The United States of America was founded on certain cherished principles, such as the right to freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, and the right to be secure in one's property.  These inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were enshrined in our Constitution, our law of the land.  They were embedded in our societal DNA, part and parcel of our very souls.

Far more than most, we judged people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  Everyone was meant to be equal before the law, innocent until proven guilty.  Justice was blind.  We aspired to be a classless society, a meritocracy.  We truly were the shining city on a hill, "the land of the free and the home of the brave."  

Those days appear to be gone forever.  Stolen from us while we slept.

Let's go through each of the erstwhile American rights and ideals in turn, to prove the point.

Freedom of speech is rapidly becoming a quaint notion, replaced by "hate speech" laws, safe rooms, social media bans, and political correctness run amok.  Those who have the temerity to believe in traditional American values are being mocked and challenged; those courageous enough to say so are being canceled, fired, or even physically attacked.  As George Orwell noted, "[t]he further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

Freedom of religion has been replaced by the bizarre concept of freedom from religion.  Christians in particular are openly mocked, questioned, silenced, and legally forced to act against their consciences.

The right to bear arms — i.e., protect yourself and your family — is under assault and will be dramatically more so under the incoming administration.

The right to be secure in one's property has been essentially abolished.  If your home or business happens to stand in the way of a "mostly peaceful" BLM/Antifa riot, it is quite likely toast.  Sorry, no recompense allowed.  Moreover, confiscatory tax rates are all the rage in blue states and will be coming to all of us soon, courtesy of the Harris-Biden Biden-Harris regime.  You may have earned your money, but illegal aliens are more deserving of it, no?

The right to life?  Roughly 3,000 abortions are committed in the United States every day.  Oddly, an unborn child has no say as to whether he lives or dies, but, if he happens to make it out of the womb, he must be allowed to determine his own sex.

Liberty?  The pursuit of happiness?  Yeah, right.  Stay in your homes!  Wear a mask!  Give up your jobs and businesses if asked!  Do not attend weddings or funerals!  Do as we say, not as we do!

Judging people is generally considered passé, unless those people hold traditional values.  But, in practice, our rulers do judge people by the color of their skin, so screw the character thing.

There is no equality before the law.  Certain groups are treated entirely differently from others.  The elites pick and choose the special groups, the untouchables.  The rest of us are nothing more than sacrificial lambs.  Are you a Clinton?  No problem.  A Trump?  Burn in hell!  Soros, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Cuomo, Biden?  Love you guys!  Got your back!  And maybe your front, too, wink, wink!  Progressives are considered innocent even if proved guilty, whereas conservatives are guilty regardless of their innocence.  Justice is not blind; rather, we are blind to justice.

We are no longer a classless society, though in many ways we have no class.  Meritocracy is a thing of the past, unless one considers monumental ignorance and hypocrisy meritorious.

The shining city on a hill is rapidly sliding down into an abyss.

Yet it is not evil that surprises so much as the number of people willing to aid and abet it.

Those on the left want to remake the U.S. into the "land of the wee...and the home of the knave."

The ultimate question left is whether we let them.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay, public domain.