December 31, 2023
On Christmas afternoon in the Tampa suburb of Largo, Florida, a 14-year-old teenager reportedly began arguing with his 15-year-old brother over the dollar value of presents the two had received. The argument spilled over to the front porch, where the boys’ 23-year-old sister, Abrielle Baldwin, sat with one of her children, a one-year-old child.
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After the older sister told the brothers to stop squabbling — “Why you trying to start it? It’s Christmas” — the 14-year-old reportedly replied that he would kill her and her baby. He then allegedly pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his clothing and shot his sister fatally in the chest.
The 15-year-old, seeing that his younger brother had shot his sister, then allegedly shot the 14-year-old, though not fatally. He is then said to have dropped the weapon he had used — also a semiautomatic pistol — and fled to a neighbor’s house, where he was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder. The 14-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree murder.
The teens’ sister left behind two daughters, one six and the other just one year old. Both brothers remain in jail at this time. Both teenage brothers, by the way, had criminal records involving car theft.
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Welcome to Christmas, 2023, in America.
What a contrast with the traditional idea of Christmas as a time of “peace on earth and good will towards men.” That vision of Christmas was celebrated in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir presentation that I watched just hours after reading the report of these shootings. Along with a very beautiful rendition of a dozen traditional Christmas carols and other songs, the Tabernacle program featured an extremely moving recitation by David Suchet (“Poirot”), who related the true story of Nicholas Winton, the British stockbroker who worked to save over 650 children from almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis in Czechoslovakia.
The “message” of Winton’s life, according to Suchet and Winton’s son and namesake Nicholas, who appeared on the program, was that all should practice some form of active charity, no matter how mundane. According to Suchet, there are today some 4,000 individuals — children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — who owe their lives to the efforts of Nicholas Winton. When Suchet asked those in the enormous audience to shine their smartphone lights as a pledge that they would perform acts of charity in 2024, the great hall was ablaze with light.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir program, though recorded on Dec. 12, was broadcast on Christmas Day within 24 hours of the Largo, Florida, murders. It was reassuring to watch such an inspiring program as that from Salt Lake City — the product of many thousands of hours of preparation on the part of selfless and dedicated staff and guests, including the breath-taking performance of featured singer Lea Salonga. The annual Mormon Tabernacle presentation was among the best I have seen, and I’ve seen many of them. Programs like this one provide us with a reason for hope. There are hundreds of millions of decent, well-meaning persons just in our own country, and they are the reason that America will continue to prosper and remain a beacon of light to the world.
These Americans do not wish to “radically transform” America. They strive to maintain the religious, moral, and cultural traditions upon which our great nation was founded, and their behavior is guided by the moral codes that they have inherited from their Judeo-Christian ancestors. It is these traditions that ensure the safety, security, health, and well-being of all, and that provide each of us with a purpose and meaning in life, including, as Nicholas Winton demonstrated, the ability to contribute so much to the lives of so many. In his case, this was life itself.
But there are also millions of others — those who will beat another driver senseless in a road-rage incident, who will shoplift $900 of goods day after day, driving businesses to bankruptcy, and who will kill because they don’t like the looks of their victims or because their victims claimed to have received more expensive gifts for Christmas.
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It is these Americans and their “culture” that Biden and Obama have in mind when they speak of “radically transforming” America, not the decent, hard-working, faithful ones who wish to put America First and who are troubled by radical change. Part of the change promoted by progressives is to replace traditional American identity with “woke” assumptions about the importance of LGBTQ, social equity, and black culture.
The Biden administration has been working overtime (not Biden himself) to undermine the culture of heartland America and to replace it with newly constructed “cultures” that would subvert it. I do not see any evidence of “culture” in the actions of the teens allegedly involved in the Christmas Eve shootings. There was only raw and instinctual violence, selfishness, and greed.
Among the honorees at this year’s Kennedy Center celebration of the arts was a singer named Queen Latifah. Queen Latifah may be a talented performer and an entirely decent individual, but her songs and videos mirror a culture that is not very decent or inspiring. This is the “culture” on display in some of Queen Latifah’s music, as in the song “U.N.I.T.Y.” in which the rapper repeats time and again, “don’t call me a b—- or a ho.” This performance does not reflect the high level of culture to which Americans have traditionally aspired and that remains on display in the Tabernacle Choir concerts.
In rap music generally, as in the culture it celebrates, there is no tradition of learning, of moral restraint, of self-sacrifice, of stewardship, of making a difference, or of simple kindness and goodness. There is only crudeness and degradation accompanied by disregard for the law and contempt for authority.
That is the future that Biden envisions for America, and more and more it is the future that is coming about. It is Biden and his progressive allies who fail to oppose rampant shop-lifting and other forms of crime in America. It is Biden who has opened our southern border to millions of unvetted illegal immigrants. And, ultimately, it is progressives like Biden who fail to challenge the degrading cultural assumptions that lead to tragedies like the Christmas Eve shootings in Largo, Florida.
I was troubled and even sickened by the report of the Christmas Eve shootings, but later I was inspired by the extraordinary beauty and goodness of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir program. I know which version of America I support — there can be no doubt or ambiguity — and I pray that America will come together in 2024, not to transform itself but to preserve and advance the moral and religious foundations that make America a safe and prosperous place to live.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image via Pexels.
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