September 14, 2026
If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Part 1 introduced our Substack series that will connect the many dots that are contributing to the serious decline in the mental health of our youth. The problem we face is that the “solutions” being proposed by the federal and state governments are the very same interventions driving the mental health epidemic! As we said, it’s like hiring wolves to guard the sheep.
This 2nd article will explore a brief history of how the culture war against reality has attacked the fundamental identities of our children by removing the objective truth of their innate value, worth and meaning and replacing it with the “isms” of revolution.
The Rise of Postmodernism in the West: Nothing is “True”
In the 1960s the philosophy of postmodernism, the belief that every value is “constructed” by a person or by a culture, seized western culture. According to post-modernists, absolute truth does not exist. Instead, all that exists are personal perspectives or “constructs.”
In postmodernism, people accept that objective truth doesn’t exist and are convinced they “construct” their own truths. But, since truth must be what IS true, by definition, postmodernism makes evidence irrelevant. Logic becomes unworkable. Personal feelings, emotions and experiences (our “lived experiences,” as they are called today) become personal truths. The Postmodernism war on reality is totally illogical. It accepts that contradicting personal truths are still true at the same time.
Postmodernism is a war on reality.
“Postmodernists believe that knowledge and truth are merely thought forms known as ‘constructs,” explains Allen Quist [America’s Schools: The Battleground for Freedom, 2005]. “Postmodernism is a false view of reality. For that reason, we should not be surprised that postmodernism is destructive to genuine learning,” and destructive to the mental heath of all who are taken in by it. Because it literally makes no sense.
Cultural Marxists grabbed postmodernism and aggressively cultivated it as an opportunity for revolution because people who cannot discover and recognize what is true are easily divided and controlled. Division destabilizes a nation. Control conquers it.
Postmodernism and Cultural Marxism became interchangeable terms. Driven by their strategy of a “long march through the institutions,” postmodernism became the dominant ideology in schools of education in the 80s. Since that time, it has captured the entire educational establishment from pre-K to postgraduate, along with all the other cultural institutions. Christianity is enemy number one because it claims there is objective truth that is knowable.
The “long march” has been profoundly successful.
Our younger generations have been born into this postmodern world and have known nothing else. Every single truth upon which our nation was founded, our true history and every common bond we cherished was attacked. Generations were stripped of their identity in their Creator, their heritage, even their families. Instead, Cultural Marxism’s postmodern “isms” began telling them who they were.
Sexism, for example, arose from the 70s radical Women’s Liberation movement (modern feminism). We were told that our system was fundamentally flawed and built around oppressing women. Marriage, we were told, was a “construct” to victimize women, and all who didn’t see it that way, were guilty of the grave sin of sexism. That narrative set the stage for the ongoing explosive, divisive conflict that continues on today.
Leaders like the recently deceased Gloria Steinem shocked the world by brazenly redefining marriage, not as a mutually empowering bond of man and woman to bring forth and nurture new life, but as oppression. Wives were victims of husbands, children were a burden, killing the unborn was good, men were toxic and being a mother and homemaker was shameful. Steinem often referred to motherhood as “giving up” one’s true identity, dismissing it as a “societal structure” and insisted that the traditional family was a “trap” engineered by the patriarchy. She claimed that “bodily sovereignty” (aka abortion) was a fundamental human right and rejected the idea that an unborn baby was a separate, intrinsically valuable human life. Instead, it was a “potential life” that only became a real person after birth. None of this movement grew organically. It was a creation of the Left, and promoted through captured cultural institutions like the media, the arts, academia, the professions, the sciences, the medical community, and the world of nonprofits.
The Postmodern Cultural Marxists (today’s Left or Progressives) weaponized racism in a similar fashion. The civil rights movement of the 60s that mobilized the nation to confront the shame and evil of racism was captured by Marxists for revolution. They flipped the script and now teach children that their value is determined by the color of their skin. Civil rights history is taught through a Marxist lens, meaning whites are viewed as always inherently guilty of racism, and blacks and other racial groups are always perpetual victims. Children are assigned a group identity and told they belong to either an oppressor or oppressed class. Their group identity replaces their personal responsibility and agency. This racism presents itself with flowery language: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Cultural Competency, Implicit Bias and so on.
Young people are shamed for being white or elevated for not being white. Shaming is an intentional demoralizing technique that leads to rejecting self-respect and dignity and choosing irrational solutions to calm internal chaos, suffering and despair. Demoralized people, especially young people, are easily manipulated into taking redemptive actions. Since they can’t change their skin color they can “choose” to become social justice allies and advocates. Unsurprisingly, the result is unstable youth.
Multiculturalism grew out of postmodernism’s belief that there is no genuine truth and no genuine morality. Therefore, we are told, we must value every other cultural belief more than our own, we must validate the ways of “marginalized communities,” and we must never, ever consider our culture to be superior, especially if our culture believes there is universal moral truth. Since morality is merely a “construct,” universal moral truth does not exist in multiculturalism. Obviously! The 10 Commandments, a standard of natural law upon which our nation was founded, were removed from the classroom. Solid ground became shifting sand.
Multiculturalism (aka Diversity) has been systematically seeded into our culture directly targeting our youth. According to David Horowitz, former leader of the radical Left of the 70s, “multiculturalism is the banner of the hate-America Left.” (Up From Multiculturalism, Horowitz, 1998) Multiculturalism applies to governmental systems too and portrays America as oppressive rather than exceptional. This is a major reason young people are flocking to the DSA (Democrat Socialists of America), an outright communist front. They have been taught that Communism and Socialism are utopian forms of government…not the murderous regimes they have proven to be throughout history.
Transgenderism
One of the most destabilizing childhood concepts is gender fluidity. Thanks to the massive indoctrination from every captured institution, boys and girls are told they may not really be boys and girls because their doctor merely assigned their gender at birth. Feel free to pick one now.
Consider this. An impressionable kindergartener walks into the classroom for the first time and is greeted with this large door hanging.
In one colorful graphic, that trusting child’s personal identity is completely shaken. Next come the gender fluid and transgender books, the drag queen story hours, normalizing two mommies and sexually explicit sex education that teaches children as young as third grade to define anal sex. We’re all familiar now with where this brutal path has led. Gender clinics all over the country are mutilating confused youth with sterilizing meds that block puberty and by cutting off healthy young penises and breasts. Vulnerable, confused and mentally ill children are being sterilized in the name of Transgenderism.
Those who seek psychological counselling discover the psych counsellors are pushing the same racialist, gender-confused, anti-family mindset. Young people are left out there groping for what’s true about life and themselves, and they’re being told there is no truth – just create it yourself.
Just when you thought they were out of “isms,” the newest “ism” being unleashed against our children and culture is adultism. Bottom line: adults in your life can’t be trusted, especially your parents and your church. They’re lying to you, says the National Education Association (NEA) at their 2026 convention. The NEA wants to close off just about every legitimate avenue to truth, because they do NOT want your children hearing anything that challenges their “isms.”
The concept of adultism may sound ridiculously extreme, but the NEA is completely serious. At its 2026 National Conference, one workshop trained teachers to identify and renounce their systemic “adultism,” defined as an unequal balance of power; systemic prejudice; a stereotyping and discriminating against young people based on the assumption that adults are inherently superior in knowledge and judgment. It’s the next step in mobilizing youth to throw off legitimate adult authority, leaving them rudderless, vulnerable and controllable. It’s a recipe for mob action fueled by emotion, led by any prevailing rallying cry of the moment.
All of these “isms” attack the core identities of children. It’s the adults who are lying to our kids. Every child seeks belonging and acceptance. Every child wants to be loved, safe and secure.
But when they are taught to be embarrassed by who they are, what they believe, or how their parents are raising them – and even worse, to hate and loathe their genetics or demographics – the result is deep emotional trauma, insecurity, and misappropriated shame.
All of these “isms” have been continually chipping away at reality leaving our children struggling with identity, shame, cognitive dissonance, alienation, confusion and distrust. They directly impact individual mental health and cannot be ignored.
Part 3 will explore how the culture has dramatically shifted in its portrayal of mothers, fathers and children which has fundamentally transformed how our younger generations view themselves and the importance of families in societal stabilization.