The Silent Good Times Roll

If you listen to the mood of cultural zeitgeist right now, you'd think the world was slipping inevitably towards calamitous anarchy.  The economy is in decline, our cultural values are eroding and America's place in the world is in doubt even as we are confronted with a multitude of problems: two wars, climate change, pandemic disease, Islamic terrorism, the rise of China and a looming deficit, debt and entitlement problem.  While this analysis contains some of substance, this granular reality obscures a larger truth: things in the world and in America are better than at any time in history, perhaps excepting five years ago when we had all of this plus a housing bubble.  This relatively brief moment of crisis has not weakened the core strength of American society, culture and economy and the arc of history continues to bend towards ever increasing societal welfare.

 Social conservatives have bemoaned the "European secularization" of American society for decades by treating Roe v. Wade as a ever widening hole in the dike holding culture decline at bay.  Gay rights, teenage pregnancy and the increasing crassness of the media are proof that ever since prayer was taken out of schools American values have steadily eroded in the face of Godless secular humanism.  Perhaps the most fervent articulator of this line of thought, James Dobson, concisely sums up his belief: “Our nation is facing a crisis that threatens its very existence. We are in a moral decline of shocking dimensions.”  In his response to this quote, the American Enterprise Institute's Peter Wehner, pointed out that in fact the opposite was occurring:

In fact, a great deal of empirical evidence argues that, if anything, we are in the midst of a social and cultural re-norming of some significance. For example, on issues of particular concern to Dobson—abortion and divorce—we have made great strides. The number of abortions performed annually in the United States has dropped to a level not seen since the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized the practice.

 He goes on to point out that teenage pregnancy and drug use, divorce, murder and welfare claims all have declined to historically low levels.  He notes that out of wedlock births and cohabitation are at record highs, which for his purposes demonstrates that while there is a general trend towards cultural resiliency, some moral indicators remain troubling.  However, I think his analysis misses the larger significance of this data: while the efficacy of religiosity has generally declined, new secular solutions to problems have arisen.  In a New Yorker article, Margaret Talbot pointed out the disparity between the intentions and outcomes of red and blue states.  In the Red States many parents who stressed abstinence until marriage eventually settle for convincing their children not to abort out-of-wedlock pregnancies.  In Blue States parents who laxly and vaguely tell their children to "be careful" often find their children waiting until later in life to marry, often cohabitating first and having children later.  These marriages are often less susceptible to divorce because the parties have matured enough to make informed decisions rather than rushing to the alter while still developing into adulthood.  While ultimately I agree with Ross Douthat that the federal government shouldn't be imposing Berkley values on Alabama or vice versa, the empirical evidence seems to point clearly to which approach is more effective.  All in all, rather than a decline, an evolution of American society has occurred demonstrating anew that America is not as fragile as those who fear change predict.

Amidst two wars and an economic crisis the temptation to think the world has trended towards instability is forgivable, but the reality is starkly different.  There is more peace, less famine and disease and generally more prosperity than in any time in human history.  Even excluding World War II as an exceptionally high point of violence in world history, since the end of the Cold War there has been a steep decline in global conflict.  With the tentative resolution of the genocide in Darfur and America's two wars seeming to have cooled off, no conflict is particularly hot right now.  The current levels of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan are historically tame, with the actor holding the preponderance of force attempting to prevent civilian casualties.  The Iraq war of a few years ago was a different story with widespread ethnic violence, but for now at least things have improved significantly.  Meanwhile, the possibility of nuclear war wiping out human civilization, which remained a daily reality as little as twenty years ago, has become an anachronism as the major nuclear powers all seek to reduce their arsenals.  

While their remains significant work to do on many areas of poverty alleviation, hunger prevention and disease control, we have exited a century that saw millions die of hunger and disease, whether in the 1918 Spanish flu which killed 50-100 million people or the Bengal famine of 1943 which killed 3 million more.  Nothing is certain, but for that level of suffering to occur again is unthinkable unless it was accompanied by major global calamity.  Poverty, as measured by those living on less than $1 a day, fell by more than half between 1981 and 2001 and continues to fall to this day, despite the financial crisis.  The AIDS crisis, which killed 2 million people in 2008, remains a pressing human disaster, but thanks to advanced therapies much of the problem now is logistical rather than hopeless.  I am not underestimating the human cost of millions of deaths annually, it is a terrible tragedy, but even this is an improvement over the historical situation.

Global warming, AIDS, poverty and hunger prove that we still have plenty of work left to do, but remember how far we've come the next time someone jams their misery down your throat.