Gone are the days when we’d say, quoting Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Now most Americans say the enemy is the guy next door, so to speak.
That’s according to a new CBS/YouGov survey finding that what frightens Americans most isn’t imperialistic China, its viral export, economic woes, nuclear threats, terrorism, or “climate change.” It’s other Americans.
“The poll suggests Americans are almost evenly divided between ‘hopeful’ and ‘scared,’ with ‘scared’ holding a 3-point edge at 52% to 49%. YouGov surveyed 2,166 people nationwide between Jan. 13 and Jan. 16; the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.5%,” reports Mass Live.
And while Republicans and Democrats concur on less and less today, there “is bipartisan agreement that the nation’s way of life is most threatened by individuals who are already in America, with 53% of Democrats, 56% of Republicans, and 57% of Independents each choosing that as the most significant risk,” YouGov relates.
As CBS/YouGov report on their data page:
As you see it, the biggest threat to the American way of life today comes from:
Other people in America, and domestic enemies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54%
Foreign countries and military threats overseas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8%
The natural world, like weather, viruses and natural disasters . . . . . . . . . . . . 17%
Economic forces such as money, trade and business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
It’s logical assuming that these results, coming not long after the January 6 Capitol riot, were influenced by it and the ensuing biased coverage and disproportionate reaction of stationing thousands of armed troops in Washington, D.C. Yet there’s a deeper truth here, one relating to many among the 54 percent that worries about the “other” other Americans:
“Tragically, they are right,” avers commentator Eric Utter. He explains:
There is no way America as founded can survive if elite progressives/leftists/statists comprising the vast government-Big Tech-academic-media complex have their way. Specifically, they wish to marginalize, silence — and possibly eliminate — those with whom they disagree. Unity is not possible when one large group of people in a society believe another large group of people in that society are a threat to their beloved power and control and therefore must be neutralized at all costs.
America is more divided than at any time since the Civil War, and in some ways more so. There are certain things that can never be reconciled on this earth, such as oil and water, fire and ice, good and evil. Those who wish for a massive government nanny state that knows best how to run everyone else’s lives are simply incompatible with those who yearn to be free and believe in America’s founding principles of limited government of, by, and for the people, the rule of law, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to bear arms, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, etc. Put another way, those who detest the country as founded obviously cannot live in peace and harmony with traditional patriots. And, as we have seen this past year, there are now enough of the former to make this an immediate, existential crisis.
The point is that while many will speak of “unity,” gone are the medieval days when, as G.K. Chesterton put it, people (in Europe) “agreed on the things that really mattered.” It’s not as if, today, it’s just that you “like potato and I like potahto.” Rather, we disagree on fundamental issues.
We part company on the nature of marriage, on what constitutes proper sexuality, on whether sex roles are reality or risible, on the realness of “sex” (as in being male or female) itself, on whether God is Creator or crutch, on whether Christianity is necessary or nefarious, on whether our history and heroes should be hailed or flailed, etc.
If spouses thus disagreed and despised what each other stood for, what’s the probability they’d get along and remain together?
This profound division is a function of a most divisive force: moral relativism/nihilism, the notion that “morality” has no objective reality — doesn’t transcend man — but is determined by him and is thus a social construct. It essentially says that “morality” doesn’t exist but is mere preference.
To illustrate this belief’s effect, consider the “laws” (rules) of nutrition. The better people know them and the more devoted to them they are, the more similar their diets will be. They may conclude, for example, that they should eat generous amounts of vegetables, fruits, and grains; some meat and fish; and avoid processed foods. But what if they concluded that there were no rules of human nutrition, that they were mere illusion effected to “control people”?
They’d then have nothing to use as a yardstick for diet except taste. And there are eight million tastes in the naked city.
So it is with all things — including morality. Convince people that no actual laws govern it, and taste (or preference) becomes their only remaining yardstick. Only Truth can unite. Tastes by definition are disparate.
The lie of moral relativism/nihilism is our most basic, and a mostly unrecognized, problem. Why, a 2002 study found that only six percent of teens believed in “morality,” properly understood as absolute — and, for sure, the numbers haven’t improved since.
So it sounds ironic, but concluding that everything is relative ensures we’ll become absolutely different.
