The ongoing erosion of trust in U.S. institutions has its roots in the utopian cultural revolution of the 1960s, former George W. Bush aide Tim Goeglein argues in a new book.
Mr. Goeglein, a vice president at the conservative Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family since 2009, offers faith-based ideas for people on the right to turn that around without putting their faith in flawed structures.
“I am an inveterate optimist and I believe restoration and renewal are possible, but will never happen along progressive lines ,” Mr. Goeglein said in an interview. “It’s never going to be a top-down solution from Hollywood, Wall Street or Silicon Valley. At the most local level, people need to re-engage in our churches and communities where we live.”
Mr. Goeglein, the former deputy to White House strategist Karl Rove, shares his perspective in “Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned Into a National Nightmare and How We Can Revive the American Dream.”
His chapters trace how cultural rebellions in morality, education, entertainment, the fiscal world, families, organized religion and public civility taught generations of Americans to disregard the traditional guardrails that protected their parents and grandparents from violent chaos.
Its title refers to “Utopia,” a 16th-century satire by British statesman Sir Thomas More that described an ideal society and showed how it could never exist in the real world.
In Mr. Goeglein’s account of today’s political disunity, politicians formed by 1960s values on both sides of the aisle have worked to remake the U.S. into a utopia in recent decades.
“Instead, they took a wrecking ball to society and America has never been the same,” he writes in the introduction. “All one has to do is look at the current culture to see the damage the 1960s utopians created.”
The book comes as public and private sector institutions have plunged in popularity over the past few decades, with mistrust of institutions such as the medical industry and federal government growing in national surveys during pandemic lockdowns.
The Pew Research Center reported in April that just 22% of Americans trust the federal government to “do what is right just about always/most of the time.” That was down from 24% in April 2021 and 27% in April 2020.
An annual Gallup poll released in July found an average of 28% of adults expressed confidence in 16 leading institutions, statistically the same as a historic low of 26% recorded last year. Just 29% of respondents expressed “a great deal” or“quite a lot” of confidence in public schools, 28% in organized labor, 12% in television news and 36% in the medical system.
Only small businesses, the military and police garnered a majority of support in this year’s Gallup poll, which had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. The company has conducted the annual survey since 1993.
“The latest 28% average marks the third consecutive year that confidence has been below 30%,” Megan Brenan, a Gallup senior editor, wrote in a summary of the findings. “Before 2022, average confidence was between 31% and 43%.”
Organized religion has also taken a hit. According to Gallup, U.S. church membership fell below the majority for the first time in 2021, hitting 47%. That’s down from 73% in 1937 when the polling company first measured the issue.
Mr. Goeglein, a practicing Lutheran who grew up in Indiana, expressed concern over that trend. Among other roles in the Bush administration, he helped establish the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001.
“In many ways, the radicalism of the 1960s has reduced many churches and seminaries to a shell of what they used to be, replacing good theology with progressive politics,” he said during his interview.
Mr. Goeglein, 60, was born during the tumultuous decade and recalled coming of age in its aftermath.
“The 1960s and ’70s held up moral relatism and nihilism as a standard for children, as education was reimagined along progressive lines,” he said. “I think that has widened and contributed to the polarization of our country and purposely made it more difficult to find harmony in the public square.”
He linked the progressive influences of 20th-century social engineering advocate John Dewey on public education and Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky on civil protests to a loss of faith in authority — culminating in recent trends such as the growing distrust of Americans in the higher education system to ensure free speech on campuses following anti-Israel campus protests last year.
In the book, Mr. Goeglein traces how the collapse of faith in organized religion has paralleled a decline in people who believe the U.S. enforces its laws fairly. He says that’s helped fuel a rise in social isolation and “woke” culture wars dividing people who used to be friends.
According to the most recent data, the U.S. ranked 26th out of 142 countries last year in the World Bank measure of nations upholding the rule of law. It ranked 24th in the Transparency International list of countries with the least perceived corruption.
By comparison, the U.S. ranked 16th in the rule of law and 15th in perceived corruption in 1996.
“The result is a dispirited and divided America,” Mr. Goeglein writes. “Neighbors are pitted against neighbors, and in many cases, family members are pitted against other family members.”
On the other hand, decades of surveys have shown that most Americans still trust local professionals over national organizations — including their family doctor over the medical industry, their pastor over religious hierarchies and their local police over the criminal justice system.
While Mr. Goeglein’s book does not single out any politicians or cultural issues, it points to a re-engagement with local culture as a path to restoring unity in the nation.
In his interview, he urged Americans with conservative and traditional values to run for the local school board, write screenplays, get involved with the fine arts and participate everywhere in “the things that make America so special and unique.”
“I’m a Burkean who believes you have to reform in order to preserve,” Mr. Goeglein said, referring to 18th-century conservative English statesman Edmund Burke. “Too often, progressivism dominates our institutions, and I think reforming our institutions rather than abandoning them is the way forward.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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