I've been repeating three sentences to my two sons since they were old enough to understand English. By now I hope they're sick of hearing them, because that means I've done my job. It's my fervent hope that someday, including that time after I'm gone, they'll still be telling their own kids, "This is what I learned from your grandpa, and I hope you learn it too." Those three sentences are: (1) Always take responsibility for your own actions; (2) Be intellectually curious about absolutely everything; and (3) The world does not owe you a good time.
What I see now is a huge chunk of American society that has adopted the exact opposite of those three principles. Specifically, their attitude can be summed up as: (1) When caught having done something wrong, blame everyone else; (2) Trust the Christian Bible and reject the results of scientific inquiry; and (3) Complain that your rights are being violated anytime someone criticizes you.
The morphing of American conservatism into some kind of semi-theocratic reactionism is behind much of this abandonment of what I believe are the basic rules of good citizenship. Republican darling Chris Christie, while no evangelical, responded to the now-undeniable allegations of having used the nation's busiest interstate bridge for political retribution by simply claiming ignorance, blaming everyone in his employ, and then firing a number of them. The accompanying response from his own party was to leap to his defense and support his lack of accountability. Who cares if he cost thousands of his state's commuters lost hours, and their businesses lost revenue? So what if a woman in an ambulance died on that bridge while waiting to reach New York Presbyterian Hospital, located just on the other side? At least he didn't tweet a photo of his private parts, which everyone agrees is absolutely unforgivable.
As for intellectual curiosity, we all know how far that gets you in an America where academics who make less than rookie cops are called "elitists," and where overwhelming evidence for human-induced climate change is labeled a "hoax," employing quotes from a book cobbled together from bad translations of thousand-year-old texts. The fact that a book whose best teachings are about humility and charity is used to justify arrogance and greed is irony writ large.
Finally, we have the obscene spectacle of CPAC, which combines all the worst failings of modern American society into one place. A month after a wealthy, overprivileged white executive told the media that criticism of greedy behavior by the top 1% of rich Americans is the equivalent of "Kristallnacht," a black surgeon named Ben Carson stood before a cheering crowd and declared that America is now "just like Nazi Germany." A black male like Carson must have had to work very hard to become a surgeon, and certainly deserves his success -- but does he honestly believe he'd enjoy the same privileges in Nazi Germany? The Nazis rounded up anyone who didn't fit Hitler's vision of the "master race" and threw them into concentration camps, where most were either executed or starved to death. The very fact that Dr. Carson can appear in a huge auditorium, and be rewarded generously with money and applause for making what has to be one the single most stupid statements in modern history, proves this is NOT Nazi Germany. But there is this idea now among conservatives that any challenge to their behavior is an attack on their Constitutional rights, supported by pseudo-information purveyors like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. It's their "right" to make bigoted statements in public and not suffer consequences. It's their "right" to discriminate against homosexuals and claim "religious exemption," even if they are not members of the clergy. Their statements should never be called into question, nor should they ever suffer financial loss or public embarrassment for being colossal assholes; they are not to be held accountable for their actions, or to be made uncomfortable in any way, because they are owed that much by society. Anyone who criticizes one of their own, however, must be made to apologize, and THEN fired anyway, for good measure. Just ask Martin Bashir.
So let's stop pretending that liberals are all about "good times" and "free rides," while conservatives are about "Christian values" and "work ethics." What liberals are about is shared responsibility, which is what builds societies; what conservatives are about is anti-intellectualism and lack of personal responsibility, which destroys empires.