America at the Crossroads

I write these reflections as someone whose convictions have been shaped over nearly seven decades of watching America change—sometimes for the better, sometimes, in my view, for the worse. My perspective is unapologetically rooted in a conservative and Christian understanding of culture, morality, and national identity, and I recognize that readers of a more liberal persuasion will take issue with some of what follows. That disagreement is neither unexpected nor unwelcome. But the intensity of my language arises not from hostility toward those who differ, but from a deep concern for the trajectory of a nation I love and a desire to speak plainly about what I believe to be urgent challenges facing our Republic. I am grateful that most of the things I articulate below are being said today in various venues and with varying intensity. I want to go on record in adding my voice to these concerns. The issues are so titanic as to warrant the warning of danger, even destruction, that might lay ahead for the good ship “America.”

American culture has changed profoundly in my 68 years of life. Our sense of reality has grown confused. We have drifted from a world that honored heroes to one that exalts celebrities—from travelers committed to a journey to tourists obsessed with snapshots. Somewhere along the way, some have lost the ability to distinguish what truly matters. For the Fabian and the feckless among the American public, Noah’s flood was little more than a spring shower.

The historian’s hindsight can help, but it can also mislead or occasionally deceive. Living people are nearly always myopic. The present cannot be severed from the past without jeopardizing the future. Knowledge endures and expands, yet ignorance continually challenges it. The horizons of what we know merely illuminate the frontiers of what we do not. We may know more than the dog—but we seem not to have a dog’s chance of solving our problems.

The “city upon a hill” is slowly sinking toward the swamp of Hell’s Half-Acre. Among us live those who do not love this country, who march to the siren song of all that is antithetical to our heritage, and whose minds are darkened by the evil one. Ominous signs of the times are everywhere.

Despite attempts by a thousand imperious pundits and virulent pseudo-scholars to deny it, the disorder and chaos now unraveling our civilization is a clear and present danger. Progressive soil is thin and seldom produces anything but anemic and bitter fruit. Some liberals must depart cloud-cuckoo-land, regain their bearings, and recognize that in a headlong pursuit of progress, they have mistaken sunset for sunrise. I am weary of hearing progressive ultracrepidarian schlockmeisters repeat their shibboleths when silence would better suit them. I would as soon listen to a gangster lecture on honesty.

Expurgating American history is a double-edged sword. The nation must be understood in both its past and its present, warts and all. Slavery was an ugly part of our racist past; abortion is an ugly part of our national present. One cannot heap moral opprobrium on the former while supporting or standing with those who support the latter. We all need a healthy dose of consistency. Slavery is gone (except in its sexual forms), yet racism endures among some people—of every color.

The attempt to conjure up Nazism and hang it around the necks of ordinary conservatives—who simply wish to curb electoral banditry by praetorian politicians and seek equal justice under the law—is itself a Nazi mindset, or perhaps a Nazi mind trick. No one is a Nazi for believing that criminals belong behind bars rather than walking the streets. No one is a Nazi for believing that no person is above the law and that anyone who breaks it—regardless of race, face, or place— should be held accountable. Strafing political opponents with scorn irrespective of their actions or views is no path forward.

While acknowledging diversity among progressives and their motives and distinguishing between scholars who happen to lean liberal but operate in a more conventional academic way, it is beyond question that many progressive scholars and politicians are motivated by ideological transformation. Many of our colleges and universities have become cesspools of progressive, anti-American ideology. As a PhD student at the University of Texas at Arlington in the 1980s, I remember hallway doors in the Humanities Department plastered with anti-Reagan and pro- Castro propaganda. That now seems a Sunday school picnic compared to today’s “America haters,” who are given virtual free rein to wreak academic havoc by ravaging the minds of students with indoctrination instead of education. Winston Churchill’s words to the House of Commons on October 28, 1948, were never truer of many American university professors today when he spoke of “the race of degenerate intellectuals” who awake each day “to see what they could find to demolish, to undermine, or cast away.”

Many educators aim to reshape institutional priorities for progressive ideological transformation centered around race, gender, diversity, suppression of dissent and moralistic denunciation. Some data scientists see their role not just in building algorithms, but in actively shaping social justice outcomes and structural transformation—in the image and likeness of progressivism, of course. A University of Minnesota’s website warns against a “whiteness pandemic” and provides resources on how to halt and reverse the issue.

When unborn children are destroyed by the truckload; when a nation permits its children to undergo mutilating sex-change procedures; when some cannot define what a woman is; when elementary school students in Alaska receive copies of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence adorned with a sticker reading, “The Anchorage School District does not endorse these materials or the viewpoint expressed in them;” when six Democratic members of Congress post videos suggesting that orders by the current Commander-in-Chief are unlawful and that members of the American military should refuse to carry out the orders; when rogue members of the judiciary render decisions based on their progressive ideology rather than on the law of the land . . . we are a nation adrift. As Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee observed, civilizations more often commit suicide than suffer murder.

Some people are little more than political hacks and hoodlums. A biased legacy media against conservatives is the bane of journalism in America. Walter Cronkite was a self-identified liberal, but he did not parade his liberal bias as the anchor of the CBS Evening News and maintained his objectivity while on air. Interestingly, he was considered “the most trusted man in America.”

For many years, the relentless salvos of negativity in the media, in academia, and the perpetual propping up of all things liberal in the culture by cultural elites has warped the minds of many.

When will we learn that Communism is unworthy to unloose the latches of Capitalism’s shoes? When will we learn that violence leads nowhere? When will we walk the killing fields of Pol Pot, revisit Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, tour Hitler’s death camps, and hear again the echo of six million Jewish voices—reminders of the sheer evil behind socialism, communism, and Nazism? The foolishness of seeking socialism over democracy, communism over capitalism, criminals over police, globalists over America, Wall Street over Main Street, and illegal aliens over citizens, is a poison infecting and weakening the body politic—and given time and the right circumstances, could lead to our nation’s demise. America may even now be somewhere between the ICU and the morgue.

We must reject the therapeutic culture that excuses wrongdoing by over-contextualizing it while showing little compassion for victims. Prioritizing factors like homelessness, transgender status, race, or any other personal circumstances as automatic mitigations for violent crime—rather than pursuing justice and holding offenders fully accountable—must come to an end.

There is a difference between declaring war on the social order and declaring war on the evil within it. Those who persist in a deliberate attempt to foment a civil war should be branded for what they are: treasonous characters. Home-grown terrorists, just like imported terrorists, must be stopped at all costs.

Every war is won at great cost. Yet some wars must be fought. The American Revolution had to be fought and won. The Civil War had to be fought and won. The First and Second World Wars had to be fought and won. Now many seem to have lost not only the will to win but the will to fight at all. False equivalency never works; it never knows when to fight, where to fight, or what to fight for.

Political party platforms will either align with the principles of the Judeo-Christian ethic or they will not. Though no party aligns completely with said ethic, it is clear the time has come in American politics where one party is clearly opposed to much of that ethic. It is incumbent upon people of faith to align with those principles and therefore with the platforms that best reflect them. National good or decay can be hastened or delayed by those in power and by the rear- guard efforts of those in opposition. Few politicians have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder. Politicians will legislate for good or ill. Pray they choose the good. But make no mistake: political power is not the tool for advancing the Kingdom of God. The state is not the savior. Our national salvation will not ultimately come from any political party. It will come only with the arrival of the Prince of Peace.

Lest I sound like a crepehanger, let me add that optimism should outdistance pessimism. Many Americans are demonstrating that they refuse to be hornswoggled. In a Republic, the feet of good citizens must always walk toward the polling place. Yet optimism should be tempered by realism—and by an awareness of error. The study of error shortens the road to truth. As Georges Bernanos wrote, “In order to hope in that which does not deceive, we must first lose hope in everything that deceives.” That is a prescription many Americans need to fill—and note the fine print: “May not be substituted for a generic brand.”

We do not need to repair the Constitution. We need only to follow it to repair the Republic. Surface-level maintenance cannot fix the cracks in a collapsing structure. Some clamor for change. Change is sometimes necessary. But not everything must be changed. Conservation of the principles that made us a great nation is as necessary today as change itself.

For some, America has become an “everything goes and nothing matters” nation. Yet we all stand before an “everything matters, therefore obey Him” God. Daniel could believe in God despite what happened to him and his people—because he believed in God before what happened, and because of what happened.

America’s foundations rest on Christian truth. It is ignorance—willful or otherwise—to deny it. Today’s naïve American public is often uninformed, ill-informed, or misinformed about the threats we face. Our national complacency and confusion reveal forgotten founding values.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are stark reminders that socialism, communism, and dictatorial regimes are alive and well. Europe is rapidly moving toward civilizational collapse. Some socialists, communists, and Muslims are attempting to use America’s freedoms as a cloak for conquest in their effort to remake the nation in their ideological image. They must be stopped. Captain Jean-Luc Picard delivered the pivotal line in Star Trek: First Contact when he refused to sacrifice the Enterprise after humanity’s many compromises with the Borg: “A line must be drawn here!” The last hope of the free world is the United States of America.

America must reach that mic-drop moment spoken by Solomon at the end of Ecclesiastes: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Do this, and by God’s grace we may survive as a nation. Ignore it, and the light of Lady Liberty’s torch will flicker and die—leaving behind a lightless lamp and a once-great nation swept into the dustbin of history.

David L. Allen

Thanksgiving, 2025