October 5th, 2012
Abe Greenwald touches on a very deep point about American culture:
There is a great and growing divide between what our political reality demands and what our culture now produces, and Bruni gets nowhere near it. Sacrifice is vanishing because the cultural institutions that promote or sanctify it—family, faith, and patriotism—are on the wane. “In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all [American] twenty-somethings were married,” a 2010 Pew study found. “In 2008, just 26% were.” And in 2011, American births fell to a 12-year low. To previous generations the demands of family meant a life defined by self-denial, delayed gratification, and the giving of one’s time, energy, and money. Is a 42 percent drop in those who claim such an existence supposed to have no effect on the quality of our national character?
As you might imagine, I have quite a lot to say about this in What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, which, coincidentally, is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and Books-a-Million.
(That’s a temp cover–the final cover art should be coming soon-ish.)
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