Is America in decline? Is society coming apart? This is a question I have heard people raise several times in recent conversations about American society. On more than one occasion, I have heard comparisons made to the moral decay and fall of the Roman Empire.
Frankly, I think most of us suffer from a parochialism of the present (Phrase stolen from George Will). Idealist and intellectuals are often inclined to see themselves out on the bleeding edge of the next great leap in human existence. The traditionalists often believe that the present is the worst era yet in American history. For nearly all of us, only those events that have happened during our lifetime seem to have substance. Everything else seems to be a part of a murky, distant past.
Last night I watched a two-hour special about the political career of Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in June of 1968. That assassination occurred when I was a child, and it is one of my first memories of events with national/international importance. Many people just a little older than I remember the JFK assassination as an important moment in their lives. While I was alive at the time, I have no memory of it. It might as well have been the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar. Some folks just a few years younger than me do not remember Watergate and Nixon’s resignation from office. It is as distant in time for them as the JFK assassination is for me.
Parochialism of the present is an understandable human proclivity. However, when people start embracing utopian solutions to problems without having learned from those who have gone before, or when others support draconian measures to prevent the collapse of society without placing present problems within the ebbs and flows of history, we tend to create bigger problems than the ones we think we are addressing.
Over the next three weeks, I will resurrect and update a series I did last November on social indicators. I will look at some statistical indicators from demography, sociology, economics, and other fields social scientists consider broad quality-of-life indicators. Depending on the indicator, we will look at timeframes of 30-50 years to get a sense of what trajectory things are on. I am sure you have heard the expression, “It’s easy to lie with statistics.” That is true. But it is even easier to lie without them! Quantified observations are a good place to start a conversation about social forces at work in the culture.
Is America in decline? Let’s take a look.
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