Some truths are so self-evident, only an intellectual could fail to see them.
One of them is this: the human soul was made to be free.
Yet every few generations, a new wave of utopians rises up with the same tired idea: that if we just reprogram human nature — if we start early, change the worldview from birth, and strip away the instincts of self-interest — we’ll finally achieve peace, equality, harmony, and heaven on earth.
It sounds noble. It always does. But every time it’s tried, the results are the same: broken minds, broken nations, and broken bodies stacked like firewood in the name of the “greater good.”
The Great Temptation: Rewriting the Soul
Anthropologists will tell you what theologians already knew: a worldview isn’t just a set of opinions. It’s sacred. It’s the frame through which a child sees everything — truth, purpose, morality, identity, even reality itself.
To change a worldview is to remap the brain. It is, in the most literal sense, to indoctrinate. The question is not whether children will be indoctrinated. They will. The real question is which doctrine will form them — and to what end.
If you start young enough, you can rewire behavior. You can make boys cry on command. You can teach children that math is racist, that gender is a feeling, that freedom is dangerous, and that obedience to the group is the highest virtue.
You can train submission.
You can enforce conformity.
But you cannot eliminate self-interest.
You only drive it underground.
And there, in the shadows, it festers.
The Myth of Collective Morality
We’re told that the alternative to individualism is collective virtue. A society where people care more about each other than themselves. Where greed is eliminated. Where selfishness is reeducated into social consciousness.
Sounds nice.
Until you ask: Who defines the group?
Who decides what’s good for everyone?
Who holds the whip when someone doesn’t go along?
Because make no mistake: group-think has never been self-enforcing. It requires an enforcer.
And once someone is appointed to “protect” the collective, he becomes the most dangerous man alive — not because of what he can do, but because of what he must do. He must crush dissent. He must flatten the individual. He must root out “selfishness” wherever it hides, even if that means burning down the soul to save the system.
In the name of collectivism, they always create a king. Whether it’s a party chairman, a committee of bureaucrats, or the faceless engine of state, someone must control the levers of this reprogramming. And control never stays benevolent for long.
East and West: Two Roads, Two Realities
Take a walk through history.
In the West, individualism — especially the American strain — was built on a Judeo-Christian understanding of the person. Fallen, yes. But created in the image of God. Given the dignity of choice. Called to self-restraint, but also to self-direction.
This worldview did not create chaos. It created civilization. It forged men who cleared forests, crossed oceans, defended liberty, built economies, and raised families. Yes, they sinned. All men do. But they also rose. They improved. They served others not because the state demanded it, but because their own sense of duty — to God, to kin, to country — compelled it.
Now look East.
In collectivist societies — China, North Korea, the Soviet Union — the individual is not sacred. He is a unit. A tool. A function of the state. His purpose is to serve the plan. His identity is absorbed by the group. His thoughts are regulated, his desires suppressed, and his soul — if acknowledged at all — is bent into the shape of the regime.
The result?
You get order.
But not freedom.
You get silence.
But not peace.
You get production.
But not joy.
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. And soon, no nails dare rise at all.
Reprogramming the Child
This is where it starts — always — with the children.
If you want to destroy a civilization, you don’t burn its buildings. You rewrite its catechism.
Modern progressives understand this better than anyone. They don’t just disagree with traditional values — they want to replace them. Not through argument, but through early access. Through education. Through cartoons, curriculum, and culture.
Boys are taught their masculinity is toxic. Girls are taught that motherhood is oppression. White children are taught they were born in guilt. Minorities are taught they were born in chains. All are taught to distrust their parents, reject their past, and kneel before the new gods of the state, the therapist, and the influencer.
This isn’t education. It’s psychological warfare on innocence.
And the aim isn’t to make better citizens.
It’s to make more manageable ones.
The Self-Interest That Builds a Nation
Let’s talk about self-interest — because this is the heart of the lie.
The left treats self-interest as a sin. They say it’s selfish, greedy, antisocial. But that’s a lie of semantics.
There is a difference between selfishness and self-interest.
Selfishness is the disregard of others.
Self-interest is the recognition of responsibility.
The father who works long hours to feed his family is acting in self-interest.
The inventor who creates a device to profit — and improves millions of lives in the process — is acting in self-interest.
The pioneer who clears land to build a home, plant crops, and defend his property is acting in self-interest.
Self-interest — when morally bounded — is the engine of growth. It’s what capitalism understands better than any other system: that the best way to serve others is to allow men to freely serve themselves by creating value.
When the state replaces that with “collective interest,” what it really means is centralized control.
And instead of value, you get quotas.
Instead of service, you get theft.
Instead of cooperation, you get coercion.
Why It Always Ends in Ruin
Every attempt to reprogram human nature has ended the same way: with fear, stagnation, and death.
- The Soviets tried to engineer a classless society. They got gulags and starvation.
- The Maoists tried to erase family loyalty in favor of party loyalty. They got the Cultural Revolution and millions of dead.
- The Khmer Rouge tried to start from “Year Zero.” They turned a nation into a mass grave.
And now, here in the West, we’re trying a new flavor:
Genderless. Godless. Borderless.
A utopia of therapy, tolerance, and total compliance.
It’s dressed in rainbow flags and equity slogans. But underneath? It’s the same machine.
It wants your soul.
And it wants your children.
The Only Way Forward
You can’t build a civilization on lies. You can’t forge liberty out of servitude. And you can’t elevate the group by annihilating the individual.
The answer is not to erase self-interest, but to ennoble it.
To teach boys and girls that their life has purpose. That freedom requires virtue. That responsibility is a joy, not a burden.
We must raise children who know who they are — not because the state told them, but because their family did. Their faith did. Their fathers did. Their God did.
Because if we don’t teach them to stand…
The world will teach them to kneel.
And when the next tyrant comes promising a better world in exchange for their soul — they won’t even know what they’re giving away.
So no, we cannot — and must not — root out self-interest.
We must redeem it.
Because a man who knows who he is…
Will never be ruled by someone who doesn’t.
And that is what the enemy fears most.
John Fisher is a contributing writer to The Americanist Journal. He believes the American soul is worth fighting for.
