So, this question has been bouncing around inside of my head for some time, and I thought I would try to explore it here. Our Birthright as Americans has always been known as the American Dream. 

The American Dream: No matter what color you are, regardless of your social class, your level of education, or how much money you may or may not have, you can always improve your life if you work hard and keep at it. You can attain the level of success that you want. There are no limits. That's the American Dream. That's why people from all over the world want to come here and that's why they always have. The law treats us all the same, and society encourages our individuality as we try to rise out of our current situation to attain a better one. Maybe it would be more accurate if I said that is the Promise of the American Dream. That's what our founders sought to establish when they codified the values of a brand-new country.

I think MLK Jr saw this pretty clearly when he crafted his I Have a Dream speech:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

It's been a long time, but I just reread that speech and cannot find one thing in there that I disagree with. I think it speaks to all of us. However, in the last several years, it seems to have withered somewhat on the vine of the collective American consciousness. Now, we have bought into the ideas of equity and identity politics, of redistribution and aspects of socialism. Individualism often takes a back seat and drags down the best to benefit the collective "good" so that our leadership roles reflect the makeup of the country rather than their ability to lead.

I could go on to cite examples of this, but anybody who has spent any time at all on RedState knows what I'm talking about so I'm not going to belabor the details here. 

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, we were still a people who mostly agreed that you could say what you wanted because "it's a free country" or "I don't agree with you, but I'll defend your right to say it." Those were times when pop culture figures like the Marlboro Man, for example, reflected our collective tapestry of ruggedness and individualism. At least in the Reagan era, we began to rediscover our sense of purpose and patriotism, optimism, and pride for our country. 

And merit was usually at the center of many of these values. If you could perform, you could be rewarded by the natural outcomes of your actions. If you didn't perform, you kind of stayed where you were. Today's culture doesn't always reward merit. In fact, sometimes, it holds you back if you're competing in the job market. Or in academics. Identity carries more weight and often excludes one from advancement. Certain boxes that once required checking, like experience, accuracy, performance, and timeliness, have now frequently been replaced by race, sexuality, and political orientation. See Sam Brinton, see Kamala Harris, see Karine Jean-Pierre.

So, merit. Back in the BeforeTime, the most important thing you could bring to the table might be ACT scores or the ability to do your job at a high level. Hard work at gaining experience and skill primed you for merit-based advancement. Merit led to success. Not so much today where having the right immutable characteristics gives you a leg up on everybody else who doesn't check the desired DEI boxes. 

I posit that this is antithetical to the ideals of Americanism. I probably don't need to get granular on this, as I think it's self-explanatory. So my question is: How did we get like this in just a few short years? Today, you don't have to Google very far to find that values like merit or timeliness or individuality are now considered relics of whiteness and misogyny. This mindset exists in the corporate world now, which is sad, but it's also made significant headway into the military, which is dangerous and reckless. 

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Our newly minted head of the DOD is already aware of this and will be doing his best to stamp out the now entrenched practice of Malicious Compliance, which basically means following directives to the letter while abandoning common sensical reason in understanding what the goals of the project are trying to achieve. It involves unlimited requests for clarification, prioritization of alternate goals, and the endless asking of questions for more information — any or all of which will bog down the process or force it to grind to a halt. All by design because someone somewhere disagrees with the orders from The Boss. Extrapolated out, it will eventually require that directives be written to cover every eventual question or contingency to the extent that no common idiot could fail to follow them as they are spoon fed the details like infants. And this will eat up a lot of time, effort and paper.

So again, how did we ever get to the point where presumably normal people would undermine the mission of their job to countermand it and replace it with the opposite? How did it become commonplace, if not very nearly mainstream, to undermine long-treasured American values of meritocracy (especially critical in the military) for the sake of a bunch of DEI/Utopian Unicorn Dust? And by extension, in other critical roles such as nuclear waste management or medical training or airline pilot proficiency? None of these make any practical sense. Who cares if your pilot is gay if he forgets to lower the flaps on takeoff or if your surgeon is black when he forgets which side your appendix is on?

I don't mean to be asking rhetorical questions — I'd really like to figure out how these empirically stupid practices got traction in a country that has always prized opposite values, and I guess where I'd start is PC. Political Correctness. I first heard of this in the late 1980s as I was walking past the NBC Nightly News which did a story on it. It wasn't very deep, and I wondered why they were even giving it time. Attention College students...don't say or do anything that might offend minorities. Because it's mean if you do. And being mean is always, always bad. Constructive criticism is out.

This was coming on the heels of films and television shows and pop music that were beginning to explore racial injustices in the mainstream. "Roots," "Roots II," "Amistad," "Ebony and Ivory," and later, "Numbers," "Glory," "Django," etc. I think it's important to have programs and songs about this. I believe we should examine our history and scrutinize it. Even the bad parts. But since the late 80s, we've had a nonstop parade of them. "Malcolm X," "Mississippi Burning," "The Color Purple." They just kept coming. "Selma," "The Help," "Do the Right Thing." It never stopped. "Ghosts of Mississippi," "Dangerous Minds," "Pride." The list goes on forever. 

One just came out called "Six Triple Eight," about the only all-black female battalion to serve during WW2. I'd like to see it and maybe still will, but basically, the message is about racism at the hands of whites and how the blacks overcame and excelled. This is a good story. It's an American story, but how many times do you need to see tales like this before you get the message? I don't know, maybe a hundred? I get it and probably don't need to see the message anymore. I understand that there are new generations that do, and before anybody calls me a racist, I want to make it clear that I don't have any negative issues with movies that explore racism (and, by extension, movies that look at injustices about gays, etc.), but movies are not just about entertainment, they're about messaging. And the messaging about racism, I get. Got it. I don't need to be dining on that message ad infinitum. 

But I bring this up because it seems that popular culture has now become saturated with the message to the degree that it thinks this is the sum total of the American experience, and therefore, America is bad. Possibly, this has led to a general belief that we are a racist country now and beyond redemption. How did that get traction? Collective guilt, I suppose. Which, of course, when the glass gets full enough, leads to collective atonement. And when you hit that stage, you feel justified if not duty bound to usurp your once-held convictions that merit is good. Even racism can be good if pointed at the right people, and sometimes it is necessary to give up your birthright if it means adopting a new birthright where people are advanced because they are righteous in their color, sexuality, or politics and therefore oppressed.

I don't know. Maybe I have a point here, maybe not. But still, the question nags at me. How did we give up our core American values so quickly and so easily? I admit that I am still vexed.