Defying Decline

Americans have lived through two revolutions in the post-war era. The first was a revolution of rising expectations accompanied by affluence, economic growth, and technological change; the second, a revolution in mores, attitudes, and institutions, expressed in new patterns in marriage, divorce, and child-rearing, changes in relations between the sexes, and revisionist approaches to the nation and its past. The two revolutions were connected: as economic growth accelerated, so also did drug use, out-of-wedlock births, crime, divorce, and family breakup. As Americans grew more affluent, they became less religious and, surprisingly, less patriotic. It was as if the new affluence was purchased at the cost of the wrecking the institutions that Americans had long taken for granted as fundamental to their way of life.