We live in times of moral crisis.  Reason has led to incredible advances in scientific knowledge and discovery, the most productive, dynamic societies in world history.  However, reason alone is without a moral compass.  Reason unchained leads to slaughter; slaughter is reasonable in pursuit of amoral goals.

For a long time, proponents of the Enlightenment and its values leaned on Christianity to provide that compass, but people began straying from that well over a century ago, and there's nothing there to replace it for many people.  Enter cultural Marxism.

Nietzsche was right to herald the death of God in people's lives and to openly worry about the consequences.  If liberty is to survive, we need to publish, promote, and live with a moral compass that, if based upon Judeo-Christian values needs more "Onward Christian Soldiers" and a lot less "kumbaya," a lot less altruism, and a whole lot more virtuous living as defined by the classicists e.g., the Nicomachean ethics, stoicism's cardinal virtues.  Faith, hope, and charity are meaningful only after one has secured his own place in his own mind, and in our world through virtuous living.  Charity is impossible without spiritual or material wealth.  And faith, without works, is dead (James 2:14-26).

Arguably, cultural Marxists have hitched a free ride from what Nietzsche termed bad conscience and the inversion of values propounded by those whom he termed history's most profoundly adroit haters: the priests of Catholicism and its offshoots.  The Reformation was a big step forward in his view, but even then, Christianity never lost the bad conscience-induced hatreds born of misdirected guilt and the inverted values used by prelates to groom their flocks.  Faith is fading, but bad conscience persists.

The doyens of the new religion, cultural Marxism, have adopted Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals as a user's manual.  They're using the same psychology as his priesthood of haters, finding causes and oppressors upon whom their followers can vent whether current or past. 

[T]hey enjoy being mistrustful and dwelling on nasty deeds and imaginary slights; they scour the entrails of their past and present for ... occurrences that offer them the opportunity to revel in tormenting suspicions and to intoxicate themselves with the passion of their own  malice: they tear open their oldest wounds [e.g., slavery], they bleed from long-healed scars, they make evil doers out of their friends, wives, children, and whoever else stands closest to them. [1]

Cultural Marxism is an existential threat.  When faced with an existential threat, humility, meekness, altruism, and obedience are not strengths.  When faced with an existential threat, self-esteem, boldness, justice, vengeance, challenge, and independence are virtues.  Assert rights and values grounded in truth without apology and without mercy against the bad actors.

It's time to breathe life back into the Declaration of Independence.  The self-evident truths were not self-evident to casual observers then, nor are they self-evident to liars and unschooled sophists today, but they were self-evident to classically educated liberals schooled in ethics who pledged themselves to promote divinity found in truth.  The time is always right to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty.

[1] Genealogy of Morals, F. Nietzsche, pp. 563-564, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 2000 Modern Library Edition, ISBN 0-679-78339-3

Public domain photo.