By Allan Stevo
June 13, 2026
My fellow Americans are uptight.
And they often aren't uptight of anything worthy of being uptight about.
In fact, that's the point: If you can make a person lax about the things that matter and uptight about the things that don't matter, then you have changed a culture.
Thankfully, there exists a Remnant of Americans who care not about the new rules of uptightness and who stand fast to more enduring concerns.
An Unfortunate Example Of Uptightness Among Americans
Natural childbirth is inspiring: the body just knows what to do, the mom just knows what to do, the baby just knows what to do, and when it is all done, often, a mother is not put off by the process.
It is almost like childbirth is something the female body was intended to do. You would almost think that, since it seems so natural. But to think that would be to get on the wrong side of the thought police. I hope by the time we are done here, I have convinced you that you always want to be on the wrong side of the thought police.
There are some who believe that the reason so many women give birth with surgical intervention, especially by caesarian section, is because we have developed a culture where the woman has been given no room in life to be still and to let the process take its course. Working forty-hour weeks in the office until two weeks before the due date and insisting that childbirth happen according to a schedule may be taking its toll on pregnant women.
If that were true, the interest of the boss at the office would be placed ahead of the interest of the baby in the womb.
That kind of pretending about reality is so prevalent in our era.
It Is Not Just Americans Who Are Lax About Good, Uptight About The Frivolous
I sat with a Dutch young man not long ago, coming of age. We were in some far-flung corner of the world. He was maybe 20, and clearly coming of age and getting to know the world. I pointed to his cultural history, of such a tiny land being a place of such great explorers. I asked him who his favorites were. He wasn't sure. I was sure that if his upbringing in Holland was anything like my upbringing in America, that he had heard many stories of fine Dutch explorers in his youth who brought new vision to the world. He was unreactive. I continued the effort, saying what a very cool culture he comes from to be a traveler in this era. Nothing. Soon, I even wondered if he could name any explorers.
So, I began to. I began by saying the name "Jost Van Dyke." I didn't know that he was a famous Dutch explorer, but I know that an Island in the Caribbean bears his name, so I figured it was worth a shot.
No, this guy knew Dutch explorers all right.
His response: "He owned slaves."
That was all he had to say. I gave him an earful back. Eighteen years of indoctrination by a state who hates him and the culture he was born into was probably not even slightly affected by the earful I gave him back for his obtuse, ridiculous, and reductive way of seeing the life of a pioneering person of a different era. I don't care who Jost Van Dyke is. If the only thing you can say is that "He owned slaves" about a man who lived in a different time, while ignoring the vast areas of acceptable slavery that exist in the world today, then you have bought into some mighty lies.
Another American Examples Of Being Lax About Good
Last night, three teens in the gym locker room were talking. One said, "My baddest grade was a C." These were teens who were old enough to understand the English language. Conversation continued on.
I said, "Excuse me, which of you said, 'My baddest grade was a C?'" They didn't want to talk about it. A man from a different race was commenting on their use of standard English. I persisted.
Eventually, one of them ratted the other out. Another said that he was about to call him out for it but decided not to. Finally, the one who said, "My baddest grade was a C," confessed.
I said, "You know that isn't the right way to say that, right?" The other two stopped and explained it to him. I didn't have to. You could see that it was slow to click for him. He didn't have the word "worst" ingrained in him the way that the other two did.
I said, "Hey, you need to correct your friends when they make mistakes. You need to help them. Unless you don't like this guy, then that doesn't matter." The one guy hug the "My baddest grade was a C" guy around the neck with one arm, both roughly and tenderly and said, "Yeah, I care. I love him. He's my brother."
They were ready to get away from me, and then I said, "The Bible said we need to be like iron sharpening iron." And all three of them were physically taken aback. They stopped. They looked at me. Something about that last sentence, hit each one.
Still two minutes later, as I was finishing in the locker room, I could hear the accused out in the gym, near the locker room door, explaining why he had used "baddest." Their conversation had changed to one of excellence and standards. It didn't matter that they couldn't wait to get away from me. The very nature of their conversation had changed.
It is okay to use baddest intentionally, knowing that it is wrong. It is okay to write like e.e. cummings. It is not okay to not understand the most basic aspects of education and to let your friends around you persist in that state. If you can parse language, you can parse thought, and you are given a lifelong tool for clearer thought.
How much better it is that you are reading here, dear reader, than watching YouTube shorts or television. How much more beneficial that you sometimes make time to quietly sit down with a book.
I watch teenage friends at the gym all the time challenge each other about stupid things but never pushing each other to achieve a personal best that day at the gym. So much is learned at the gym. So much is learned from peers. Unfortunately, it tends to not be much good learned at the gym, and it tends to not be much good learned from peers.
But it need not be that way.
We are so caught up in the frivolous and lax about the valuable.
Now there are some things worth getting uptight about. An invasion of your homeland would be an example of a thing worth getting uptight about. An invasion of your neighborhood would be an example of thing worth getting uptight about. An invasion of your home would be a thing worth getting uptight about.
Be Cringy, Be Like The Cringiest Man I Have Ever Known
There was a boss I once had who was just so good at evoking cringes in the people around him. He was so commanding. He was in charge. He had entered into the post-communist milieu of Central Europe, and he had built a Christian institution where nothing like it had existed. This was an important second career, after he had shown significant accomplishment in another field. Thousands were affected by his life.
I was an innocent missionary just out of college, well-indoctrinated about the world, daily having that horrible indoctrination ripped painfully out of me.
That boss of mine who I used to just feel so uncomfortable around is one who I have come to see as a role model, as someone who I wish to be like. He did not care if he made you cringe. He did not care one bit. He cared about making you think. He cared about motivating you to excellence.
The goal is not to offend. That, however, is one of the goals of the freakish, rapey, transgressive agenda that is so common in our groomer era from many of the political elite given a voice in the media. The goal is not to offend. The goal is to keep so ardently to the truth, that you do not care if you offend.
That first boss of mine said many "offensive" things.
And you never knew what was going to come next. It was impossible to know. His is the kind of life that legends are made from. There are few things that would be told to me about him, where I could say, "He would never do that."
I would like to encourage you to be that guy, but I do not know how many of us have the ability to be that guy.
I don't know how many of us are able to lovingly have a ministry of offense, in which we have no shame about telling the truth in a way that the other can listen to it and retain it. I don't know how many of us care enough. I don't know how many of us will disregard the cultural and societal punishment that inevitably follows that kind of person.
And I do not suggest that the purpose of such a ministry is to offend. But you must understand that in our era when you do not care about offending, when you do not onboard the shame that the cultural wants you to bear, that you inevitably offend some.
There are some who read Psalms 119:165 as a prohibition against allowing yourself to get offended: "Great peace have they which love they law: and nothing shall offend them."
What a refreshing reading of that verse that is.
Rapey Groomers
All around us in our culture are rapey groomers trying to slowly push down the borders on things that matter, things that one should care about, and slowly trying to build up borders around terribly distracting things that are not worth caring about.
The rapey groomers do not have your best interest at heart. They do not have your family's best interest at heart. They do not have your community's best interest at heart.
At this point the rapey groomers outnumber those who vocally oppose them. They might even outnumber the so-called "silent majority."
The good news is that sometimes the truth has a stopping power that a lie does not have.
He who will fearlessly and lovingly speak the truth, even willing to be so very uncomfortable about it, saying it in the most uncomfortable of ways, in the most uncomfortable of situations, allows himself a stopping power that years of indoctrination by rapey groomers can't overcome.
Though many positive things have been said about the silent majority, I have a hard time paying much compliment to those who watch society burn down around them - especially when that silence is so costly, and especially when that voice of truth can be so effective.
How much it matters to have a ministry of offense, in which you will comfortably speak truth and speak it in a spicy way that gets a person thinking.
I do not mean ministry in a British sense, Ministry of the Exchequer or to quote the great English novelist of the 20th century "Ministry of Peace." I mean ministry in a different sense that some people reading this might not appreciate. To quote author Warren Wiersbe, "Ministry takes place when divine resources meet human needs through loving channels to the glory of God."
Those Christian roots, those biblical roots, are where this land must return to, or we will be lost. Diversity and cultural sensitivity can be valuable in the right context, but they have no place trumping the Bible, at least not in America.