The Patriot Post® · Cynicism in America Is Growing

It’s no secret that Americans today are collectively losing their faith in our cultural and governmental institutions. We have previously noted polling data indicating that an increasing political polarization has been spreading across the country, characterized by the bluing and reddening of the states. People move away from governments they don’t trust.

One of the primary drivers of migration in America today is politics. As states like California and New York increasingly embrace hard-left policies, a growing number of conservative residents of these states have opted to move to greener pastures in states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.

As a result, this migration has allowed for and even encouraged a broadening gap in the political polarization between the states.

Against this backdrop, Gallup has observed four distinct big-picture trends becoming more apparent across the nation. These four trends, outlined by Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport, are declining public trust in America’s institutions, declining sexual morality, declining religious affiliation, and growing political polarization.

Not only have all of these trends been developing for years, they are all interrelated. As Newport observes, “We can look at these shifts in American public opinion as representing a report card on how America is doing these days (the people’s answer: not well!).”

Newport’s assessment leads him to ask a fundamentally important question: Are these normal societal growing pains, or is the U.S. experiencing a significant cultural crisis that is increasingly defined by national cynicism? If the latter is the case, it’s difficult to see how the growing divergence in American identity will be bridged.

Trust has fallen in America’s institutions in part because too much trust has been afforded to them in the first place. Just as a narrow footbridge is ill-designed for a car, so too America’s institutions were never intended to uphold the totality of our cultural and individual identities.

While Gallup correctly notes the negative impact of the declining role of religion in Americans’ lives, there doesn’t seem to be a true appreciation for the significance of this decline. Indeed, it is from this one foundation, religious liberty under the Judeo-Christian worldview, that our great nation was birthed.

America rightly traces its history back to the Mayflower and those bold and brave pilgrims who came to the New World seeking to build a world where religious liberty flourished. Without that foundation of a Judeo-Christian worldview, there never would have been America; there never would have been a Constitution; and there never would have been the embrace of equal value for every individual citizen under the law. As John Adams presciently put it: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It also comes as no surprise that with the erosion of Americans’ Christian religious faith comes the erosion of Americans’ sexual ethics. With the loss of faith in God, who is the ultimate sustainer of life and happiness, that vacuum is quickly being filled with idols. Given this reality, it comes as little surprise that sexual deviancy has not only been embraced by the broader public as permissible but is increasingly viewed as normal and even celebrated as virtuous. If there’s no Creator or objective standard, then anything goes.

Similarly, a loss of trust in America’s institutions is ironically tied to that cultural loss of religious faith as well. With fewer people looking to God as the ultimate source for solving the myriad problems they face, people are instead turning to institutions like the government for salvation.

Once again, however, that only affords greater polarization. If people view government as the only means to better themselves, then government becomes ultimate, and the stakes grow ever higher with each election cycle. Out of this comes intense tribalism, wherein tribal identity takes precedence over everything else. Under these conditions, the foundational principle view of the equality of every individual is lost to a chaotic sea of identity politics.

Americans are facing a time eerily similar to that of the Israelites of old as described in the Old Testament book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” If there is no recognition of a uniting value system and a commitment to a common culture, then all that’s left is a bunch of individuals judging everything and everyone as if they themselves were God. And the inevitable result is a fracturing and disintegrating of the nation.