Back in the early 90's, I was a window washer and house painter and spent much of my time outside with AM radio. Jan Mickelson, morning WHO radio personality, was my daily companion. This video gives you some good insight into Jan. Advance to about seven minutes in and you'll hear this:

It's the proper role of government to restrain evil. That is... evil, well, that's the stuff that hurts other people. That's evil. Therefore it is the role of government to hold people accountable when people do evil stuff - that is, when they hurt other people. It is the proper role of the church to encourage virtue - to subsidize virtue. Virtue cannot be extracted by a government employee. It has to be nurtured by the institutions that are designed for that... that is the church, of course. And much of the conflict in what is called the The Culture War... can be resolved by balancing those two notions. It's the job of the church to encourage virtue and it's the job of the state to hold people accountable when they're not.
In the early 90's, James Davison Hunter wrote a book entitled "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America." Great title. That's exactly what culture does: it defines America.

Hunter gave an interview where he said that culture wars "tend to become violent when we see the other side as less than human... when our conception of the other side is that these people are not members of the political community and worthy of its protections as well as its privileges."

Think of how many times Obama said "That's not who we are." He said it 46 times during his presidency. He was trying to redefine America. He was trying to portray his political opponents and their ideas as un-American.

We get the culture we allow. We have allowed the church to walk away from advocating virtue. Instead, here in Texas, a pastor blesses blasphemous drag queens and elsewhere other leaders advocated for drag performance as worship and praise.

By definition, virtue showcases high moral standards. Parading grown men in sexualized performance before a church and children is the exact opposite of virtue.

If we have a society where we have universal respect for life, liberty, and property, then no one is hurt. There is no crime. But we don't hear church leaders advocate for this. Instead, we hear calls for tolerance of evil and of criminality. Tolerance is not virtue when we tolerate the harm of others. And to move the needle on that one, now harm comes from misgendering someone. The actual criminals are bailed out and set free or given sex change operations at the expense of taxpayers. Rather than defining and teaching virtue, the church is blurring virtue and teaching tolerance.

Obama used labels to smear his opponents. He insinuated they weren't American. Biden's presidency alienated actual American citizens and bypassed their literal rights to persecute and jail them, just as author Hunter describes. J6'ers have been treated as though they are not "worthy of protections as well as privileges" of being American. The government has blurred what it is to be accountable for truly hurting others. It tolerates crime from the "acceptable" people. Biden is in the process of pardoning the lawless throughout his administration.

Worse, we have Republican Senators who voted to confirm a defense secretary who embraced so-called pride instead of aggressive national defense, but these Senators now hesitate to confirm veteran Pete Hegseth. The Senators allowed Ketanji Brown Jackson to ascend to the highest court of the land, when she can't define a woman, but they balk at giving Trump the administration for which we voted.

Culture wars continue. They define America. They define your America and the America you will hand down to your children.

Buckle up. It's going to get bumpy and dirty. Some might not like it, but it's like this because we allowed it to get this bad. We get the culture we allow. We get the government we allow.

It's time to re-define both. Obama's and Biden's and Clinton's definition of America is not who we were, who we are, or who we should be.