by Monreale
Heather Mac Donald is the
Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor. She ends her
article, The Decriminalization Delusion, with these words:
In the final analysis, America
does not have an incarceration problem; it has a crime problem. And the only
answer to that crime problem is to rebuild the family—above all, the black
family. The media troll incessantly for an outlier case of a hapless bourgeois
who got slammed in prison for a one-shot mistake. In fact, the core
criminal-justice population is the black underclass. “Young black males between
the ages of 17 and 26 drive the system,” says corrections expert Steve Martin.
“Family is the solution—and the work ethic. You show me people with intact
families and those folks work—their chances of ending up in prison are next to
zero."
How, then, to rebuild
the family, not only as an antidote to crime but as the repository and source
of our highest and best selves?
I'm going to go out on a
limb here--I think it's necessary.
Seventy percent of black
children are born out of wedlock. How many of us realize that the rate for the
rest of us (including Hispanics) approaches 50%? For almost 50 years study
after study has identified this phenomenon as linked to dysfunction and
crime, as causing serious damage to children, especially boys. Yet our society
refuses to face it, to grapple with it.
Blacks go along with this because they prefer to blame their problems
wholly on racism and external forces rather than assigning proper weight to
deep cultural flaws. Liberal commentators and social scientists go along
with it because it's politically correct and because they fear that
truth-telling, describing behavior that's unflattering to people of color,
would subject them to the charge of racism or blaming the victim. The rest of
us go along and when we're asked to examine our own culture we also turn away.
Why? I think it's because facing the facts would mean we'd have to change
our ways, some of which are clearly dissolute. Despite the price paid by
our children, we'd rather not change anything.
We must affirm marriage
as the historically universal union of a man and a woman, in which the
state takes an interest only because it may result in children. Other than for
the promise of the next generation, the state should have no interest in
marriage. Gay marriage probably can't be undone but we don't need to accept
what it teaches. Affirm the importance of the role of a mother who
nurtures children and oppose the feminist propensity to denigrate
motherhood and elevate careerism over motherhood. Affirm the importance of
fathers as supporters and guides to their children, balancing the mother's
role. Criticize the prevalence of divorce and make it more difficult until such
time as any children of the marriage reach their majority. Dishonor any women
who decide to have children on their own as a lifestyle choice. Refuse
government subsidy to unwed mothers except to maintain the children, and if
children are not reasonably cared for, remove them to foster parents. Dishonor
and penalize men who father children outside of marriage; require them to
support their children. And more.
Unrealistic?
Who would have guessed 25 years ago that the movement to tolerate homosexuals
would become a requirement to endorse them, would lead to a mandate
to celebrate them and then would impose on all of us the decree to accept the
legitimation of gay marriage (or be accused of "homophobia"), which
would, in turn, lead to the walls crashing down around any resistance to
transgenderism?
In the recently
televised annual Oscars ceremony, the film Call Me By Your Name was up
for Best Picture. Critics loved the film, saying it was about "two young
men falling in love." The film portrays a summer sexual affair
between a boy who appears to be around age 14 and a man who looks around 30.
Yet the critics ignore or laboriously downplay the obvious homosexual aspect of
the film, perhaps for fear they would be accused of legitimizing public
perceptions that gay men often engage teenagers. The critics take comfort in
the fact that, for obvious reasons, the Director has the boy initiate the
encounter as well as having the boy's father issue glib praise and approval to
both the boy and man for engaging in the affair, in that it enriched the boy's
experience.
Totally
ignored: the film is based on a gay novel, the screenwriter and the Director
are both gay, and gay Hollywood has embraced the film as its own. Could this film have gained such prominence even a short five
years ago? Very recently many popular outlets reported a story of bestiality
(with a dolphin!), providing the details quite unabashedly, even
sympathetically. We're adults, aren't we? So what's next?
Public opinion can
change rapidly in a positive direction too. All it takes is a leadership
willing to take risks and a followership not stifled by PC. Notice how the
concept of "Diversity" started to take hold in the mid-70's. Today,
despite the complete lack of any evidence for its purported benefits, Diversity
has become America's most visible cultural ideal. What if a determined
cohort set out to establish the nuclear family in the same position? There are
nascent signs of strength (for example see distinguished professor of law Amy
Wax on traditional values, a New York Times piece for which she is being
hounded, punished but not silenced).
We should refuse to
concede defeat.
