Americans Haven’t Lost Their Moral Compass — Their Leaders Have

When thinking about the American people, columnist David Brooks is a glass-half-full kind of guy, but I, on the contrary, see the glass overflowing with goodness.

In his farewell column to The New York Times readers, Brooks wrote, “The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. We told multiple generations to come up with their own individual values. This privatization of morality burdened people with a task they could not possibly do, leaving them morally inarticulate and unformed. It created a naked public square where there was no broad agreement about what was true, beautiful and good. Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred — sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals — and when that goes away, anxiety, atomization and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results.”

Despite having been writing for more than a decade and having hundreds more columns published, I am going to have to disagree with Brooks on this one.

The vast majority of Americans continue to hold shared values of what is sacred. The disconnect comes when we continue to elect officials who no longer act as public servants or representatives. And because of gerrymandering and perverse incentives in primary elections, our representatives no longer represent our cultural values.

None of this is to say that I am not deeply concerned about the state of our democracy. We have a president who is more concerned with accumulating personal wealth than with putting the interests of the American people before his own, and a justice system that is no longer blinded by partisan politics.

But I think it's too easy to blame the American people’s “hyperindividualism” for our current situation, over which they have no control.

An overwhelming majority of Americans are appalled and sickened by the Epstein Files and long to see those who committed the crimes of pedophilia, sex trafficking of minors, and all those involved in covering it up, met with the full force of the law.

A plurality of Americans finds the actions of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), especially when shooting citizens practicing their Constitutional rights or ripping 2-year-olds or 5-year-olds from their parents and caregivers and being detained in another state, unpalatable and un-American.

A recent Gallup poll found 67% of Americans trust their local leaders to handle community issues, compared to just 33% trusting the federal government. Another study shows that 84% say democracy is either in crisis or facing serious challenges. So by extension, that 84% is likely to view the raid of a Georgia county’s election facility by federal officials or the arrests of journalists as examples of our civic emergency.

The lion's share of Americans appreciates the forty-four Danish soldiers killed in the United States’ War in Afghanistan, the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces, after the September 11th attacks, with a majority of Americans still supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

A majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s plan to replace the White House’s East Wing with a $300 million ballroom, and while there is no polling yet, these same Americans are most likely to be displeased with the president suing our own Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $10 billion when many Americans can’t afford their healthcare, let alone groceries.

During the same week Brooks’ column was published, there were countless stories of neighbors helping neighbors and communities providing for their residents during the intense cold and snow that blanketed more than half of the country.

Influencers across the spectrum took to their platforms, telling their followers that what we are living through is not okay and “I see you.” We learned that Alex Pretti’s last words before he was shot and killed were “Are you okay?” and we saw Minnesotans respond by delivering food and coats to those in need.

The American people have not lost their moral compass. Rather, they have lost faith that their elected leaders share it. What we are living is not a descent into barbarism that Brooks fears, but rather a profound disassociation between the values held by ordinary Americans and those practiced by the powerful and connected.

The goodness seen overflowing in communities across this nation, in neighbors helping neighbors, in strangers standing up for what's right, in citizens demanding accountability, proves that our shared conception of the sacred remains intact. Americans still know what is true, beautiful, and good. We still recognize justice, compassion, and human dignity when we see them, and injustice when we witness it.

The challenge before us is not to rediscover our values, but to ensure our institutions once again reflect them. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America, and what is right with America is, and always has been, the decency of its people.

Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master's of science in political science as well as a bachelor's of science in nursing.