It has been said that cultures, like people, have a sense of life — a kind of emotional undercurrent generated by a society’s view of its people, their principal values and their place in the world — which acts as a recurring theme of a particular age.

Today in America, we are living in the Age of Fear.

Fear is everywhere — we are awash in it: We fear our government. We fear our leaders. We fear crime and violence. We fear inflation and climate change, illegal immigration and fentanyl. We fear misinformation, disinformation, indoctrination and censorship. We fear wokeness, cancel culture, CRT and DEI. … We fear fear itself.

The result: Fear is suffocating us in worry, anxiety, panic and dread — and contributing to the spiritual and moral disintegration of our national fiber.

As Joseph Epstein, former editor of the American Scholar, observes, “The U.S. feels sadly leaderless” — a sentiment that “has contributed greatly to the deflating sense of hopelessness that seems to have swept over the country.” Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal speaks of our “unhappy nation” and “a very sour public mood,” where “The country’s culture, the stuff of daily life is negative.”

© The Hill