Everywhere we turn, the country looks like it is falling apart. Crime is out of control. Millions of illegal immigrants are pouring across our borders. Our schools are more interested in cultivating gender dysphoria and a proclivity for porn in our children than in educating them. The press routinely censors the truth at the behest of the government, which also increasingly prosecutes (or opts not to) based on political party affiliation. In sport after sport, biological males who have decided to "identify" as female are taking awards away from actual biological women, and we're told that we must indulge their delusions.
Americans are asking themselves, how did we get here on earth? And even more urgently, how do we turn things around?
Most, if not all, the major societal problems we are confronting today are a direct result of abandoning the principles underpinning American culture. In fact, we have been guilt-tripped into abandoning them, and we are reaping the consequences.
The current immigration crisis is an example of this catastrophe.
It is estimated that between 6 and 10 million people have crossed the southern border of the United States since Joe Biden took office in January 2021. One of the lynchpins of American governance has been the rule of law -- the concept that our government fairly and uniformly enforces laws. Additionally, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are explicit that our government was instituted to protect Americans and our rights.
This administration has utterly abandoned both fundamental principles and millions of Americans are willing to let them get away with it.
But it's worse than that. The United States is a big country; we could probably absorb 10 million people. It isn't the raw numbers; it's the policies in place when the millions of migrants arrive. There was a time when immigrants were expected to assimilate, learn English, and support themselves and family members or other dependents via gainful employment -- to abide by our laws.
No more. Now, they pour across the border and receive free phones, welfare payments, housing and food, education, and health care, all courtesy of the American taxpayer. Those who import drugs and traffic women and children do so with impunity. There are disturbingly large numbers of drunk driving instances involving illegal immigrants, and in most cases the perpetrators have no insurance. When they commit violent crimes -- like the group that violently assaulted police officers in New York City last week -- they flip America the middle finger. Migrants who commit crimes know that they will be released in the unlikely event that they are arrested. If they happen to be tried and convicted, they won't be deported. If they are deported, nothing will happen if they return.
Why is this happening? We have been guilt-tripped into accepting that demanding integration into American society is insufficiently "multicultural" and that America is an exploitative nation that somehow "owes" the world's poor billions of dollars that must, therefore, be extracted from American taxpayers.
American schools provide more examples. Each week brings more amateur videos of violent behavior by students. Social media commentator Marina Medvin posted on X earlier this week a list of 53 Illinois schools at which no student -- not a single one -- was grade proficient in math. Most of them were in Chicago. These dismal results are not limited to Illinois by any means. Oregon recently eliminated the requirement that high school students be proficient in reading, English, and math in order to graduate. Many colleges have eliminated entrance exams.
Why is this happening? Because we have allowed ourselves to be guilt-tripped into believing that demanding appropriate behavior and insisting upon objective academic standards is "white privilege," and that we must expiate our collective guilt as a nation by excusing the violence and catastrophic failures permeating our schools.
In states like California, Illinois and New York, shoplifting has become epidemic. Flash mobs steal thousands of dollars' worth of inventory and are not prosecuted. Retailers across the country lost $112 billion just in 2022. Homelessness has been allowed to explode in our major cities, contributing to crime, disease and filth that would have been unimaginable in America just 20 or 30 years ago. Stores and other retail establishments are closing in the downtowns of major cities due to theft, crime and generally unlivable conditions.
Why is this happening? Because we have been guilt-tripped into believing that involuntary commitment of the mentally ill isn't "compassionate" and that enforcing shoplifting laws protecting property is "systemic racism."
Men now insist that they can become women -- and vice versa; minor children and staggering numbers of preteen and teenage girls with clear mental illness are being railroaded into chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation. Teachers think it is appropriate to discuss their sexual proclivities with grade-schoolers and expose them to pornography.
Why is this happening? Because Americans have been silenced by buzzwords like "cisprivilege," "heteronormative," and "transphobic."
Enough.
Suppose these crises have been facilitated by our silence and our willingness to be cowed into submission. In that case, they can be addressed when we refuse to be cowed, when we refuse to be silent, when we refuse to use the nonsense lingo that activists demand be injected into everyday parlance; when we stop apologizing for the sins and imperfections of those who lived generations ago; and when we vigorously defend the principles that represent the best of America.
Those principles built this country. Abandoning them will destroy it.
To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.