I feel certain most of those reading have observed the unmistakable evaporation of common sense across the fruited plain.
As the decades have ticked away, departing with them are our capacities for understanding and expressing obvious truths that make sense to the majority of adults.
It's clear to me this problem fundamentally stems from failing to teach devotion to truth and critical thinking to emerging generations in favor of political radicalism and a resulting decline in character, morality and integrity.
The acceptance of deception in society as part of day-to-day life has overridden beliefs in commonly accepted truths that provide the cornerstone for common sense.
I appreciated a recent article from Robert Curry of Front Page online: "Believing what no one has ever believed before: What abandoning common sense has done to America."
"There is the belief that a man who 'identifies' as a woman must be allowed access to facilities which have always been reserved for women and girls," Curry wrote. "There is the belief that a man can have a 'wife' who is a man. We are told we must stop designating a newborn as either male or female; a child must be allowed to discover which of the ever-increasing number of 'genders' (67 when I last looked and surely more by now) it identifies with. The list of examples goes on and on."
Yes, it does. He overlooked the preposterous push to rename mothers as birthing people, biological male athletes competing against biological females, and the undoing of traditional Scouting programs in which so many accomplished American leaders participated.
Curry acquired his essay's title from Harvard philosophy professor Ralph Barton Perry, who more a century ago coined this phrase that describes our time. In his 1912 book "Present Philosophical Tendencies," Curry wrote, Perry foresaw a time when people would easily be led to believe "what no one has ever believed before."
"Perry knew that American thinkers in his time were in the process of abandoning common sense. By pondering that fact, he came to understand what abandoning common sense was going to do to America," Curry wrote. "America has been called the common sense nation. American thinkers abandoning common sense was going to be a big deal because common sense had always been at the core of the American idea.
"In his book 'The Enlightenment in America,' Professor Henry F. May wrote that before the American Revolution, "increasingly after it, and with growing volume through at least the first half of the 19th century, a specific kind of ... thought acquired a massive influence in America. This was the philosophy of common sense."
Other thinkers agree, Curry wrote, such as best-selling author and historian Allen Guelzo: "'Before the Civil War, every major [American] collegiate intellectual was a disciple' of the philosophy of common sense."
Curry continued: "Perry understood that abandoning the philosophy of common sense would cast American thinkers adrift on the intellectual currents of the 20th century. Perry's brilliant insight was that abandoning common sense meant leaving truth behind--and that in the post-truth era, people would believe what no one has ever believed before. In 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries made it official we had arrived in the post-truth era. The dictionaries selected "post-truth" as the Word of the Year for 2016. ...
"According to the philosophy of common sense and ordinary, everyday common sense," wrote Curry, "we are capable of knowing things that are true and the difference between right and wrong."
Perry's simple definition: "Common sense consists of the manifold things that can be taken for granted for the purposes of everyday life.'"
Curry wrote: "When young Americans were taught the philosophy of common sense at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and all of the other institutions of higher learning in America, ordinary Americans and elite Americans had the common sense way of thinking in common.
"But when young Americans were taught to reject truth and common sense and to embrace progressivism in American universities, a gap opened up between ordinary Americans and elite Americans. That gap grew wider with the passage of time, and became a source of political and social instability. The elite eventually decided to close the gap by force. Fired up by the progressivism they had acquired at the university, America's elite began using the power of government and the other institutions they controlled to force ordinary Americans to submit to those beliefs no one has ever believed before.
"As a result, Americans who still rely on common sense, who believe we can know the truth and the difference between right and wrong are now under attack from progressive elites in government, in the media, and in corporate boardrooms," Curry wrote.
Those efforts by elitists to force common-sense Americans to believe things that were never believed before make it clear to Curry that the Front Page is right in concluding, "Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out."
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.