I have been reading Mary Ann Glendon at First Things, to which I will be renewing my subscription.
Although awareness of this impending demographic storm is beginning to sink in, policymakers in Europe and the United States tend to frame it only as a â??welfare crisis.â?? The falling birth rates that are fueling the welfare crisis, however, are symptomatic of a deeper crisis in beliefs and attitudesâ??a crisis involving changes in the meanings and values that people attribute to aging and mortality, sex and procreation, marriage, gender, parenthood, relations among the generations, and life itself.
With widespread acceptance of the notion that behavior in the highly personal areas of sex and marriage is of no concern to anyone other than the “consenting adults” involved, it has been easy to overlook what should have been obvious from the beginning: individual actions in the aggregate exert a profound influence on what kind of society we are bringing into being. Eventually, when large numbers of individuals act primarily with regard to self-fulfillment, the entire culture is transformed. The evidence is now overwhelming that affluent Western nations have been engaged in a massive social experimentâ??an experiment that brought new opportunities and liberties to adults but has put children and other dependents at considerable risk.
Discovering Our Dependence (2004)
So, where to begin? â??What, in heavenâ??s name,â?? muses the Stranger, â??should be the first law our legislator will establish?â?? Without waiting to hear what Kleinias and Megillos have to say, he answers his own question: â??Surely the first subject he will turn to in his regulations will be the very first step that leads to the birth of children in the state: the union of two people in the partnership of marriage.â?? Kleinias readily agrees that marriage must be regulated first because it is crucial to the nurture and education of future citizens.
But not everything that pertains to the seedbeds of character and competence needs to be regulated. Unwritten customs, according to the Stranger, â??are the bonds of the entire social framework.â?? When soundly established and habitually observed, they â??shield and protectâ?? the written law. â??But if they go wrong,â?? says the Athenian from bitter experience, â??well, you know what happens when carpenterâ??s props buckle in a house: They bring the whole building crashing down.
and there’s more
