On Sunday night, Hollywood delivered its final judgment on the American character.
The Academy Award for Best Picture went to “One Battle After Another,” a film that portrays border agents and conservatives as neo-Nazi caricatures while casting violent progressives as moral heroes. The standing ovations and golden statues conveyed an unmistakable message: conservative America is not only wrong, but morally grotesque.
That message is nothing new from our cultural elites, and it has found its audience. A first-of-its-kind Pew survey this month found that 53% of Americans view their fellow citizens as morally bad, with the perception among Democrats (60%) far worse than among Republicans (46%). Why wouldn’t that be the case?
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It is the inevitable result of the left’s campaign to portray traditional values as oppression. That’s what happens when universities express moral relativism and identity grievances, when traditional media portrays law and order as fascism, and when Hollywood portrays conservatives as fanatics or—as in this Oscar winner—as cartoonish, mustache-twirling villains.
This campaign of moral confusion has degraded the shared standards of right and wrong that once allowed us to presume basic decency in each other. In particular, it seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon.
Of the 25 countries surveyed in the Pew poll, the United States was the only country where a majority had a negative view of national morality. In Canada and Indonesia, for example, 92% viewed their fellow citizens as morally good.
America has its moral problems, but this is more a crisis of perception than reality.
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Our people still lead the world in goodness and character by most available standards. We give to charities at a per capita rate about twice that of Canada and three to fifteen times that of other developed countries (with Republicans giving the most). We also lead most Western colleagues when it comes to helping strangers, volunteering, donating blood and other forms of generosity.
Yet the perception is still revealing—not just of the ways in which our cultural institutions fuel hatred, but also of how severely our civic life has been eroded.
It clarifies the disastrous consequences of replacing traditional sources of connection – faith, family and community – with political obsession and online life. Social media has locked us into alternate moral universes, destroying our shared beliefs and trust in each other.
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That problem will only get worse until it is put to an end. Without a common moral vocabulary, rooted in American tradition and common decency, we cannot sustain the republic. Polarization will harden into hatred.
What should we do then?
A good starting point is to take the time to pause and observe reality. Goodness and virtue still bind most communities together, if not our social media or national discourse.
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In a town near us, a kindergarten teacher recently lost her home in a house fire. The outpouring of support was swift and overwhelming, even from those with very little to give. No one asked her political preference before helping. That is the America that always was – and still is.
But in our public and civic lives we must also undertake the hard work of moral recovery. And conservatives must lead.
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We must demand an education system that teaches the classical virtues – honesty, courage, hard work, responsibility – rather than replacing them with trendy relativism. We must strengthen families and faith communities as the first and best schools of character. And we must refuse to let Hollywood or the media define the American people based on their worst caricatures.
Many Americans are already rejecting the narratives of our cultural elites. “One Battle After Another”, despite being showered with awards, flopped spectacularly at the box office. Meanwhile, audiences occasionally watch films that celebrate national pride and values, such as “Top Gun: Maverick” or Clint Eastwood films. Hollywood refuses to get the memo, to its own detriment.
Similar stories can be told about progressive media outlets turning away viewers, or even about the migration of students from the Northeast’s state colleges to the South, who prefer a traditional college experience to the political activism of elite universities.
The American people know who we are. We long not only for unifying values, but also for moral normality. If we can’t get it from Hollywood or our institutions, we have to find it in each other – and build it with our own hands and hearts. In this way we will reclaim our shared morality and prove that our virtues endure.
Rob Noel is a speechwriter and president of the Washington Writers Network.
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