Remember when Barack Obama informed his adoring crowd that “we are the generation we’ve been waiting for?” That always struck me as a cat poster inanity. But in light of recent data, it seems that Americans took him seriously.

Look around you. Really look. What do you see? A nation, we’re told, of progress, of liberation, of endless opportunity. But scratch beneath the surface and you start to sense it, don’t you? A chill. A quiet dread. And nowhere is it more apparent, nowhere does it speak more profoundly of something sad and, frankly, dark, than in the slow, agonizing death of marriage in America or the declining birth rate.

Think about it. Marriage. For thousands of years marriage has been the bedrock of human civilization. Two people, a man and a woman, committing themselves to one another, to raise a family, to create the next generation, to ensure the continuity of a society. It wasn’t always easy, of course. Life rarely is. But it was there. It was the default. It was the aspiration.

But now? Now it’s a relic. A quaint notion. We’re told it’s about “personal choice,” about “freedom” from outdated norms. We’re told people are just too busy, too career-focused, too independent. And sure, those sound like good reasons, don’t they? They sound modern. Progressive.

But what if they’re just convenient excuses for something far more unsettling? What if the real reason fewer and fewer Americans are walking down the aisle isn’t about liberation, but about isolation? What if it’s not about strength, but about weakness?

When marriage declines, what rises in its place? Loneliness. A society of individuals adrift, unmoored, with no stake in the future beyond their own fleeting desires. We see it in the collapsing birth rates and in the rising tide of despair and addiction washing over our communities.

So many young men, adrift and without purpose, spend their days consuming porn and video games in their parents’ basements. Young women are told they don’t need a partner, only to find themselves successfully employed but profoundly alone in their cubicles or offices. Is this progress? Is this what we truly wanted?

The institutions that once bound us together – family, community, faith – are under assault. And marriage, the most fundamental of them all, is withering away. It’s not just an economic phenomenon or a cultural shift. It’s something deeper. It’s a spiritual void.

When people no longer believe in building a future together, when they no longer have faith in enduring commitment, when the very idea of sacrifice for something larger than oneself becomes alien, then what kind of country are we left with? When we are the generation we’ve been waiting for, where does that leave us? A collection of individuals, consuming and being consumed, with no shared purpose, no common destiny.

It’s a sad thing. It’s a dark thing. And if we don’t start asking ourselves why this is happening, if we don’t start addressing the fundamental spiritual and societal rot that lies beneath these declining marriage and birth rates, then we are truly, truly lost. We’ll be left with nothing but the chilling silence of a society that chose atomization over connection, and ultimately, chose loneliness over love.