More recent cultural shifts around gender identification and the push for transgender rights represent a profound change in society that has led to battles over medical procedures for minors and public school policy. For example, former President Biden proclaimed that Easter Sunday 2024 was also the 2024 Transgender Day of Visibility. He declared to the transgender community: “You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.” That this “Day” also occurred on Easter Sunday provoked outrage and anger—understandably. Arguably quite political in nature, Biden’s proclamation backfired and further eroded the legitimacy of the transgender revolution.

In 1958, political theorist, Isaiah Berlin, delivered a lecture entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty,” which established two strands of thought on the concept of freedom.

Jordan Peterson is a cultural phenomenon. He has been called both “the world’s most famous public intellectual” and “the stupid man’s smart person.” His most famous book is 12 Rules for Life, which is an unusual mix of existential philosophy and common sense pronouncements. The Economist reports that an entire Peterson industry has flourished around him: There is a Jordan Peterson newsletter (“Mondays of Meaning”), a “Peterson Academy ($500 a year gets you lectures on a variety of “manly” topics) and a “self-authorizing program.”

Assisted dying, the current phrase for active euthanasia, has until recently been a debate between the progressive idea of personal autonomy and the Christian idea of public morality. But, today there is less talk about the sanctity of life and the moral injury of suicide and more of a focus on notions of “safeguarding” and “informed consent.” In other words, Christian ethics rooted in the infinite value of human life is rarely a part of the debate. Let’s explore this issue in light of 21st century morality.

Over 30 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his famous essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.” Bret Stephens summarizes his thesis: “Every society, the senator-scholar from New York argued, could afford to penalize only a certain amount of behavior it deemed ‘deviant.’ As the stock of such behavior increased—whether in the form of out-of-wedlock births, or mentally ill people living outdoors, or violence in urban streets—society would most easily adapt not by cracking down, but instead by normalizing what used to be considered unacceptable, immoral or outrageous.”

In the 1930s, the United States pursued a policy of protectionism and isolationism. “No coincidence, World War II soon followed.” Germany’s and Japan’s neighbors were too weak to deter and defeat those fascist dictatorships on their own. They desperately needed American help, and they did not receive it until it was nearly too late. Max Boot argues that “After 1945 in the United States, the greatest generation sought to rectify that mistake by constructing a new world order based on free-trade pacts and security alliances. That approach was staggeringly successful: Democracy and prosperity spread around the world. […]”

Over the last several decades, Americans, it has been argued, are more tribal in their behavior and social groupings than ever. We live in silos of our own choice, watch cable news channels or listen to podcasts that simply reinforce our tribal identities. We are not open to new ideas and are threatened by those who are not in our silos. In this cultural development, the individual is not as important. Our group identity defines us and we are not open to those outside our groupings. How did this develop within American civilization? What are its origins?

Theoretical cosmologist, Paul M. Sutter recently wrote, “I’m a cosmologist, the kind of scientist who studies the origin, history and evolution of the universe. I have spent my career researching one special part of the universe called cosmic voids: the vast expanses of nothing that stretch between the galaxies. Most of our universe is void—somewhere around 80 percent of the volume of the cosmos is made of nothing at all. By strict accounting of cosmic abundances, our planet and the life we find here amount to essentially zero.

The birth of a child produces wonder, astonishment, even adoration. The birth of Jesus was no different. Yet, biblical Christianity adds that He was God in human form entering our history. As Chuck Swindoll summarizes: “On a rescue mission designed by His Father before time began, Jesus silently slipped into our world, breathed our air, felt our pain, became acquainted with our sorrows, suffered and died for our sins . . . to show us the way out of our darkness and into His glorious light.”

Many times I have used this quote from G.K. Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything.” From Chesterton’s quote I am choosing to use “men” here as gender-specific—males in American culture today. There is so much confusion within our culture about what it means to be a man. As David French reports, the very definition of “masculinity” betrays a crisis.