The evidence that American culture is becoming more secular is overwhelming. For example, the rise of the religious “nones” is one of the more profound developments within American culture. They constitute about a quarter of the total population and, about a third of those who became adults in the new millennium, identify with the “nones.” As The Economist reports, “Comparing 2016-2018 with the last three years of the 20th century, declared participants in organized religion have plunged by nearly 20 points to 52%.

In late April 2019, before he walked into a synagogue in Poway, California, and opened fire, John Earnest wrote a seven-page manifesto spelling out his core beliefs: That Jewish people, guilty in his view of faults ranging from killing Jesus to controlling the media, deserved to die; that his intention to kill Jews would glorify God.

Chuck Colson regularly stated that “what was once unthinkable, becomes debatable and gradually becomes acceptable.” Independent journalist, Jeremiah Keenan, recently reported in The Federalist magazine a rather astonishing legal development concerning a 14 year old child, the child’s parents and the judicial system of British Columbia, Canada. It magnifies the bizarre and almost unthinkable developments in the next frontier of the human sexuality within Western Civilization. It also raises the troubling question of when do the rights of a child undermine parental rights? In this developing new normal, parents have limited rights, while the state sanctions sexual experimentation and novelty in the name of human rights.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States. In 2017, there were 47,126 suicides and nearly 1.4 million suicide attempts. The CDC estimates that self-inflicted deaths and injuries cost the US approximately $70 billion a year in direct medical and work-loss costs. Between 1999 and 2017, the age-adjusted rate for suicide in US increased 33%.

In the 1960s 1 in 6 Americans belonged to a mainline Protestant church. Today it is 1 in 20, and falling. More broadly, the number of self-described Christians in the US has continued to drop and is now below 70%. The United Methodist Church (UMC) offers a rather poignant example of the confusion and tension when a Protestant church abandons its theological and doctrinal roots.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic theory that has won recent converts, especially presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who argues that this is how she would finance her radical Green New Deal.

In April 1994, an aircraft bearing Rwanda’s president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down and Rwanda’s majority ethnic group, the Hutus, blamed the Tutsis and began a systematic massacre of the Tutsis, killing over 800,000 in three months. The Tutsis then rebelled, killing many Hutus and thereby conquering most of Rwanda by mid-July 1994. This egregious slaughter on both sides is one of the great horrors of the 20th century.

Within the Democratic Party, especially within the Progressive Left, support for the B.D.S. Movement is growing. B.D.S. is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions initiative against Israel, seeking to exert economic, moral and political pressure on Israel. Founded in 2005 with a statement of principles, the B.D.S. “call” has been signed by more than 170 Palestinian organizations around the world.

The year 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” address, delivered at the spring commencement for the University of Michigan. Johnson’s speech remains the most ambitious call to date by any president to use the power of the national government to effect a far-reaching transformation of American society. In a broad sense, the calls of today’s Democratic socialists resemble LBJ’s call.

The controversy over sex education in the public schools is a major cultural issue in America. Since the federal government has gotten involved in funding such programs, it has become even more provocative and controversial.