There are many values of the average conservative that used to be cornerstones of the United States. Our country was founded with religious ideals in mind, as explained by John Adams: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion….Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”. Americans used to be united by these shared cultural and societal values. However, those values changed when a counterculture arose in the late 1960s and 1970s. That counterculture attack was, and still is, due to the giant shift away from tradition in the U.S. This shift caused a push against the interconnected, foundational morals of the country, the roles of women in society, and the importance of family unity.
That counterculture attack was, and still is, due to the giant shift away from tradition in the U.S. This shift caused a push against the interconnected, foundational morals of the country, the roles of women in society, and the importance of family unity.
Today, it seems that the boundaries of that counterculture have been over-extended so much that it’s now the mainstream culture. The foundational morals of the U.S. were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, every single one of these values is now turned on its head. Justice and truth are overrun by political correctness and hypersensitivity. Sexual immorality is now the norm thanks to the third-wave feminism perpetuated by the legality and acceptance of abortion and divorce. And now politics are run based on identity, pushing the public (and even students here at U-M) to view others, not by their individual values and actions, but by their social groups.
This role of sexual immorality is yet another example of how the counterculture movement has turned the push for female equality into a social justice warrior petition. A good example of this is American society’s stance on sexual “liberation”, perfectly exemplified by the left-wing praise of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s Grammys Performance. When I watch this clip, it doesn’t make me feel “empowered” or “liberated.” It’s really quite disheartening to see how celebrities are teaching young girls and men that sexualizing women is supposed to be the same as empowering them. And, frankly, it’s rather disgusting to watch.
When I watch this clip, it doesn’t make me feel “empowered” or “liberated.” It’s really quite disheartening to see how celebrities are teaching young girls and men that sexualizing women is supposed to be the same as empowering them.
The counterculture against the unity of families has turned into a fluidity and acceptance of divorce, which is statistically one of the worst ways that children can be raised. The Black Lives Matter movement specifically stated in their charter that “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” Why? Because they believe it’s an American tradition that still points to white supremacy and a lack of community. It’s a traditional value to create strong nuclear families, and because of the shift away from tradition, we can see the same shift away from strong families. This causes children who are raised in single-parent households to be more likely to commit higher crimes and are more likely to live in poverty.
Overall, because of the shift away from traditional values, America has seen more division than it has in many years. People act as though traditions are wrong and should have never been, when they don’t think about the reasons those traditions were ever in place. I think most of that disrespect for tradition comes from the younger generations, who think they know better but, in reality, have lived the least amount of time. Therefore, they may not have the same wisdom or understanding of such traditions as older generations who lived through them. So, they try to change the traditions that they don’t understand, and the country is left in tatters.
