As the pillars of culture crumble before our eyes, what’s left behind is not a sound structure so much as an increasing chaos. This cultural decay is seen most clearly in the expression of turning values on their heads. The words of the prophet Isaiah come to mind — “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

In this topsy-turvy world, asking a simple question — “What is a woman?” — is seen as equal parts confusing and existential attack on the very men who have unilaterally asserted that only their own felt fantasies qualify as authoritative for defining their gender reality.

Language itself has come under attack by radicals claiming that allowing freedom of speech only empowers language to be used to do “violence.” Not direct violent action, mind you, but the fundamentally absurd notion that words are violence because they can offend people’s sensitivities.

This is a country that once valued the free expression of language. And one particular political party in the not-too-distant past championed freedom of speech as fundamental to the health of democracy, and regularly hid behind the shield of tolerance when promoting radically and culturally toxic ideals.

Now as the radical Left has increasingly gained control over America’s cultural institutions, the word “tolerance” has been tossed to the side. In its place has been erected the three most sacred words of the woke Left — “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

This culture war has also increasingly seen an entreatment to science, while ironically eschewing it. It is not science but a new religion. As noted above, the “transgender "movement perfectly encapsulates this reality. It’s not just the binary nature of human sexuality that is rejected to placate the gender-bender cult, but this is also the case when it comes to the other major religion of the Left — the climate cult.

This cult calls for policing the free market while bowing to the anti-human demands of the prophets of Gaia. The greatest sin, these climate activists assert, is the use of fossil fuels. Never mind the historical reality that fossil fuels have demonstrably allowed for great human flourishing. Any questioning of the climate cultists’ narrative is met with a self-righteous indignation such as was given by their high priestess Greta Thunberg, who once angrily screamed, "How dare you?!”

Science like the definition of “woman” is being redefined. It no longer represents an exacting, sober-minded fact and observation-based assessment of the physical world. Rather it has become both a shield and club to be wielded against any who would dare cling to the old ways, those old foundations upon which the entire Western world was built.

This religious-like dogma coming from today’s Left means the two opposing parties increasingly have few common values over which to find shared solutions. The radical Left has almost entirely taken over the Democrat Party, pushing a neo-Marxist ideology that is antagonistic to the very Constitution establishing our government. As a result, the message from the Democrat Party is not one of love for country, but rather one of shame and hatred for it. The party of the donkey has embraced the woke narrative that the only salvation for evil America is the systematic dissolution of precisely the fundamental values and liberties that made America the greatest nation the world has ever known.

It is indeed a form of madness. A madness we have witnessed destroy other nations, and we are now trying to prevent from destroying our own.