As I walked through the airport recently, I saw a young teenager who proudly displayed a button on her clothing. It said: “What you do matters.” I liked it! I’m not sure what motivated her, but she wanted to communicate an important value, to elevate an ideal. I admired her enthusiasm for taking a stand. 

A recent survey highlights a troubling statistic: a majority of Americans “don’t identify with what America has become.” Many people feel our country is slipping away, but most want to reclaim the promise of our nation. Contrary to the barrage of negativity, most people hope for justifiable goals: to regain power over their lives, their government, and their economic prospects. 

Ultimately, however, both the government and the market are downstream from culture—and America’s social fabric is fraying. Many people are experiencing deepening anxiety about the direction of our country. The recent attack in the San Bernardino Valley has only intensified the feeling. A crazed couple driven by their twisted religious ideology murdered indiscriminately at a social service center. A horrific tragedy and a grotesque irony.  

A genuine multiculturalism, long a vibrant hallmark of the American experience, will continue to decay into discord unless two mutually supporting conditions are sustained: a genuine appreciation of organic difference and a binding substructure of universal ideals and shared values. One such value is that we do no harm to others. A religion that teaches killing is no religion at all. Other important values include trustworthiness, thrift, citizenship, courteousness, and so on (a helpful list is found in the Boy Scout Law). 

The values crisis is compounding a three-part problem: government overreach, economic exclusion, and cultural dislocation. 

First, a centralizing government seems decreasingly able to understand, much less address, the needs of the citizens it should serve. In the midst of a divisive political season, partisan dysfunction and bureaucratic inertia are hindering proper progress toward addressing our country’s pressing problems, and overshadowing local initiative where certain problems can best be solved. Not everything is a federal issue. 

Second, a private sector of consolidating corporate power, often underwritten by the state, is disenfranchising the small business sector. A loss of genuine choice and competition, of economic pluralism, reduces the ability of people to participate, own, and innovate in a marketplace that is truly free and can deliver widespread prosperity. 

Third, a culture of contrasting philosophies, more and more frequently enflamed by caustic rhetoric, is contributing to what some believe are irreconcilable social divisions. An impoverished account of individualism—of a “liberty” reduced to autonomous choice and divorced from responsibility—creates social anarchy, which creates the conditions for counterproductive government interventions, lawless overreach, and intrusive market manipulations. Add in the mix a confusing assortment of value choices driven more by experimenting elites than the stability of sound tradition and you have a recipe for harmful disruption. There is much sadness.

As politicians and the media debate policy positions, we must understand that authentic solutions involve a return to essential value propositions. The application of proper principles to these problems would enable Washington to better assuage widespread and justifiable angst with appropriate government decentralization and dynamic economic inclusion, supported by a hopeful culture. 

As you enter Nebraska, the signs read: “The Good Life.” A good life is found in freedom and responsibility. A just and orderly society is founded by individuals who care. And what we all do matters.