The Wall Street Journal/NORC conducted a survey about American values. For anyone watching the news, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that, in the 24 years since similar questions were put to Americans, our citizens have lost faith in God and country. That’s what leftists have been teaching for a long time. But the real kicker is that Americans no longer want to have children. That’s not just bad for the country; that’s bad for the people in the country.

Here are the basic, sad facts of the poll:

Long-held values like patriotism, religion and community involvement are in retreat across America, according to a stunning poll released Monday.

The Wall Street Journal/NORC survey found that just 38% of Americans say patriotism is “very important” to them, down from 70% who said the same in 1998.

Slightly more Americans (39%) placed the same importance on religion, down from 62% who said faith was “very important” to them 25 years ago.

​The percentage of Americans who said raising children was “very important” fell to 30% in the new poll, down from 59% in 1998.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans who valued involvement in their community as “very important” fell to 27% — down from a high of 62% in 2019, the last time the question was polled.

One virtue long associated with liberals, a belief in tolerance for others, is now deemed very important by 58% of Americans — down from 80% four years ago.

Every one of those changes is the result of the rise of leftism in America. It isn’t any great feat to understand this: Leftism has always held that America is a bad country and that God is an unnecessary, censorious throwback to a backward, premodern time before leftism brought true light to the world.

For leftists, “community” is defined by government and, currently, government wants to define “community” to mean subsets of people divided by race and sexual orientation, all of whom are kept in a perpetual state of hostility toward each other. And of course, the refusal to have children derives from young people being taught that children mean death for Mother Earth.

Image: Family by freepik.

As I said, nothing is a surprise, but it was the thing about children that especially saddened me. First, children enable us to regain belief in country, faith, and community, because all of those help us raise and elevate our children. When you have children, you start believing that maybe America isn’t such a bad place, and maybe it’s easier to teach children to make smart choices if they believe God is looking over their shoulders, and that it helps enormously if you live in a community in which there are other families who share your values and become your, and your children’s, friends.

Raising vulnerable, innocent children also helps you see how terribly wrong it is for the left to sexualize our children. As Libs of TikTok routinely shows, it’s the deranged, leftist, childless teachers who want to coopt other people’s children, while it’s the parents—ordinary, placid people—who suddenly became warriors on their children’s behalf.

But there’s one more important factor about children that too few people without children realize and too few people with children articulate: Children force their parents to grow up and become better people.

Currently, we live in a world in which adults are encouraged to be children. They stay in school under they’re 23, 24, 25, or older; they’re on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26; they don’t want real jobs and seem happy to continue living with mom and dad; they never let go of Disney “magic,” something they should age out of; and, as those deranged teachers with the multicolored hair and tattooed faces reveal, they continue to dress like adult toddlers, complete with rainbows and sparklers. We live in a society of arrested development.

If you’re a mentally healthy adult, having children changes all that. You are no longer the center of the world, able to shape most aspects of your life to fit your desires. Instead, you have in your life a person who is utterly dependent upon you for survival. If you are selfish, that little life may be snuffed out.. And sometimes, when you haven’t slept in several nights, and the baby won’t stop crying, you may entertain fantasies of defenestration, but when that child finds comfort in your arms or suddenly smiles at you after a storm of tears…well, it’s at that moment that you become a very important person in a way that will never happen otherwise in your life.

If you love your children, for their sakes, you will force yourselves to become responsible, patient, kind, knowledgeable, and mature. The days will be long and hard and, sometimes, the rewards will come slowly.

I’m not a fan of little children, so my rewards came very slowly, indeed. But when your investment of time, love, self-sacrifice, and self-improvement finally comes to fruition, the payoff is extraordinary. You have had a hand in creating wonderful human beings who are interesting, thoughtful, productive, and loving.

For all those young people turning against children, I can assure you that no spreadsheet, no legal brief, no boardroom—and this is true even if you love your job and find it fulfilling—will ever compare to the glow you feel when your adult child says, “Hey, Mom, I just want you to know that I love you.”