Losing Faith in the System?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. …

Generations ago, the men we now revere as the founding founders of our Nation lost faith in the system under which each had been born, under which each had been educated, under which each had thrived, and under which they had ultimately been oppressed. At some level, they had to be seriously disillusioned with the hand they had been dealt under a monarchy seeking to maintain control over a distant empire. But they also had a firm grasp of an ideal - notions of natural rights and liberty that is the birthright of every individual. They had to have had a hope and a faith in the potential of such ideals, to propel them through a costly conflict that led to independence.

Modern generations, so we are told, are much less optimistic. In a doom-and-gloom piece out of the Telegraph comes a snapshot of the current "American mood":

With the United States mired in three foreign wars, beaten down by an economy that shows few signs of emerging from deep recession and deeply disillusioned with President Barack Obama, his Republican challengers and Congress, the mood is dark.

The last comparable Fourth of July was probably in 1980, when there was a recession, skyrocketing petrol prices and an Iranian hostage crisis, with 53 Americans being held in Tehran.

Frank Luntz, perhaps America’s pre-eminent pollster, argues that his countrymen are much more downbeat now than in 1980. “The assumption with the Carter years was that it was a failure of the elites, not the system. We thought the people in charge screwed up. We didn’t blame ourselves.” Remarkably, many Americans think things will only get worse and the good times will never return.

A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 39 per cent think that “the current economic downturn is part of a long-term permanent decline and the economy will never fully recover”. That was up from 28 per cent last October. Last month, a CNN poll found that 48 per cent of Americans believe another Great Depression is somewhat or very likely.

Luntz has found that 44 per cent of Americans believe their country’s best days are in the past, 57 per cent that their children will not achieve the same quality of life, and 53 per cent that they are less free than five years ago. So what is going on? How did the land of the free, the home of the brave, … get into this funk?

Moods are cyclical, and people are cynical. There is nothing particularly newsworthy about that, nor this article. One paragraph further down did catch my eye, though, and has a ring of truth to it:

But Americans do not just blame Obama; and the national malaise is to do with far more than one president. “Every institution in America has gone through a collapse,” says Luntz. “The Church is not what it was, thanks to all those religious scandals, the media is much less trusted today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Big business does not have credibility.”

It does strike me that we as a people have lost some faith in our institutions - government, church, and corporatism. This faith crisis goes beyond the notable scandals involving individuals within these institutions. People are fallible, and while we all know that, we still expect people to respect the processes and the rules that enable society's institutions to function. When the process is ignored, or bypassed, or otherwise unenforced, we lose trust. Trust lost is rarely regained. What may be happening now, however, it something far more systemic and as such, existentially serious.

In a must-read piece at Defining Ideas, William Damon writes of a serious decline in academic proficiency in the subject of civics. Students are being groomed to be "citizens of the world," rather than girding them with the fundamentals of a free society and the functions of American citizenship and the institutions we've celebrated for 200 years.

For the past ten years or more, virtually every glimpse into American students' views on citizenship has revealed both a lack of understanding and a lack of interest. An American Enterprise Institute study earlier this year found that most social studies teachers doubted that their students grasped core U.S. citizenship concepts such as the Bill of Rights or the separation of powers. A recent Department of Education study found that only nine percent of U.S. high school students are able to cite reasons why it is important for citizens to participate in a democracy, and only six percent are able to identify reasons why having a constitution benefits a country. The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has reported a decades-long, step-wise decline in interest in political affairs among college freshmen—from over 60 percent of the population in 1966 to less than half that percentage in our current period.

But the problem goes beyond apparent deficiencies in curriculum or general disinterest:

Beyond not knowing what U.S. citizenship entails, many young Americans today are not motivated to learn about how to become a fully engaged citizen of their country. They simply do not care about their status as American citizens. Notions such as civic virtue, civic duty, or devotion to their country mean little to them. This is not true of all young people today—there are exceptions in virtually every community—but it accurately describes a growing trend that encompasses a large portion of our younger generation.

This trend has not arisen in isolation. Indeed, the attitudes of many young Americans are closely aligned with intellectual positions that they likely have never encountered first-hand. In our leading intellectual and educational circles, the entire notion of national devotion is now in dispute. For example, in a book about the future of citizenship, a law professor recently wrote: "Longstanding notions of democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete …American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization." As a replacement for commitment to a nation-state, the author wrote, "loyalties…are moving to transnational communities defined by many different ways: by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation." In similar fashion, many influential educators are turning to "cosmopolitanism" and "global citizenship" as the proper aim of civics instruction, de-emphasizing the attachment to any particular country such as the United States. As global citizens, it is argued, our primary identification should be with the humanity of the world, and our primary obligation should be to the universal ideals of human rights and justice. Devotion to one's own nation state, commonly referred to as patriotism, is suspect because it may turn into a militant chauvinism or a dangerous "my country right or wrong" perspective.

Moods are largely emotional responses to our perceptions of our circumstances. Sometimes, those perceptions are on the mark; other times, they fall victim to a skewed perspective. In time, the national mood may very well swing back to a more positive and optimistic posture. The greater danger, however, is any further deterioration in the operational and philosophical understanding of the democratic institutions that have enabled us to survive as a largely free society for 235 years. If the upcoming generations lack both faith and knowledge, the decline of America as we know it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Future generations may well find an America that resembles the chains our forefathers cast off, leading them to form a new government.

Human history is full of such cycles. Moods change. Values change. Circumstances change. And despite the general tone of this post, far be it from me to even suggest that America is already lost. Far from it. The face of America may change, but the unalienable rights we share - the heart of the American idea - still beats within us. The future hasn't been written yet, and it is within us to shape the trends, if we have the will to do so.

We celebrate today, and that's as it should be. May we also remember why.