Far be it from me to extract a silver lining from a gold mine of regional instability, but if the evacuation of Afghanistan is a preview of the impending revival of the Iran deal, let’s save us all the embarrassment and roll out the Persian rugs for the Ayatollahs now. Given America’s botched exit from Afghanistan and ensuing terror attacks that took the lives of 13 U.S. troops, and the Biden administration’s surreal trust in the Taliban, it will be impossible for Iranians to keep a straight face in any direct negotiations.

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved that the War on Terror is finally over. All those travel restrictions, security shakedowns, toothpaste confiscations and coded-color warnings. And the nerve-wracking hesitations about getting too close to iconic landmarks: Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, Sears (now Willis) Tower, and the Space Needle.

THERE was a time in America, not so long ago, when speaking the truth was admirable and knowing the truth essential. Children were raised to tell the truth, with truth as the moral of every story. Liars suffered all manner of shame, even an enlarged nose. As legend had it, America’s Founding Father, George Washington, as a boy, took responsibility for a fallen cherry tree rather than lie.

Alexander Hamilton, not the modern-day hip hop song and dance man, but the founder of The New York Post, and Benjamin Franklin, the wittiest of our Founding Fathers and publisher of The Philadelphia Gazette, would be appalled at what passes for freedom of the press today.

Culture, true culture, breathes life into societies—launching ideas, sparking conversations, changing minds, expanding horizons, stilling hearts. That breath feels increasingly shallow in the United States these days. We are living through a cultural crisis. The aesthetic impulse and the life of the mind are being subordinated to a rigid progressive orthodoxy that specializes in taking offense. We have allowed, even enabled, the politics of identity and its cousins, “inclusion” and “equity,” to dictate and narrow what our culture is and should be.