Neocon, I did respond, more or less, to the general point at the end. The West is in general in fine shape. What's the problem supposed to be? You can always find something to express moral outrage about, but the '50s world of shotgun weddings, homes for unwed mothers, and back-alley abortions doesn't seem obviously superior to me.
On the particular problems you cited :
On the home front, it is simply true that the fabric of family life has been frayed in the liberationist era, to the detriment of children, and that ill- considered social policies have created an underclass totally unprepared for the world of work and responsibility, and frequently criminal. I live in the Washington metropolitan area, as you might have guessed, and recently there were five separate instances of young men shooting other young men over Eddie Bauer coats, two of them fatal. How many socio- paths can a society afford to create?
I detect the mildest hint of an unspoken racial element. Or were the Eddie Bauer shootings among whites? The racial world of the '50s was hardly ideal, either. The ghetto underclass is indeed a frightening problem, one that nobody is doing much to address. Newt's solution was Boys' Town, until someone told him how much it cost. What's your solution? Shame? My particular view would be that a good place to start would be to make everybody in Congress read Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities, and then get people talking about ways to address the deplorable state of inner city schools. In D.C., at least, Congress has some role in the matter, right?
Charles Murray has a different point of view on these matters, needless to say. "It is simply true", indeed. I'm sorry that my view of the "truth", of which I don't profess to know much, is a bit more complicated than yours.
The Clinton stuff I feel obliged to throw in because Clinton is always tied into the moral decline due to the '60s somehow. At least when the conservatives aren't annoyed with him for stealing their thunder. It's all a bit confusing to me.
Cheers, Dan. |
