Last week, during a TV law enforcement briefing on Medicare scams affecting federal reimbursement systems, the FBI briefer unexpectedly went off-script, describing the crimes that were committed. These after-crime TV briefings are usually among the most boring live presentations available to TV viewers. The FBI agent went into detail describing the nature of the crimes as major affronts to the ‘generous American people’, who are a ‘just’ citizenry providing aid to the less fortunate in our population, whose help was being stolen by greedy malcontents.
Americans, a just and generous people? Have you ever heard a law-and-order situation described in this manner? and from someone at the FBI, an organization whose current and last two directors were strongly vilified, depending, of course, on which side of the political spectrum the person doing the criticizing is on!
An Internet look-up defines that ‘just people’ can mean “people who are fair, honest, and morally right, or people who act in accordance with justice and high moral standards”. For a historical analogy, I had to go all the way back to Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he stated: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…..can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?”
But, as I write this post, the subject is Memorial Day, when we pay tribute to those who have served and died defending our nation. They may be the only Americans that most of our citizens still regard as having virtue. Whatever war our nation was involved in, they followed orders, to do or die, whether to the shores of Tripoli, deadly Omaha Beach, or the sands of Iwo Jima, Americans have followed orders and done their duty.
Our Founders embarked on the Great American Experiment based on a belief that to be successful, the People were a virtuous group that would faithfully work together, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The English majors among us will recognize that ‘felicity’, in the Washington quote above, is a synonym for ‘happiness’, which connects happiness with ‘virtue’. The logical question, then, is “Did America become unhappy and divided when it began losing its virtue?”
The pollsters tell us that Americans have been slowly retreating from the traditional religious beliefs of their families into some forms of atheism or nihilism, ‘the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless’. Dennis Prager’s book addresses the question this trend suggests: “If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil”.
The recently elected New York City mayor, Zohan Mandnami, an avowed communist, took communism out of the political closet and made it a respectable choice for as many as half of American voters. Since Marxist political views revere the State as its moral compass and seek to eliminate religious or family ties for moral guidance, will these precepts, including anti-Semitism, increasingly define Americans’ concept of what is good and what is evil?
The 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence is just over a month away. As Americans wave their American flags on July 4, 2026, will most be waving them in honor of George Washington’s Creator-defined virtue to guide America for another 250 years, or will the majority join those who are actively promoting a fundamental transformation of the United States of America away from the concepts laid down for us by our Founding Fathers?
TW3
May 28, 2026
John Whitmore Jenkins
www.jenkins-speaks.com
john@jenkins-speaks.com
