Is half of the country crazy? Regardless of which side of the political divide you happen to be on, at least half the country appears to be crazy. And they probably think the same about you.

Can this be true? It is difficult to believe half our country—which half doesn’t really matter—is unmoored from reality.

Thomas Kuhn in his revolutionary book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, noted that the common belief of science as a steady cumulative flow of one idea built upon another is simply wrong. Kuhn, who coined the phrase paradigm shift, argues that in reality science moves ahead in intellectually violent revolutions when one world view, or paradigm, is completely tossed aside and replaced by a superior paradigm.

Confronting Unreconciled Anomalies

What leads to these intellectually violent revolutions and subsequent paradigm shifts is the accumulation of “unreconciled anomalies.” These occur when the actual results don’t fit with the expected or predicted results. Sooner or later unreconciled anomalies are either somehow explained away—often just ignored for as long as is possible—or they accumulate until they force a break with the underlying theory their very existence proves to be wrong.

Of course, it is always easier to see these revolutions in the rearview mirror where one can think, “of course it is that way, how could anyone have believed anything else?”

But being in the middle of one of these revolutions is quite a different experience; and that is where we find ourselves today.

No, half the country isn’t crazy. The growing frictions we experience everyday—regardless of your political position—are simply the symptoms of the present failing paradigm.

Discarding the Failed Paradigm

And just like science, the only way to address these “unreconciled anomalies” is to abandon the present thinking which has led to the crisis and discover a deeper, more fundamental truth.

To do so requires the discarding, at least for a while, the left/right, conservative/liberal, and most certainly Democrat versus Republican lens. It is not possible to explore a new paradigm unless one can mentally discard all aspects of the old paradigm.

Until we are willing to do so, the unreconciled anomalies will only continue to grow as will the friction and anger they feed. And of course opportunists will use these frictions to gather power and enrich themselves and their friends. It is a certainty, as any halfway honest analysis of our present political situation reveals to be true.

The left versus right, liberal versus conservative paradigm is failing because it doesn’t overlap with reality. It is based far more on tribal thinking than an analysis of facts.

There are two ways to analyze and rebuild a system:

The wrong way is to analyze the present system(s) focusing on problems and where things don’t work very well. This is “problems-based” thinking and it generally leads to fighting, finger-pointing, and even more friction. It seldom, if ever, works very well with the odds of failure being far greater than those of success.

Unfortunately, this is how most people attempt to address the present impasse. At its core, our political discourse is flawed because it remains mired in the same paradigm that caused the problems in the first place. In practice, it often means communication-based on “if I just repeat myself a little slower and a lot louder those dumb SOBs will finally understand!” thinking.

The other way to analyze and rebuild a system is to mentally toss it and all it was built upon in the trash and to start anew with a completely blank slate. With this thinking, one doesn’t focus on problems since there are none yet. This might sound counterintuitive but it leads to far better results.

How did we do it in the past? Who cares? The issue is how do we want to do it in the future and for that the past is generally irrelevant. And quite often all of those “problems” that seemed so insurmountable, those issues which simply don’t seem to have a solution other than the “other” side pulling their heads out and seeing things my way, simply fade away. They are problems created by the system.

Look at the World Anew

Our political, economic, and cultural wars are all based on these insurmountable problems. Look at the present political situation. Half the country seems crazy and people sincerely speak of a coming civil war as they see no realistic way to solve the arguments other than the physical annihilation or separation of the entire “other” side.

When it seems the only possible solution is using the power of the government to crush those who disagree, it is time to rethink the entire paradigm which at its core creates these realities. If we insist on keeping the present failing paradigm, the unreconciled anomalies will sooner or later be the end of us all.

We can take this step. At least momentarily, toss all your preconceived notions in the trash and look at the world anew. You will find a very simple truth waiting. Individual freedom is the key. Not the powerful organizations we call government. Not the various tribes. Individual freedom and the forces it unleashes is the solution.

The transformative power of individual freedom is based on science and reality; it will always work. Take the leap or stay where you are while you ponder how to destroy the half of the country that seems crazy to you. The choice is yours.

May 1 celebrations used to be about the renewal of life, replete with beribboned poles and spring dances, long before the Soviet and Chinese communists appropriated those joyous rituals—replacing flowers with tanks. May Day parades, ostensibly for the purpose of commemorating International Workers Day and instilling pride in the motherland, were meant also to intimidate adversaries at home and abroad.

As much of our country may be set to return to work on May 1 after what has been a nearly three-month confinement, the way in which COVID-19 compelled us to live exposes cultural paradoxes overdue for examination. In the 103 years since the last comparable pandemic, our cultural relationship with life and death has changed.

How will we remember this period of time?

Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci asserts that COVID-19 will be with us for some time, and thus, long-accepted societal practices must change to keep infection rates at a minimum. Fauci ignited controversy by suggesting that the widespread social ritual of shaking hands should be discontinued in our new world. “We don’t need to shake hands. We’ve got to break that custom.” His admonition, initially shocking to many, has been quietly accepted by many others as the death toll mounts in places like New York. Other, more informal public displays of affection are likewise being forsaken in the small family gatherings still left to us.

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and self-described “funeral industry rabble-rouser” popular on YouTube. In 2011, she founded The Order of the Good Death, whose mission is “about making death a part of your life. Staring down your death fears—whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety of modern culture is not.”

In her book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory (2018), she graphically describes how the American fear of death results in a terrible disassociation with reality. Doughty’s goal is to reintroduce a cultural affirmation of, and comfort with, death in our lives—as opposed to the antiseptic and expensive service that the modern funeral industry currently offers us. Doughty has argued that Americans tend to deny death and decay:

Looking at the body you understand the person is gone, no longer a player in the game of life. Looking at the body you see yourself, and you know that you, too, will die. The visual is a call to self-awareness. It is the beginning of wisdom.

Doughty frequently takes the funeral industry to task for not offering a more personal, holistic mourning and burial experience like those from earlier times in our country’s history. She tells viewers that the family, usually the older women, would wash and dress their loved one’s body, carefully arrange the body on a couch or bed, and the community would come together and mourn. A black ribbon wreath on the front door notified visitors and bypassers of a family in mourning. Funeral homes, fixtures in communities today, were unknown until the mid-1920s.

During the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, life did not shut down. Large and small businesses continued to operate. Concessions to safety like gauze masks were made, and a substantial public service campaign to cover coughs and sneezes was launched largely with help of volunteers like the Boy Scouts.

Historian Catharine Arnold documented the outbreak in Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History. She exposed the vulnerability which the experience of survival amid mass casualties can leave in its wake. She includes an account by author John Steinbeck, who had been an adolescent during the height of the pandemic. Steinbeck had recovered after a lengthy convalescence but carried on with lasting physical and mental repercussions. “The experience bestowed a strange psychological legacy, leaving Steinbeck with a profound sense of vulnerability which shaped him as a writer.”

Both Doughty and Arnold make salient points about the cultural treatment of death. Doughty is not wrong to call out abuses and scandals in the funeral industry, but she overplays the role of the industry in shaping our now-ingrained abjuration of death’s reality. “Burial,” she explains’ “means an embalmed body in a heavy-duty casket with a vault built over it so that the ground doesn’t settle. That body is encased in many layers of denial.” However, our current funeral practices are not only the cause of the cultural shift in attitudes towards mortality.

While no one would deny that there are funeral directors who prey on grieving families and abuse their own indispensability for financial gain, Doughty misses some concurrent changes in social mores that are even more directly responsible than the funeral industry. Other corporate ventures have come to trivialize the experience of death in the same measure that funeral directors are said to capitalize on our fear of death. Video games, in their quest to enhance and prolong the period of play, enable their characters to come to gory ends and then respawn with even greater powers—a potentially hazardous twist on cultural archetypes of death and resurrection.

There are scholars who have warned us. John Paul II is often described as the philosopher’s pope. There is little doubt he was influenced by Israeli thinker Martin Buber. The purpose of his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae was to clarify and expand Pope Paul VI’s Humana Vitae, updating it to include new threats from technical innovation and mediated by governments, social activists, and media. The net result of those changes has been to diminish the inherent value of human life as an essential truth. The encyclical reaffirmed the Church’s stance on contraception, abortion, and euthenasia:

…[in the]present social context, marked by a dramatic struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death,” there is an urgent need to develop a deep critical sense, capable of discerning true values and authentic needs.

When governments at the behest of society provide access to these “social” services, they promote a self-centered efficiency at the expense of, and furthering the depreciation of, life itself as a value.

Buber’s 1952 book, Eclipse of God, foreshadowed how nothing good could come from the rapidly fading primacy of metaphysical truths: “Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of the light of God—such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing.” Buber was writing in the aftermath of World War II amid the ethical chaos wrought by the devout atheism of National Socialism as well as the postmodern secular philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and other postwar existentialists. Buber also remained acutely aware of false piety, and he did not hesitate to call out devout supposedly moral individuals who collaborated with Nazis:

I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.

Echoing Buber, John Paul II wrote:

. . . the eclipse of God and man, typical of a social and cultural climate typically dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles…those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate fall into a sad vicious circle: When the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, or his dignity and his life . . .

It is fair to say that both men were prescient in predicting the spurious nature of what would become woke culture, the fully actualized culture of death the late Pope warned us about.

Although neither Martin Buber nor John Paul II would have had occasion to play “Call of Duty” or “Red Dead Redemption,” they might have watched some American westerns. American popular culture, even including these old westerns, showed a reverence for life and for the concept of all humanity sharing an invisible bond. Several now-classic westerns sent a strong message of American moral exceptionalism. They also took care to affirm an irreducible respect for the humanity of every individual—pointedly including the insignificant, the scorned, the inconvenient. In John Ford’s “Stagecoach,” the passengers risk their own lives to ensure the survival of a pregnant woman and the baby to which she gives birth.

In John Sturges 1960 western “The Magnificent Seven,” the characters played by Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen form an instant brotherhood of protest when a town tries to deny an Indian’s right to be buried alongside the white people of his town. Finally, in Fred Zinneman’s “High Noon,” citizens of a seemingly doomed town rationalize their abandonment of that town and of its marshal Will Kane to certain death, by complaining that nobody outside their town cares about their town anyway. It takes a madam and businesswoman, Helen Ramirez, to argue that the town is choosing to kill itself and thus making it that much easier for the next town to be ground into the dust by the forces of evil.

Over the past two months, the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has taken over 50,000 lives and wrought economic devastation. If there is good to come of this, it will be born of acknowledging the moral abyss whose edge we have too closely skirted. It is not too late for a rebirth of reverence for the precious value of human life, for the somber—not frightful—claim of all our dead upon our respect. We might reclaim lost ground from the culture of death as we reach for the light of life in the very shadow of that death.

The Real Clear Foundation has launched a new American civics education portal, dedicated to renewing civic education in the United States.

If one good thing has come out of this season of quarantine, it’s that parents, forced to homeschool, are getting to see the unpatriotic and liberal curriculum public schools are teaching. In a recent article at the Federalist, Beth Freeley wrote about a world history assignment on gender theory (parents raising “theybies”) and a physics assignment on critical race theory that her freshman received from his public school. Evidently, a supplemental source like Real Clear’s American Civics Portal could not have come at a better time.

Though the American Civics Portal is not a direct response to the New York Times’ “1619 Project” it is “more than an answer” to it, David DesRosiers, publisher of RealClearPolitics, wrote in an email.

The “1619 Project” is an initiative by the New York Times and the Pulitzer Center to reeducate Americans about American history. They seek to teach school children that America’s real founding date is not July 4, 1776—the day the United States declared independence from Great Britain—but 1619, the year slaves were first brought to Jamestown.

Even now, One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House, is working to turn the “1619 Project” into a series of books. This will include new and expanded essays as well as fiction and poetry. Further, according to Pulitzer’s Annual Report, more than 3,500 classrooms around the nation have been given free copies of the “1619” curriculum. That represents more than 100,000 students who are learning that, as Nicole Hannah-Jones puts it in her flagship essay, our founding principles were a lie.

In contrast “RealClear’s American Civics web portal gives students, teachers, and citizens-in-the-making a clear understanding of our nation’s founding principles and history,” stated DesRosiers. “We draw upon the best resources, research, and scholarly writing in order to educate and inspire a new generation of Americans,” he said.

According to RealClear’s website, the project seeks to give readers insight on topics such as inalienable rights, the Constitution, and civic virtue. Included in this project is the 1776 Series, essays that explore founding principles such as the nature of self-government and the republican nature of the U.S. Constitution. Further, this collection of essays will include modern topics of political import such as balancing individual freedom and national security.

Of the 1776 series, DesRosiers wrote, “We see that [the] soul of America finds its articulation in the Declaration of Independence and its New Order of the Ages ambitions. To say that it’s 1619—as the New York Times does—is to introduce a falsehood into our educational system.”

As a whole, this portal masterfully deals with America’s failures and successes without offering either a wholesale condemnation or exoneration. In the project’s introductory essay “American Civics in the Time of Coronavirus,” Carl M. Cannon states that the essays and resources will not present a “sanitized version of America.” He writes,

Lady Liberty is sufficiently beautiful that her blemishes needn’t be powdered over. On the other hand, modern revisionists mainly present a warts-only view of the United States. “American Civics” will do neither. The reigning ethos here will be that the country has nothing to hide and much to be proud of.

While this project will not shy away from the injustices that have taken place throughout our nation’s history—including slavery and racism—they will rightly be shown as departures from our founding principles.

The portal is arranged topically. Those doing research can click on one of several categories such as: Equality, Liberty, and Race and Slavery. Other topics will soon be added that cover self-government, citizenship, the U.S. Constitution, and more. Under each category are numerous informative essays to read. Also on the portal is a list of essential American civics readings that can serve as a source for teachers and students alike.

Tom Tacoma, assistant professor of history and political science at Blue Mountain College, said of the new American Civics Portal,

A fairly large proportion of my students want to be high school history teachers, so I think just exposing them to Real Clear’s Civics portal will be helpful to them as they look to their future careers . . . From what I’ve read already [RealClear has published] thoughtful pieces by top scholars and that’s exactly what I want to incorporate in my classes.

DesRosiers said he hopes teachers will find the page helpful. “This Civics portal brings together primary sources, video, and sample curricula to give students a clearer understanding of their nation’s principles and history.”

After COVID-19 we will need a renewed understanding of American civics to repair the economy and our political culture, Cannon writes. He argues that America has always met existential threats by summoning our inner resources.

Narratives such as the one taught by the “1619 Project” are distorting the understanding of the principles that made Americans capable of overcoming monumental obstacles. In times of war and trouble, our leaders have always been able to refer to America’s founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence to inspire people with its soaring language and ideals. Yet, if Nicole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times have their way Americans will no longer revere such things, but will look upon all of American history with cynicism.

Unlike the “1619 Project,” the 1776 Series and RealClear’s Civics Education Portal takes an optimistic look at American history. It is a breath of fresh air in a time when our nation needs it most.

Although the circumstances are somewhat different from today’s, in Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, there is one character, Monsieur Cottard, who illustrates what happens when a profoundly sad and lonely person encounters a horrible event that ravages his community. Cottard paradoxically finds new life and purpose for as long as the plague endures.

At the beginning of the novel, the friendless and misunderstood Cottard is thwarted in his attempt to commit suicide. He then makes a complete change when the plague hits, running a smuggling operation and cultivating friendships with his neighbors. When the plague finally passes away, he becomes angry and hysterical once again.

It is not an exaggeration to say that in the United States and much of the developed world today, there exists a whole population of Cottards. They are anti-social, unfulfilled, and paranoid. Sad with themselves, they feed off stories of doom. They may claim that they care about public health, but this becomes impossible to believe when they stubbornly cling to wildly inaccurate projections and desperately deny stories of cures or methods of preventing infections that don’t hurt vast swaths of people. Instead of resolving the chaos in themselves, they would rather normalize the chaos all around them.

It’s worth mentioning that there have been some positive exceptions to this with the Wuhan virus. Citywide shelter-in-place orders have ironically inspired people to come out of their houses and see one another for the first time. Families and married couples now take walks, play board games, and have conversations with one another. Neighbors will check on the elderly and buy them groceries. Residents in many towns have even made special efforts to keep local businesses afloat. Indeed, all the wholesome togetherness recalls a famous scene from “The Simpsons” where all the children of Springfield leave their houses and play outside when their favorite cartoon “Itchy and Scratchy” becomes boring and preachy.

All-Too-Willing Accomplices

More often than not, however, the Wuhan virus has brought out the worst in people, especially those in authority.

In the name of public health, governors and mayors have imposed indefinite shutdowns of their states and cities, thinking little of the actual effectiveness or economic consequences of such measures or how they have set a dangerous precedent for stripping Americans’ fundamental rights at a moment’s notice.

Mandatory quarantines seem to favor large corporations and government organizations, which are deemed “essential,” and condemn churches and small businesses as “nonessential.” Enforcing these orders has led to ugly scenes of police arresting pastors, pro-life protesters, and parents playing t-ball with their children in an empty field. At the same time, China-friendly monopolies such as Amazon grow by leaps and bounds and abortion providers are given a free pass to stay open despite the quarantine.

Contrary to the argument that these actions are unpopular, many people actually support this injustice and feed into it, as the hordes of COVID-shamers at any social media site will demonstrate. They faithfully report their neighbors who violate quarantine. They take pleasure in embarrassing and shaming people who have doubts about the virus or the extreme responses to it. They see no problem with so many people losing their jobs or with small businesses closing down. They couldn’t care less that their governments have effectively ruined Easter for millions of Christians. Whether or not these actions save lives, there is a feeling that it is all ultimately good for the world.

Long before coping with the Wuhan virus, Americans have been sick with other ills which have contributed to this widespread misanthropy. Despite its gains in comforts and affluence, the United States has become lonelier, shallower, and less logical. Fewer people attend church, marry, have children, keep up with family, or even maintain friendships.

At the same time, more people are addicted to pornography, social media, and videogames.

Social Maladies Exacerbated

What results from these trends are whole generations of Americans who are more depressed, less empathetic, and thoroughly irrational. They don’t mind losing freedoms because they are not really free. They don’t mind the prospect of mass suffering, because they feel like they suffer already. They don’t mind if society breaks down because they don’t see themselves as part of society. And they don’t mind that none of this makes sense, because they never learn to think clearly about anything.

To such people, worldwide disasters are treated more like novelties than serious afflictions. Hence, they embrace elaborate doomsday narratives over concrete facts. Narratives make them feel important; facts make them feel like losers.

Nobody wants to hear that they’re overreacting, or that they’re being cowardly. Nobody wants to accept that they might have been wrong or misinformed. Nobody wants to realize that the government and media institutions they depend on are corrupt and dishonest. Nobody wants to hear how they played a key part in motivating politicians to shut down the economy and trample on people’s rights. Nobody wants to be told they look stupid in their N95 masks.

No, they want to hear that they are saving lives by staying home. That they are heroes for calling the cops about teenagers playing football. That they are brilliant for taking the virus so seriously. That the real enemy isn’t China; rather, it’s the conservatives, Christians, and President Trump who are all “anti-science” and deluded with false hopes.

Whereas emotionally secure people with friends and family to support them can dispense with the narratives and own up to their mistakes, insecure people fail miserably at this. Having nothing but their own ego, they must safeguard it at any cost. They have no friends to come to their aid, to motivate them, or to offer a much-needed reality check. Thus, doomsday narratives become appealing because they offer a kind of escape from their quotidian misery.

Among so many other things, the Wuhan virus has taught people that spiritual maladies can translate into physical maladies. A society comprised of so many individuals lacking community, faith, and reason will succumb all too easily to hysteria and nihilism.

No amount of propaganda, authoritarianism, and stimulus spending will cure this. Only a spiritual renewal among individuals and communities will bring salvation from the evils of this world. This is the message of Easter Sunday and happens to be the perfect one for Americans today.