How We Can Turn the Tide in the Culture Wars

[Valin]

Daily Signal:

Kathryn Jean Lopez

September 29, 2014

 

There is no sugarcoating it. With each passing year, on most cultural fronts, things have been getting worse. There is a coarseness to our society and a rending of real ties that bind us to one another. Only about half of Americans are currently married, and about half of the children in the U.S. will spend time outside a household with a married mom and dad. Whatever the circumstances, that has an impact on people and culture, and it shows up in indicators from fertility rates to teen drug use. Our brotherly social safety net is fraying, and we now look to government instead, compounding our problems. After all, bureaucracy doesn’t do love as well as civil society does.

 

he brave new world of family life today, with seemingly endless prospects for future chaos, makes one nostalgic for the days when we were at least agreed on some of the fundamentals for a good, healthy home environment for children and women and men. Our lack of a common vocabulary and understanding of human nature has made public opinion—and now even our lawmaking and courts—susceptible to wild claims about truth and tolerance in spite of social science evidence about marriage and family to the contrary. Devoid of reason, history, and tradition, these claims simply wouldn’t have made any sense a few decades ago.

 

>>> Read more: The 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity

 

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Even knowing this all, however, there is some good news. Despite the fact that the United States has among the most permissive abortion laws in the world, abortion is on the decline. Public opinion is also headed in an encouraging direction. Polling commissioned in early 2014, consistent with other polling, found that nearly half of Americans consider themselves “pro-life,” with three in 10 Americans considering themselves “strongly pro-life.” Importantly, polling found that “84 percent of Americans believe abortion should be restricted … or never allowed at all.” Even those who wouldn’t necessarily label themselves “strongly pro-life” or “strongly pro-choice” support placing limits on abortion and providing women accurate information. The abortion lobby’s insistence on pretending that even late-term abortions are a mere matter of women’s freedom is not accepted by most Americans.

 

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Democracy needs a flourishing civil society, the backbone of which is people of conscience who look out for their neighbors, who raise and support families, who take matters of human dignity either as Gospel truth or as a moral imperative to protect and uplift. The cultural indicators that follow help us to take stock of our efforts in this regard—and a number of them do not give us a good report. But the indicators are grim only if we resign ourselves from our responsibilities to one another.

 

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, Kathryn Jean Lopez will speak at the Heritage Foundation event “Strengthening Society: What Progress on Life Can Teach Us for Challenges Facing the Family.”