Writing this week for Public Discourse, RFI President Emeritus Tom Farr argues that America’s public conscience has begun to replace its fidelity to inalienable rights and religious freedom with a state-enforced commitment to radical human autonomy. Farr writes:

A close colleague of mine, the president of the Religious Freedom Institute, travels the country teaching the meaning and value of religion and religious freedom. He begins each class by asking: “Who can tell me what ‘inalienable rights’ are?” Most college students, he reports, have no idea what that expression means. Worse, many admit they’ve never even heard of inalienable rights, much less what the term has to do with religion or religious freedom. 

Fewer than 20 percent of today’s U.S. college students can answer basic questions about our government or our history. Astoundingly, fewer than a third of our top colleges require a course in American history for history majors. America isn’t a popular subject. 

Most college graduates simply do not know, or do not acknowledge, the significance of the American experiment in freedom that is ordered to truth rather than self. Few are patriots because they see little in their country that is worthy of their devotion.

…

Why is the once-widespread American commitment to inalienable rights and religious freedom disappearing? Longstanding trends of secularization, the Sexual Revolution, a professoriate and media seeking the privatization of religion, and a growing public belief in radical individual autonomy have all played a part. Until recently, most of these trends have been muted by a bipartisan cultural and political consensus on the founding principles. That is no longer the case, not only in our educational system, but in our mainstream politics. 

Evidence that the consensus is dying lies in plain sight. Recent Democratic administrations have openly, proudly abandoned the transcendent truths claimed in the Declaration, embracing instead radical human autonomy as America’s guiding vision. By so doing they are undercutting the moral ground on which America was established and on which it has flourished. Their flight from our founding principles constitutes an American apostasy, a treacherous betrayal of what has made our nation great. To grasp the gravity of this apostasy—especially as the Declaration approaches its 250th anniversary—we must consider the founding principles of our country and apprehend what is being abandoned.  

Read the full article: “American Apostasy at 250.”