The conservative academic Victor Davis Hanson sees America changing in ten important ways, and they aren’t good. These include new radical rules, he writes in a new opinion piece. But while Americans largely don’t like these rules, they want others to think they accept them. Otherwise, the results could be dire for them.

Here are the ten new ideas which Victor Davis Hanson sees are changing America, perhaps permanently.

1. Money is a construct. Who cares about the national debt anymore, when money can be printed.
2. Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden has voided immigration laws. He also recently said that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” In addition, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters go unpunished for the destruction they’ve wrought.
3. Racialism is now acceptable. I’m old enough to remember when integration was considered progress. Now excluding white students from college dorms or federal aid programs is seen as a “good” racism, since it’s a form of payback. Plus, being called a “racist” has become the most damning pejorative one can hear.
4. The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. Talk to any parent from San Diego whose kids are at home trying to learn remotely while teachers directly teach migrant kids in shelters. See how they feel about their kids being treated as second class citizens, especially since the parents foot the taxes paying for the schools. But white parents need to shut up: reopening schools is an example of “white supremacy.”
5. Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. There’s a pandemic going on, and citizens need the government to tell them how to behave. Plus, minority citizens are not responsible enough to obtain an I.D. to vote. Young adults also need to have their college loans paid off, since they aren’t responsible for their educational choices or their money.
6. Hypocrisy is passé. Virtue-signaling is alive. It’s okay if wealthy climate change scolds fly on private jets, or Hollywood justice warriors live with security and preach to you about your guns. They’re better than you, and you need to listen to them.
7. Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it. If you see homeless people crowding city sidewalks with tents, leaving behind needles and feces, just shut up and move on. That’s better than putting them in shelters, or providing mental help, or help for drug abuse. As Victor Davis Hanson put it, “It is more humane to let thousands of homeless people live, eat, defecate and use drugs on public streets and sidewalks.”
8. McCarthyism is good. Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture is here to eliminate wrong think. Watch what you say, or you may lose your job. Oh, and welcome to George Orwell’s 1984 courtesy of the “social media guillotine,” as Hanson put it.
9. Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. The New York Times “1619 Project” presented poor scholarship as fact about the founding of the nation. The scholarship, in fact, was so egregious that academics from the National Association of Scholars called for revoking 1619’s Pulitzer. However, it fit the media’s narrative that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false,” so promoting it was necessary.
10. Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity. As Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

“Its priesthood outnumbers the clergy and exercises far more power. Silicon Valley is the new Vatican, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are the new gospels.”

In my opinion, this final rule is the most frightening of the ten.

Religion sets the social order of a society. Even atheistic societies such as the old USSR, or today’s Communist China, have religion: worship of the supreme state. While America has traditionally been a nation of religious adherents, the numbers are dropping rapidly. Gallup polling recently reported that fewer than half of Americans belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque. What’s more, that’s down from 70% in the 1990’s and 50% in 2019. And as Victor Davis Hanson pointed out, the Church of Woke is replacing Judeo-Christian faiths.

In the Church of Woke, unlike Christianity or Judaism, there is no forgiveness if you have offended someone. Cancelation on social media is your fate. That perhaps is the most obvious difference between Western religion and Wokeism.

However, there are some similarities to traditional religions. The woke faithful also believe in demons, but they are the police. Thus, they preach that police roam city streets seeking to murder people of color. Never mind that in the city of Chicago, for example, of the 719 people shot and killed in 2020, only 14 were at the hands of an on-duty police officer. Forget facts: the church’s theology must stand.

Plus, victims of fatal police encounters almost always receive sainthood, as in the George Floyd case. Now I don’t have an opinion as to whether or not former officer Derek Chauvin caused Floyd’s death, and I’d rather keep my thoughts to myself. But while Chauvin is no holy man, Floyd was no saint, either. Yet the Church of Woke treats him as such.

Lorie Shaull/flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0.

And if a police officer shoots a minor, the child attains instant sainthood. Take, for example, 13-year-old Adam Toledo, whom Chicago police shot and killed on March 29 after he refused to drop a gun. However, because of his age, Toledo has become a saint who died at the hands of the demon.

Yet when liberal Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn suggested that we “stop romanticizing and infantilizing 13-year-olds,” he took heat on the Tribune’s Facebook page. Zorn may be liberal, but he broke one of the Church’s tenets. Children of color are innocent babies.

And, as in other religions, the Church of Woke has its con artists who fleece the faithful, too. Like Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Khan-Cullors, who has spent over $3 million dollars on four homes since 2016. In fact, she and her ‘wife’ traveled to the Bahamas last year to check out property in a wealthy celebrity neighborhood. Where did they get the money? Even New York City BLM activist Hank Newsome wants an investigation.

“If you go around calling yourself a socialist, you have to ask how much of her own personal money is going to charitable causes.”

So much for integrity in the BLM branch of the Church of Woke.

According to Victor Davis Hanson, America is becoming a nation where wrong becomes right; citizens hold second-class status; squalor is acceptable; riots are “mostly peaceful;” and criminals become saints. Such are the results when people reject traditional faith and adhere to the disastrous religion of wokeness. Unless the nation rejects this new religion and returns to order, the future will be grim.

Featured image: Nathanmac87/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.