Materialism Has Become Both a New Religion And A New Political Cause
by John Grimaldi
The 21st Century has brought us a boatload of new technology, an abundance of leisure time and a newfound focus on materialistic ethics. It's a new world in which we live but it is the kind of world in which pessimism, disrespect and wrong-minded beliefs and objectives beset the younger generations.
Materialism has become both a new religion and a new political cause. Attorney General William Barr put it this way in a recent speech at Notre Dame: "Secular forces and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia, in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."
America was founded on a set of "essential civic virtues." The Bill of Rights Institute explains that these qualities "bind a self-governing people together in communities that facilitate a healthy civil society. As Americans we believe it is essential to understand and implement these fundamental or founding principles and civic virtues."
For the first time in the history of the U.S. too many younger citizens pine for the so-called "freedoms" of historically perverse political ideologies including socialism, collectivism and even communism. They seem to believe that under a socialist government they won't have to work so hard; that the government will care for them from cradle to grave, providing them with a whole lot of free stuff. They want the government to pay for their educations, their medical care, their housing.
Remember progressive would-be presidential candidate Andrew Yang who promised he'd pay every adult American $1,000 a month with no strings attached if they vote for him. Variations on that theme are now being voiced by mainstream Democratic wannabes, including Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders. They want to send checks to stay-at-home parents.
The Heritage Foundation published an essay by historian Lee Edwards, Ph.D. last December in which he noted that: "There is disquieting evidence of many young Americans' sympathy for socialism. Exhibit A: 2.052 million people under the age of 30 voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries and caucuses. Exhibit B: Polls find that, not only do a large majority of millennials have a favorable opinion of socialism, a near majority would prefer to live under socialism rather than capitalism. Exhibit C: The no-longer sleeping Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) now boasts 30,000 members, most of them in their twenties and eager to follow the socialist banner."
Those who seek to replace the American way of life with a political system that makes promises they can't keep need to wake up and do their homework. Governments that embrace communism these days -- Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc. -- and those that embraced socialism in the past [think the USSR] don't work. And, they never will.
