The more things change, the more changed we become

Memo to members of the greatest generation and baby boomers

Subject: Where you live

Welcome to another country. This is not the one you grew up in. This is an entirely different nation, with completely different values and vastly different experiences and expectations.

Do not be deceived by what your eyes see -- a country bordered by two oceans and two other North American nations, same as it was when you were young and there were only 48 stars on the flag. What is occurring in this country is not remotely what you think, and nothing in your education or experience has prepared you for the character of the nation you thought you understood.

Some of this you know: the changing skin color of our American group portrait. The evolving views on race and gender. The fact that movie tickets no longer cost 35 cents -- and movies aren't shown only in theaters anymore. The appearance of menus that no longer offer a glass of tomato juice as an appetizer but do include salad items that sound like entries in the periodic table of the elements.

Annual prices for a year in college that are at about the level of Ted Williams' final baseball salary. Phones that aren't used mainly for making phone calls. All this has been clear to you for years, along with the astonishing fact that once solidly Democratic Mississippi and Alabama each have two Republican senators -- and only a single Democrat in their House delegations, both of them Black.

But significant as those changes are, they may be only surface adjustments in a country that was born with change in its DNA. The more significant ones are in a new survey conducted by NORC, the research arm of the University of Chicago, for The Wall Street Journal, which -- given your age -- should have special credibility.

Prepare yourself for some vertigo. This portrait of the country you think you know is going to leave you dizzy.

Here goes.

Back in 1998, when the youngest World War II veterans were in their early 70s, 7 out of 10 Americans considered patriotism an important value. Today, when only a tenth of those who served in the war remain alive, fewer than 4 in 10 Americans feel that way. In 1998 -- two popes ago and when 70% of Americans belonged to a religious institution -- 3 out of 5 Americans thought religion was very important to them. Today fewer than 2 of 5 feel that way.

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Patriotism and religion once were regarded as the two bedrock values in American life. Consider how the speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the central figure in the life of the greatest generation, would sound if he delivered them today.

In a campaign speech in 1940, the 32nd president spoke of communism and Nazism as forces that "hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy." George W. Bush might have gotten away with a comment like that when about 60% of Americans considered religion a fundamental value, but Joe Biden -- who went to a Catholic primary school and attends Mass regularly -- surely could not.

But there is more, and it speaks of more change. In the past quarter century, the number of Americans who think having children is very important has been sliced in half.

The central bridge between the greatest generation and the boomers may be John F. Kennedy, a World War II veteran whose presidency coincided with the birth of the late edge of the baby boom, whose children were boomers, and whose political idiom marked and shaped the boomer generation.

Four months before he was assassinated, he told the United States Committee for UNICEF that "children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."

That sort of remark -- made by a president who won the White House by arguing that it was time for "a new generation of leadership" -- remains common, but the consensus that having children is one of the capstone experiences of human life has vanished.

So, too, has the traditional American worship of hard work, where there has been a drop of 14 percentage points since Bill Clinton was president and said, without irony or self-consciousness, "If you believe in the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family. And we're proud to be with you."

Biden might give that speech, but it would resonate far less with his audience.

The country is far more divided politically today, and the innards of the survey show a stark partisan divide, with Republicans more worshipful of patriotism, religion and having children. But one value remains at the heart of what it means to be an American: the value we place on money.

That stands out and stands alone. The survey shows that 45% of Republicans today believe money is very important to them. It also shows that 45% of Democrats believe money is very important to them. (Independents are slightly less convinced of the value of money; only 36% of them agree with their partisan colleagues.)

What does all this say about the country we now inhabit?

That we worship different things, and worship less, than we used to. That the assumptions older politicians bring to current politics are outdated, an especially important factor when the two most likely 2024 presidential nominees are 76 and 80. That Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in 1835, had it right when he argued, "I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men."

It should surprise no one -- whether an admirer of patriotism or an adherent to religion -- that perhaps the greatest observer of the American character came to that conclusion in a book titled "Democracy in America."

Nor can there be doubt that Abraham Lincoln, speaking amid earlier tumult and upheaval, was right when he told Congress in 1862 that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." He added, in words we might take note of and apply to our own lives and country, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion."

David Shribman, a Pulitzer Prize winner in journalism, is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.