Is the U.S. morally in trouble?

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1997 by George Roche

I AM an inveterate list maker. I love making lists - of tools and gadgets to buy at the hardware store, grocery staples that need restocking, New Year's resolutions - of the little yet vitally important details of living of which I often need to be reminded. Many of the notes I write to myself, especially those on my own shortcomings, begin with the words, "I must remember to. . . "

So, it is not surprising that, when I was asked to reflect on our present culture and the general state of American society, my immediate response was to pick up a pen and pad. At the top of the first page, I wrote the heading: "America in the 1990s: Why We Are in So Much Trouble." The following list is the result, a compilation of what the nation has lost:

The loss of values. Values are the building blocks and mortar that keep our entire civilization together. Yet, we no longer seem to think our values are worth defending. "Political correctness" dominates the academy and the public square. This doctrine holds that all differences in ideas, values, and lifestyles are equally valid and that any attempt to prefer one over the other is an act of prejudice. Moreover, the differences between people - between blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor, Westerners and non-Westerners - are more important than the qualities and values they share in common. According to PC advocates, questions of race, gender, class, and power are the only real issues that govern human events.

If you think this kind of thinking is confined to college campuses and our intellectual elites, just consider the Los Angeles riots, the O.J. Simpson murder trial, or any number of recent events that demonstrate how values have been destroyed by political correctness. Philosopher Jacques Barzun had it right when he said that political correctness does not legislate tolerance, it only organizes hatred.

The lose of truth. PC advocates claim that truth really isn't objective at all; it depends on our point of view. One person's truth is supposed to be just as good (or, more to the point, just as unreliable) as another's. What has been passed off as "truth" are merely the collective prejudices of the dominant ruling class and culture. We must be shown how to "deconstruct" what we think is true.

The only truth that political correctness will admit is that everything - every poem, book, historical event or person, emotion, attitude, belief, and action - must be viewed in a political context as an instrument of exclusion, oppression, or liberation.

The loss of moral literacy. Honor and virtue increasingly are rare commodities. Cheating and lying have become acceptable, especially in school, because children believe that, with few exceptions, "everybody's doing it," Sadly for America, they may be right. In a 1995 Reader's Digest article, Daniel R. Levine notes that Who's who Among American High School Students polled more than 3,000 juniors and seniors who were at the top of their class. Seventy-eight percent admitted cheating and 89% indicated that cheating was common at their schools.

In Kansas, Levine adds, a survey of the same number of college students led to almost identical results. Emporia State University psychology professor Stephen F. Davis found that @rite had cheated. He commented: "The numbers alone are disturbing, but even more alarming is the attitude. There's no remorse. For students, cheating is a way of life."

Educators are not only doing a poor job of teaching the three Rs, they are failing to teach children the difference between right and wrong. Observers have characterized this as "a hole in the moral ozone," "moral poverty," or "moral illiteracy."

The loss of trust. We live in what may be the most cynical age in history - and the most gullible. Americans are skeptical about many of the things we should believe, while blindly accepting many of the things we should question. On the one hand, we distrust politicians, journalists, and filmmakers because we know that they often have lied to us and deceived us, but, on the other hand, we still look to them as primary sources of information and interpreters of reality.

According to social scientist Francis Fukuyama, author of Trust.. The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, we seem to trust our fellow citizens less and less. This "decline of sociability" dramatically weakens our communities, economy, and civil society, which all depend on the "social capital" that is created by shared goodwill, ethical norms, and expectations. He warns that, if we do not revive our trust in others. we will end up cooperating only under a system of coercion and regulation.

The loss of empathy. I am not talking about what Pres. Clinton meant when he said to the nation, "I feel your pain." By empathy, I am referring to the ability to transcend our own immediate concerns to understand other human beings - to see the world from their perspectives without surrendering our own. Former National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Lynne V. Cheney tells of an incident that occurred in 1994 that provides "a chilling vision of life" without empathy: