John Stonestreet – Page 2

Where Has All the Creativity Gone?

Jan 29, 2026John StonestreetEducationEducation

Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture? That was the question asked by a recent Atlantic article about the sheer number of prequels, sequels, remakes, and expanding “cinematic universes.” Among the most notable recent examples in the world of film is Wicked, which reimagined the world of Oz.

The same creative stagnation can be seen in music. While earlier generations could produce distinct kinds of music, it’s increasingly difficult to find meaningful stylistic differences today. Some of the most popular songs aren’t even composed by humans but generated by AI. Where has all the creativity gone?

Many explanations could be offered, but one deserves particular attention. There’s been a precipitous decline of the kind of education in America that awakens the moral imagination, enabling students to think creatively and innovatively within a framework of what is enduring and true. In its place is an education oriented around expressive individualism, where children are encouraged to “follow their hearts” and “look inside,” rather than first know the true, good, and beautiful.

Classical Christian education is uniquely positioned to fill this void. At its best, the modern classical education movement seeks to recover what Dorothy Sayers described as “the lost tools of learning.” Such an education—centered on great books, great ideas, and classical languages—aims not merely at information transfer but at the formation of a virtuous life. Students are trained in virtue, encouraged to emulate heroes, and invited to explore and embrace visions of greatness. In the process, many develop a lifelong love of learning.

Vigen Guroian offers a compelling account of this formative process in his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classical Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination. He explains how classic children’s stories like Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe can shape a child’s moral imagination. Young readers are transported into worlds filled with wonder, surprise, and danger. As they imagine themselves alongside heroes and heroines, the images and metaphors of the stories linger and shape how they experience the real world. Children internalize concrete pictures of good, evil, love, and sacrifice by which they can interpret their own lives. When the moral imagination is awakened, Guroian concludes, the virtues come alive with personal, existential, and social significance.

C.S. Lewis made a similar point in The Abolition of Man. After criticizing the dominant educational models that fail to form human beings, he described how education should cultivate students “with chests.” The “chest” mediates between reason and appetite, enabling students to not only recognize what is noble and what is base, and discern between that which deserves love and that which does not, but to also choose rightly between them. This moral formation reflects what makes us truly human.

If popular culture is to experience a renewal of genuine creativity and innovation, classical Christian education may well be the taproot. Ironically, the renewal of innovation doesn’t begin by encouraging innovation for it’s own sake, or from an obsession with what is trendy or new. Rather, it will begin with an immersion in what is permanent and true. It will begin with curious hearts and minds that are trained to think imaginatively within a meaningful moral framework. As Russell Kirk once observed, the works that endure are not those rooted in nihilism, but those that appeal to enduring truths and therefore to posterity.

If classical education is to be Christian, it must be tied to the grand biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Learning that is interpreted through a Christian worldview will affirm the dignity of human nature and will also acknowledge its limits, clearly distinguishing between Creator and creation. Within this rich moral universe, students are inspired to imagine and create in ways that honor what is true, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, and praiseworthy.

Classical Christian education offers a compelling model for education in an age of cultural decadence. It is anchored in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” By forming the moral imagination, Christians are equipped to not only resist cultural stagnation but to create culture anew, as co-laborers with the One who even now is “making all things new.”

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico.

Guest Column: Are There No Suicide Pods? Are There No Gas Chambers?

Dec 18, 2025John StonestreetLifeAssisted Suicide, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life, Suicide

In a striking scene in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge asks two men raising money for the poor, “Are there no prisons? … And the Union workhouses? … Are they still in operation?” When the charity supporters reply that many would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge replied, “If they would rather die … they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Later in the story, Scrooge is reminded of his dehumanizing words and is ashamed.

Recently, in real life Britain, Lord Falconer of Thoroton suggested to the British House of Lords that the poor might be better off dead:

Where the reason that you want an assisted death is because in your mind you are influenced by your circumstances, for example, because you are poor—should you be barred from having an assisted death because of your poverty? In my view not.

In Britain’s nationalized healthcare system, the cost of the procedure for the poor is not an issue. Rather, Lord Falconer seems to be suggesting that the poor should have the “right to die” if they are ashamed of being poor. Poverty, in this view, is a fate worse than death.

Most likely, Lord Falconer thinks his is an appeal to charity, like the charity workers in A Christmas Carol. In reality, his advice is indistinguishable from Scrooge. He might as well have asked, “Are there no euthanasia clinics? And, the gas chambers, are they still in operation? If they would rather die than be poor, then they had better do it.”

Now, Lord Falconer is not suggesting, at least not yet, that the state should round up the poor for suicide pods, though suicide pods are a real thing. However, he is suggesting that “being poor” should be added to the ever-growing list of things that make life not worth living. A few years ago, when advocates argued for death in Canada and Colorado, they argued that this was the compassionate choice for those with terminal, painful diseases and would die shortly. Why prolong their suffering?

But there is no slope more slippery than this one. In both Canada and Colorado, what gets someone approved for the death list has grown. In Colorado, severe eating disorders qualify. In The Netherlands, an early adopter nation of assisted death, euthanasia has been extended to sick children. In 2022, a Belgian woman who survived a terrorist attack was put to death to save her from stress. Ironically, the terrorists were not killed for their crimes.

In Canada, “medical assistance in dying,” or MAiD, is now the fifth leading cause of death. In 2016, the Canadian government insisted that only those facing “imminent death” would be eligible. By 2023, this grew to include patients struggling with mental illness and drug addiction. Last year, a Canadian man complained that his PTSD would not qualify him to take advantage of death. In another case a few weeks later, a young woman was granted the right to die for autism. The judge ruled that not providing MAiD in her case would cause “irreparable harm,” as if death for some is less harmful than living.

What other trials of life will be deemed suffering? A bad break-up? Not getting a wanted job? Just because? We once condemned the Nazis for whom and why they killed. Now, we’ve adopted their rhetoric.

Every person is made in the image of God and has infinite dignity and worth. Not just the healthy, and not just the wealthy. Human value isn’t lessened by pain, disease or, Lord Falconer, poverty.

The Church’s task in this moment is clear. We affirm life. We defend the vulnerable. We reject utilitarian thinking about human value. As Stanley Hauerwas said, “In a hundred years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have been doing something right.”

Why Socialism Always Fails: Guest Column

Dec 5, 2025John StonestreetCurrent EventsCommunism, Socialism

After winning the New York City mayoral race on November 4, Zohran Mamdani declared, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” The comment was exactly the opposite of what President Reagan once said that, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” It did, however, sound very much like what another politician said, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That was Benito Mussolini.

While it would have once been problematic for an American politician to essentially sub-quote a Fascist dictator, many younger Americans are ready to consider failed ideas of the past. For example, according to a recent YouGov and Economist poll, nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism. That demographic overwhelmingly turned out for Mamdani.

A key factor is that the younger generation simply does not know better. This is a failure of their education. They’ve heard about the evils of capitalism, but not about the many killed attempting to escape socialist regimes or why the escapes only went one direction. They’ve been taught to fear the impending catastrophes of climate change but not about the mass starvations resulting from the state controlling industry and agriculture. They’ve learned socialism is about sharing, but not that the sharing is often forced at gunpoint. They’ve learned that when socialism fails, it was done “wrong,” and that true socialism has never been tried.

The truth about socialism is that it is inherently immoral. As Ben Shapiro put it a few years ago,

Socialism is bad, because socialism is tyranny. Not it’s an aspect of tyranny. Socialism itself is tyranny. … The notion of socialism is that you don’t own your own freedom.

The reason oppression results every time socialism is tried is because it’s built into the system. Oppression is not a bug of socialism. It’s a feature.

Socialism is built on conceit. It is assumed that a society’s problems are a matter of poor management, and once the right people are in charge, utopia will be in reach. What Hannah Arendt said about totalitarianism fits its embryonic stage of socialism:

Their moral cynicism, their belief that everything is permitted, rests on the solid conviction that everything is possible. … Yet they too are deceived, deceived by their impudent conceited idea that everything can be done and their contemptuous conviction that everything that exists is merely a temporary obstacle that superior organization will certainly destroy.

Socialism requires that any element of society that does not submit to the state be stripped away or, “better” yet, made another arm of the state. The mediating institutions that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly observed as drivers of American liberty and prosperity—such as churches, schools, volunteer organizations, and families—must devolve under socialism into departments of government power. The state cannot fail.

But it does, and not just because of inefficiency. Socialism ultimately fails because it is built on flawed anthropology. Socialists claim to be for “the People,” but it’s always for Humanity and never for humans. According to a socialist vision, the individual receives dignity from society, not the other way around. The individual with his or her unique insight, perspective, and preference becomes an existential threat to the grand socialist project.

Within a Christian worldview, dignity was given to individuals by God, who made them in His image. They bring dignity to the families, communities, and societies around them. They are not cogs in a government-sponsored wheel, nor are they problems for the state to solve. They are, to borrow from J.R.R. Tolkien, sub-creators who, given the freedom and chance to do so, will outperform any mass system that seeks to control them.