In the first chapter of Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order we read the following statement: “Our own society, like that of any other people, is held together by what is called an ‘order.’” Without order, society doesn’t cohere. Instead, it flies apart, breaks up, and disintegrates. And, I would argue, a process of disintegration has been underway in the United States for many years. The breakup of the American order has been masked by American prosperity, which has continued throughout the process of social disintegration. To a very great extent, the financial crisis we are experiencing today is no ordinary economic downturn. It is also the result of spiritual and moral degeneration together with the total collapse of paternal authority.
Most citizens of the Republic do not realize that a breakdown has already occurred. But many are troubled. A few days ago I spoke with a 19-year-old girl who expressed embarrassment about her peers. “People my age aren’t honest,” she volunteered without prompting, “and the future isn’t safe.” I asked what she thought would happen. “I don’t know, but I have my mountain.” She then motioned as if to indicate her parent’s home in the country. Another young person I spoke with recently confided that her peers were mainly interested in partying and taking recreational drugs. “I want to be a history professor,” she said.
It has now been 30 years since Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture of Narcissism. According to Lasch, “The psychological patterns associated with pathological narcissism, which in less exaggerated form manifests themselves in so many patterns of American culture – in the fascination with fame and celebrity, the fear of competition, the inability to suspend belief, the shallowness and transitory quality of personal relations, the horror of death – originate in the peculiar structure of the [modern] American family…. Industrial production takes the father out of the home and diminishes the role he plays in the conscious life of the child.” Today one might add that the mother, too, has been largely taken out of the home. Thus the way is paved to the collapse of parental authority and the sinister process of state usurpation of the parental function.
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