Well this is disturbing.

Not surprising, but disheartening.

The Wall Street Journal did a poll of Americans that explored their values and found that most Americans have abandoned the cultural values that built this country. We have become a vapid, dying culture filled with morally vacuous people.

Sound harsh? Prepare to have your eyes opened.

Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds.

The results of the poll are striking not just because Americans as a group have rejected many of the values that allowed the country to become the most prosperous and powerful in world history, but also because the collapse in moral courage has happened so rapidly. The rise of Millennials and Gen Z has corresponded with the decline in American values.

Nice.

Before I get all negative, a lot of the people who used to consider these values “very important” still consider them “somewhat important,” so they haven’t rejected these values entirely.

What they have done, though, is become more selfish and less community-minded. This is ironic in many ways, not the least of which is that most of the people who claim to hate the individualism of free markets have become more obsessed with money and less interested in participating in the larger culture.

Children? Nah. They cost money and reduce my freedom to be a sybarite. Participate in the community? Nah. They are a bunch of racists. Patriotism? Nah. The US is a White Supremacist country and it is time for it to go. Religion? “I am spiritual but not religious, so why spend time with others praising God?”

Some 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion was very important. That was down sharply from when the Journal first asked the question in 1998, when 70% deemed patriotism to be very important, and 62% said so of religion.

Bill McInturff, a pollster who worked on a previous Journal survey that measured these attitudes along with NBC News, said that “these differences are so dramatic, it paints a new and surprising portrait of a changing America.’’ He surmised that “perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values.’’

I disagree with McInturff. The cause is much simpler than these explanations: there has been full-blown and very effective cultural warfare waged against American values. You see it in the schools, on social media, in rioting on the streets, in our media and entertainment, and in politicians who deride basic American values and normal Americans.

You have the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, the relentless attacks on Middle America, Defund the Police, school teachers dedicated to ideologically grooming children, and the rise in support for socialism and communism.

The Left keeps on claiming the mantle of empathy and generosity, but the truth is that the rise of the Left and the decline of pro-social values have coincided.

We are raising another generation of narcissists, and it is scary.