’re addicted to is going up 20%. COVID was the coup de grâce — unless you think shutting down the economy and printing money has worked out well for Gen Z.
All in all, hardly a cause for celebration.
In fact, the growing disparity between old and young strikes at the heart of a vital American interest: upward mobility. The hope of living better than your parents — not in their basement.
For years, however, monthly job reports have shown healthcare and social assistance as the only sectors with substantial employment gains. Indicative of a society that no longer makes things but relies on a massive generational wealth transfer from those who once did to those who are now relegated to taking care of them.
But we forsake the young at our own peril. They are risk takers who occasionally see things we old folks miss. It is no coincidence the majority of the Founding Fathers were 45 years of age or younger when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
Maybe that’s what’s driving the “revolutionary” economics, I don’t know. What I do know is the calamity that has befallen those starting out in life can easily be laid at the doorstep of contemporary officeholders who cynically inflated the assets of their donors. The market’s hitting highs as median wealth declines.
Not that another hard turn left is the answer. For my entire adult life Democrats have been successfully inching the United States towards socialized medicine. But is there one person left outside the heavily subsidized “medical industrial complex” that thinks the Affordable Care Act is affordable?
Republicans were supposed to do something about that back in 2017 — right up until a vengeful John McCain (and a silly libertarian or two) derailed repealing and replacing Obamacare. Then they threw in the towel.
The GOP was also supposed to know the difference between free markets and the kind of crony capitalism so well represented on K Street. But I’m afraid both sides of the aisle have bet their careers on a quid pro quo based on unchecked globalism and a race to the bottom for a dwindling middle class.
Welfare checks subsidize immigrant Amazon labor while our highways buckle under the weight of over-the-road mega-semi-truck trailers delivering the goods. It’s having an impact on America’s “forgotten man.”
As one Washington insider put it, “increasing the number of workers in lower-skill labor markets puts downward pressure on wages. That dynamic coexisted with a long-term decline in labor-force participation among less-educated men, including a Brookings analysis showing a 4.4-point decline among prime-age men without a college degree between 2000 and 2015.”
It’s also having an impact on the federal fisc as an unsustainable $40 trillion national debt swells under the latest “budget deal.” Part of a series of bipartisan fiascos that discard spending caps for the sake of a $1.5 trillion Pentagon war budget that would make Dwight D. Eisenhower blush.
But wasn’t the whole point of America First to bring the troops home and guard the borders of our own nation that mines its own minerals, builds its own cars and employs its own citizens?
To be fair, there have been victories as witnessed by last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding the administration’s end to temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian nationals. Progress, though the ruling wasn’t in time for a Fort Myers mother brutally bludgeoned to death in broad daylight by an illegal alien from Haiti granted TPS by Joe Biden in 2023.
Or apparently with screwworm infestations migrating to Texas and a veritable narco-state operating in the Southwest. Nope, there’s another war to fight in the MidEast. Who cares if you work hard, play by the rules but still can’t get ahead, Cruz, Huckabee & Hannity are talking Old Testament “end times” here.
Something they’re counting on to scare you and empower them.
Nevertheless, a whole lot of independents are wondering who put former national security adviser John Bolton in charge of the GOP again. Yes, the very same John Bolton Trump dismissed in his first term for wanting a war with Iran so badly he was willing to mishandle classified documents to get it.
Maybe he got ‘em from Hillary Clinton’s email account? After all, they have a lot in common. Clinton Democrats go headlong into Bosnia, Syria and Libya while Bush Republicans practice “regime change” in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
Both seek to guarantee Ukraine just the way Chamberlain did Poland — as a tripwire for larger war. One that continues a century-old interventionist ideology that seeks to substitute faith with “the madness” of internationalism in immigration, culture and conquest.
“Regime change,” says Catholic apologist Frank Wright, “changed our regime [meaning the West] more than any other.” And it was “marketed to us as liberal democracy which we’ve been led to believe – deliberately because the system rules us by media – is the acme of human organization.”
Indeed, the reaction to orthodox Christians in Russia (including Vladimir Putin) chiding the West over its obsession of transgenderism during “gay pride month” is evidence. The academy pronounced Putin’s statement as an attack on “western values” and journalists were appalled. NBC NEWS decided it wouldn’t use the term ‘biological male’ without quotations.
But Al Jazeera’s the problem.
Exercising a tad more humility before lecturing others might enhance our credibility—at least until we aren’t paying exorbitant sums called property taxes to stay in our homes? Or until our own government quits using ‘state actors’ to censor us. Or an out of control “deep state” stops spying on Americans and lying to Congress.
Yes, even superpowers have limits, as we are finding out in the Strait of Hormuz. And it begs the question, “why do they hate us, anyway?” Something the leadership class doesn’t want to answer because it entertains the possibility that we might have, somewhere, sometime, done something wrong.
The first causality of tribalism is objectivity, at home or abroad. Two people can look at the same situation and depending on who they support (or who’s in office), things are either good or bad. Our present crisis, however, is bipartisan and we should be willing to say so.
For if anti-Americanism is a caustic criticism of our founding principles, then patriotism is the constructive criticism for failing to live up to them. Blind jingoism is the refusal to do either.
Jason Lewis is a former Minnesota Congressman and broadcast veteran. Prior to serving in the 115th Congress, Lewis hosted a talk radio program for over 25 years and has authored two books, Power Divided is Power Checked (2010) and Party Animal (2022). This article has been republished from the author’s Substack, which can be viewed here.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
