Douglas Murray: Defy the Doom-Mongers and Believe in a Better Tomorrow for America and Ourselves

A new poll out this week made some alarming discoveries. The survey carried out for the Wall Street Journal revealed that just 38% of Americans say that patriotism is “Very important” to them. That is down from 70% in 1998.

Only slightly more Americans said that religion was “very important” to them. Again down from 62% 25 years ago.

So it is hardly a surprise that the things which go along with religious belief and patriotism have fallen at a similar rate. Just 27% of Americans said that their community was “very important” to them (down from 62% in 2019). And a belief that tolerance of other people is important fell from 80% of Americans four years ago to just 58% today.

Some of these figures can be relatively easily explained. 

Religious belief has been in decline across western democracies for generations now. Absent some religious revival, that trend will continue. 

The cliff-like fall off in the importance of community must be in part because we had the years of isolation caused by COVID.

But it is those figures on patriotism and tolerance that are the most alarming. Though even easier to explain. 

Twenty-five years ago it was normal for Americans to feel pride in their country. This country was the unrivaled, dominant force in the world. And it had become so not through invading and colonizing other countries, but by liberating many (not least Europe, twice) and by spreading free market economics across much of the world. 

Back then, in relatively recent memory, Americans were still a sunny people – proud of their ancestors and proud of the great men and women who made this country.

Not anymore. For more than a generation Americans have been taught from the schoolroom onwards that this is an iniquitous country. They are told that the country was founded in “sin.”

But why should America have a founding “sin” which is said to be ineradicable? Does any other country have such a thing? Would anyone like to go to Sudan and say that country is steeped in original sin for practicing slavery not just in the past but right up to this day?

No one does. It is a one-way street, this assault on the American and wider Western past. 

But if you are constantly told, by teachers, pundits, and political hucksters that there is nothing good in your past why would you feel patriotic? 

Why would you feel proud to be an American when all you have been taught is that America is evil?

It is the same with the fall-off in toleration. Most of us can attest to the truth of those figures. Only 25 years ago people could still be married, be friends, go to the same bars, and talk politics without anyone knocking anyone else’s head off. 

Today we have every minority group and every political extreme insisting that we cannot even live in the same country as each other. It comes from every direction. Trans extremists this week called for a “day of vengeance” in America. An unwise thing to do after a trans shooter just murdered three children and three adults in a school.

But other extremes push the same narrative. GOP loudmouth Marjorie Taylor-Greene recently insisted that the United States must break up. She and other extreme Republicans agree with radical Democrats, trans extremists, and every other type of nut-job in thinking that you cannot live in a country unless everyone else in it is in lock-step with your own particular views.

On issue after issue, Armageddon-like extremism has taken over. Look at the way that a generation of American school children have been told that they face a climate emergency and that unless we reduce the number of people on earth they will all burn to death in their lifetimes. Hardly the most optimistic – or true – message to impart to American youth.

But all this has consequences, and these too can be seen in this poll. 

Just 23% of American adults said that having children was very important to them. That is absolutely extraordinary – a demonstration of a profound pessimism about the American future.

If this was July 1940 perhaps such a fear of bringing children into the world would be understandable. But today? With all of the advantages, rights, opportunities, and more that we have in this country? 

Many sensible people have fallen for the climate cult. But even if their cult claims were right, so what? Human life was always lived on the edge of a precipice. If our ancestors had put off having children until the future held no fear then none of us would be here.

But we are here – and that is the point. 

Our being here is one expression of optimism that our forebears had. An optimism far harder to feel in their day than in ours. 

It is not just our luxury, but our duty, to defy the doom-mongers and make it clear that tomorrow in America does not have to be worse, but can in fact be made even better than ever.

A terrifying warning about Artificial Intelligence

I have rarely been so struck as I was by the statement signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of other tech whizzes this week. The letter called for a six-month halt on Artificial Intelligence research due to the “profound risks” that it poses to “society and humanity.”

The fact that such a group of great human brains are getting worried should make us pause.

We have known of this risk for a quarter of a century. Certainly since the world chess champion – and New York resident – Garry Kasparov lost to a computer in 1997. 

In that match, Kasparov said in his notes that the computer was not calculating – it appeared to be thinking.

Then imagine if we as a species had spent the last 25 years thinking about all this. Instead, we wasted much of our time being distracted by large-ass celebrities, gender madness, and “public thinkers” who have made us stupider than we were before.

Sometimes I think the computers deserve to win.