The Self-inflicted Nature of America’s Ills

The Left claims our problems are the result of family or society or America, not our responsibility. Yet a minimal review of the evidence indicates that most of our trials and afflictions in life in this fallen world are the result of our own choices, or some near us. God gave us reasoning capacity, freedom, and responsibility to be good stewards. We do not need more or bigger government that cannot fix our problems. We need to act as God has given us the opportunity and holds us accountable for acting, then trust his will.  For more Christian commentary, see my website at www.rexmrogers.com or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. #individualresponsibility #biggovernment #Left #socialism #ChristianWorldview

Transcript

Are our problems society’s fault, or are they, our fault? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #222 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Political liberals, and even more so those on the political Left, repeatedly tell us that American citizens are victims of one oppressor or another and that the only remedy is more or bigger government—with them in control. They say society caused our problems so society is the only power that can fix our problems.  

Political liberals or the Left include the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, as well as groups like Our Revolution and Democratic Socialists of America, for example, pushing for policies like Medicare for All, abortion on demand, and Green New Deal.

And then there’re grassroots organizations like Indivisible, MoveOn.org, and Working Families Party, labor unions like AFL-CIO and teachers’ unions, then left-leaning issue-focused groups: ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Black Lives Matter, and Human Rights Campaign.

The “we’re-all-victims-of-oppressors” crowd, or if not oppressors as such simply society or America, also include left-leaning media: MSNBC, HuffPost, The Nation, Mother Jones. 

And the Left includes many universities and student groups, especially in the humanities and social sciences, think tanks like Center for American Progress, Institute for Policy Studies, Economic Policy Institute, and sadly, certain professional associations: American Association of University Professors, American Public Health Association, and several medical/psychological bodies.

National progressive individual or celebrity leaders include Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and now Socialist NYC Mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani, to name a few, and other prominent cultural figures, e.g., actors like Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, and a long list of business leaders hailing from Silicon Valley.

In sum, every day, the Left in America boldly messages that society or family or America itself causes our problems. The Left argues for more government control and more spending as the panacea for our problems that somehow someone else created. Well, the difficulty with this analysis and with the solution is that neither are true.

But much of what ails American society is not the result of external oppression or structural inevitabilities, but the accumulation of self-inflicted choices. That’s right, self-inflicted, meaning our choices create our own problems. From health to economics to family life, the evidence is overwhelming that individual behaviors, not social influences, are the chief drivers of our trouble. Because the roots lie in culture and personal responsibility, government programs cannot meaningfully correct or ameliorate them.

Consider health outcomes. The Centers for Disease Control has long estimated that 40%—nearly half—of annual deaths in the United States stem from modifiable behaviors, i.e., preventable, behavior-related problems, for example, smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse are leading drivers of heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, and liver disease.

Obesity, diabetes, and opioid overdoses, not genetics alone, make significant negative impacts upon our health. Such choices are not imposed by fate or by society, but by voluntary decisions repeated daily. Meanwhile, no government program can force Americans to eat well, exercise, or resist addictive substances.

The same dynamic is evident in economic life. Many households live paycheck to paycheck not solely because of wages, but because of overspending, lack of savings, and debt, fueled by short-term gratification. Now this does not mean that some families struggle financially for reasons beyond their control, but it does mean that many, if not most, struggle because of choices they have made.

The tools of financial stability are available: budgeting, retirement plans, credit discipline. Yet they are often neglected. Government cannot legislate prudence.

Family and community breakdown further illustrate the problem. Rising crime, violence, poverty cycles, and social fragmentation correlate strongly with decisions about marriage, family formation, childbearing, drug use, and work ethic. Welfare and criminal justice programs have attempted to compensate yet often make matters worse by reducing accountability and incentivizing bad behaviors. There’s something called “third generation welfarism” that’s rooted in welfare policy that encourages dependency rather than responsibility. 

Late professor James Q. Wilson stressed that crime is largely a choice, not merely the product of poverty or inequality. His writings emphasized individual responsibility, alongside environment. His “Broken Windows” theory held that tolerating small disorders fosters a culture of irresponsibility.

Economist Thomas Sowell argues that many social problems (poverty, inequality, educational outcomes) are more about cultural and personal decisions than systemic oppression.  

In his book, Coming Apart (2012), sociologist Charles Murray frames U.S. social decline (especially among working-class whites) as rooted in personal/family choices. He sees social decline (crime, out-of-wedlock births, poverty) as the product of personal decisions about family, work, and responsibility. His later works argue that working-class communities collapsed not because of oppression but because of abandonment of traditional virtues regarding work, marriage, and community involvement.

Mathematical statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb has argued that many systemic risks (financial crises, obesity epidemic, healthcare burdens) are the accumulation of bad individual incentives and personal decisions. 

The Founding Fathers created a constitutional republic, not a democracy as such, which they believed could only survive and thrive if the people maintained their own morality and virtue. The Founders believed in a limited government that provided room for religious and virtuous citizens to pursue their own interests, care for their families, build a future, and do this within a context of law and order and self-reliance based upon a Judeo-Christian public morality.

A biblically Christian worldview places accountability for behavior upon us as individuals. God grants us freedom of choice, freedom of religion if you will, he gives us scriptural propositions about right and wrong and reality, and he places in our heart and hands the responsibility to live out our lives as stewards unto him.

Insofar as we Americans do not do this, we create our own futures populated by problems of our own making.

Of course, it is true that we live in a fallen world and that disease or other negative externalities can happen to us, that is, we experience trials not of our own making.

But it is also true that as reasoning human beings we have enormous liberty to discern what is best.

So, in short, America suffers today not from a lack of government programs but from a decline in self-governance. Problems born of self-inflicted behavior cannot be solved by bureaucratic expansion. Until individuals and communities recover the virtues of restraint, responsibility, morality and work ethic, societal ills will persist regardless of government intervention. 

The Left, Progressives, now also Democratic Socialists, want to blame something other than our own volition for our problems. But even if the source of our problems were indeed largely something outside ourselves, the Left still have no solutions that work. They reject God, truth, and morality, then embrace pagan nihilism calling it a “live and let live” freedom, but this gives them no basis to call anything good or better or best. They can’t condemn crime, lying, mutilating minors, drug abuse, sexual perversion, homelessness rooted in drug addiction, nothing. They can’t promote parenthood because they’ve rejected the traditional family or don’t want to be caught passing discerning moral judgment on broken families. They say “trust the science” but deny it when it comes to biology. They can’t define a woman and think a person can change his or her biological sex by preference or hormone doses or surgeries, so they end up defending the irrational, non-scientific, debilitating trans ideology. They have no basis for calling anything immoral or amoral, so, anything goes. This is what we are seeing in declining, decadent American cities.  

Our problems are real. More than we’d care to admit, mostly the result of our own choices.

No one is forcing us to eat, drink, and be merry in ways destructive to our health and well-being. No one makes us be haters, or be amoral or immoral, or even be lazy. We possess the capacity to choose. We’ve been given the Word of Truth by the Sovereign God, so we know how or what to choose. We’ve been given life and liberty and responsibility. Society isn’t the source of our problems, and government can’t fix them.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.