The signs are everywhere. Today, every distinctive value upon which the United States of America was founded is in dire jeopardy.

According to a Pew Research Center study, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem hate speech. Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 agreed that offensive statements “should be outlawed.”

According to a series of Harvard University polls, about 47 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that food, shelter and health care “are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them.” That means that nearly half our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life¹s basic necessities. Many have made it a profession to live off what government provides. They have no desire to work or to improve their lot. It’s no wonder our country is over $18 trillion in debt and teeters on the edge of economic collapse!

More than half of 18- to 29-year-old Americans do not support capitalism, the source of the prosperity they enjoy, and the ONLY economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.

Today, when young Americans are shown pictures of our founding fathers, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history — they see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled as “privileged”) and owned slaves.

Today, the belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based — a view held by every American founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history (until recently) — is reviled outside of conservative religious circles, and held by fewer and fewer Americans.

The view that male and female are distinctive identities — one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history — is being obliterated through obfuscation. Simply saying that one believes (all things being equal) a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother will ensure you¹ll be considered a “hater.”

The ideas that America should be a melting pot, or that all Americans should identify as American, are now unutterable in educated company. In fact, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campuses because some students regard it as offensive and representational of imperialism and capitalism.

In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay, decline or disarray.

Today, religious institutions, which, for most of American history, have been the most important institutions in everyday American life, are being rendered more and more irrelevant, and a larger number of Americans, many more than ever before, do not identify with any religion whatsoever. Many ministers and pastors no longer preach against the wages of sin for fear of stepping on too many toes. They’ve been muzzled as a result of social, political and multicultural coercion.

The traditional family has become nothing more than one of many options open to Americans. For the first time in American history there are more unmarried than married women. The number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data shows just 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960. Additionally, more than 40 percent of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women that percentage is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71 percent.

Colleges and universities (outside the natural sciences and mathematics) have become intellectual frauds with insatiable appetites for more and more increasing costs in tuition. Yet, at the same time, they continue to do their best to reduce the number of professors on staff by having them teach more classes or by hiring adjunct teachers so they don’t have to pay for full-time employees and accompanying benefits. Students are getting short-changed in the long run as a result. They (or more than ever,  their parents) are paying through the nose and are being saddled with tremendous debt as the proverbial carrot of a diploma is stretched farther and farther beyond their reach. They’re not being taught of the importance of thinking independently or the importance of an individual being the best that he or she could be anymore. They’re being indoctrinated — funneled and herded like lemmings towards a so-called New World Order. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens wrote recently, “American academia is, by and large, idiotic.”

The arts are as fraudulent as academia. A lot of artistic standards have been destroyed. In music, art, architecture and other forms of expression, nonsense and ugliness have replaced the pursuit of meaning, edification and beauty. The scatological have replaced the noble.

From reading and watching various news sources over the past 10 years, it seems our national, a lot of state and many city governments have largely engaged in Ponzi-scheme-like practices, racking up levels of debt that will crush the economy of the country sooner or later. The size of the federal government, and its far-reaching meddling in and control over Americans’ lives, is one of the very things America was founded to avoid.

I will not end on a happy note because, quite frankly, there aren’t any.

Sam Morgan lives in Salisbury.

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