Our Birthright as Americans has always been known as the American Dream.

The American Dream: No matter what color you are, regardless of your social class, your level of education, or how much money you may or may not have, you can always improve your life if you work hard and keep at it. You can attain the level of success that you want. There are no limits. That's the American Dream. That's why people from all over the world want to come here and that's why they always have. The law treats us all the same, and society encourages our individuality as we try to rise out of our current situation to attain a better one. Maybe it would be more accurate if I said that is the Promise of the American Dream. That's what our founders sought to establish when they codified the values of a brand-new country.

I think MLK Jr saw this pretty clearly when he crafted his I Have a Dream speech:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. //

And merit was usually at the center of many of these values. If you could perform, you could be rewarded by the natural outcomes of your actions. If you didn't perform, you kind of stayed where you were. Today's culture doesn't always reward merit. In fact, sometimes, it holds you back if you're competing in the job market. Or in academics. Identity carries more weight and often excludes one from advancement. Certain boxes that once required checking, like experience, accuracy, performance, and timeliness, have now frequently been replaced by race, sexuality, and political orientation. See Sam Brinton, see Kamala Harris, see Karine Jean-Pierre. //

How did we get like this in just a few short years? Today, you don't have to Google very far to find that values like merit or timeliness or individuality are now considered relics of whiteness and misogyny. This mindset exists in the corporate world now, which is sad, but it's also made significant headway into the military, which is dangerous and reckless. //

So again, how did we ever get to the point where presumably normal people would undermine the mission of their job to countermand it and replace it with the opposite? How did it become commonplace, if not very nearly mainstream, to undermine long-treasured American values of meritocracy (especially critical in the military) for the sake of a bunch of DEI/Utopian Unicorn Dust? And by extension, in other critical roles such as nuclear waste management or medical training or airline pilot proficiency? None of these make any practical sense. Who cares if your pilot is gay if he forgets to lower the flaps on takeoff or if your surgeon is black when he forgets which side your appendix is on? //

But I bring this up because it seems that popular culture has now become saturated with the message to the degree that it thinks this is the sum total of the American experience, and therefore, America is bad. Possibly, this has led to a general belief that we are a racist country now and beyond redemption. How did that get traction? Collective guilt, I suppose. Which, of course, when the glass gets full enough, leads to collective atonement. And when you hit that stage, you feel justified if not duty bound to usurp your once-held convictions that merit is good. Even racism can be good if pointed at the right people, and sometimes it is necessary to give up your birthright if it means adopting a new birthright where people are advanced because they are righteous in their color, sexuality, or politics and therefore oppressed.

I don't know. Maybe I have a point here, maybe not. But still, the question nags at me. How did we give up our core American values so quickly and so easily? I admit that I am still vexed.