The “Sixties” actually opened as a continuation of the equally iconic “Fifties.” Through 1963, the social life of the United States remained defined by a seemingly strong culture of marriage and family. The average age of first marriage stood at record lows: 22 for men; 20 for women. The proportion of adults who were or […]
Read MoreThe American Evangelical Response to Griswold vs. Connecticut The United States’ Supreme Court 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut stands in ever bolder relief as a profound break in American and Western history. True, a quiet revolution in American behavior had begun during the war years, 1917-1918, as the old moral older was deeply shaken […]
Read More“It is true that I bel ieve in fairy tales—in the sense that I marvelso much at what does exist that I am readier to admit what might.” So commented G.K. Chesterton in his 1926 book, The Outline of Sanity. Hethen described a fairy tale of his own creation: restoration in 20th-century England of a […]
Read MoreA Centenary Reflection This year marks the centennial of Hilaire Belloc’s curious book The Servile State. Recent commentators have been unsure where to place this volume on the ideological spectrum. In the Liberty Fund edition, Robert Nisbet labels Belloc a “libertarian Catholic,” a writer taking his inspiration from the nineteenth century’s Cardinal Newman and Lord […]
Read MoreThe Cultural Dry Rot that Doomed the Postwar Era “The Fifties”—broadly defined to cover the years 1946 to 1964—were on the surface “the best of times,” a golden age of religious renewal, strong families, and a vital and growing middle class. Beneath this façade, however, lurked the theological, moral, and social dry rot that would […]
Read MoreRestoring the Family-Friendly Roots of Social Security When Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, the Republican presidential hopeful did himself few favors if he becomes the GOP nominee to challenge President Obama in 2012. At the same time, the Texas Governor may believe that his characterization of the relatively successful and popular social-insurance […]
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Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young against Old, Child against Parent, Worker against Boss, Company against Rival, and Nation against Nation Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 2010; 416 pages, $27.50 Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century Eric Kaufmann Profile Books (U.S. […]
Read MoreHow Protestants Swallowed the Pill and Evangelicals ‘Out-Libertined’ the Mainline Every great president since Abraham Lincoln has learned that political success requires uniting one’s party and splitting the opposition. In the same way, the success of Margaret Sanger in transforming American attitudes toward contraception, without which the government’s forty-year campaign for birth or population control […]
Read MoreHow Debt Weakens Family Formation among Generation X The Federal Guaranteed Student Loan program represents an almost pure example of the “law of unintended consequences” in public policy. Initiated in the mid-1970s as a modest supplement to means-tested federal (later, Pell) grants, it has grown into a massive program involving a majority of students at […]
Read MoreRetrospective and Prospective Exactly thirty years ago, I wrote and saw published my first substantive essay on the family crisis in modern America.[1] I had recently completed my doctoral dissertation, which had investigated the origins of family policy in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s.[2] A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, provided through the American Enterprise Institute, […]
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