Whole lotta smiting going on

Rod Dreher, in a post that responds to Andrew Sullivan, makes a statement that I am still having trouble getting my mind around:

Andrew brings up an important point, one that serves to highlight a critical difference between the two basic strains of American conservatism -- libertarian, and traditionalist.

Libertarianism is anti-statist liberalism. It is also the dominant school of American conservatism.

[snip]


For the libertarian, human happiness is the highest goal, and that happiness is something that the individual is free, within broad limits, to decide for himself.

Traditionalism is a harder sell, obviously, as any philosophy that imposes limits on human choice and liberty will be in America. Its telos is not happiness, but virtue. In fact, the traditionalist does not recognize human happiness apart from virtue. A bad man who is content with himself cannot truly be said to be happy, in this view.

If it's a matter of agreeing with Andrew that the Sixties (which is to say, the social revolution that broke open in the Sixties, but which has been ongoing since then) made possible a greater increase in personal satisfaction, and even legitimate happiness, then I do agree with him.

Certainly there can be no greater example of the gains made in virtue via the repudiation of immoral and unjust legal barriers to full black citizenship. Similarly, women are treated more fairly now, and though some of you will doubt me, I agree that the world is a better place for gay folks than it once was. It would be foolish to view the Sixties as nothing but darkness, in the same way that it's hard to deny that many good things came out of the Enlightenment.

The question, though, is not whether the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad, but whether on balance the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad.

I answer in the negative. [em: mine]

In the above, Dreher recognizes broadly (and embraces) the benefit of the Sixties for blacks, women and gays (i.e. that is to say approx. 60+% of the US population), but concludes that on balance the total impact was negative.

Now, it would be unfair to Rod (having read him regularly) to say that this indicates that he would willingly trade those gains to restore the benefits he sees as lost. It would more likely be that he would have preferred to find a manner to achieve most of the same benefits without the associated costs that he finds objectionable. But still, even when taken at that charitable level, this is an absolutely fantastical statement from my point of view. The losses have outweighed the gains?!?!

He doesn't elucidate what exactly he judges these losses to be, but from my reading of him over time, I would conclude that they typically fall into 3 categories:

1) Decline in religiosity - resulting in unspecified, but extremely perilous, moral decay with a nihilistic emphasis on personal fulfillment
2) Family breakdown / divorce - resulting in more single-parent homes and social problems emanating from same
3) Sexual freedom / abortion - related to item #2 and the decline in traditional marriage

Now, if I were Rod, and I saw the total volume of abortions performed since Roe vs. Wade as effectively a national holocaust, then maybe this would make some sense. After all, one cannot compare the increase in freedom for many individuals to the actual loss of innocent lives for others and judge the tradeoff as worthwhile.

But, I don't get any sense that the abortion question is the singular fulcrum upon which this determination pivots. In other words, I doubt he would answer the question alternately even if Roe v. Wade had never come to pass, but all other societal changes remained the same.

So, what to make of this? When I read traditionalists such as Dreher, there is an almost unremitting sense of impending doom in their writing (he actually has a blog post category tag called "decline and fall"). But, it is never entirely clear from whence the final cataclysm is going to erupt. However, what we do absolutely know, for sure and with certainty, is that there is a Judgement Day on the very near horizon where the world gets its collective comeuppance for having strayed from the path.

Then there's this from the New York Times:

Phil Zuckerman spent 14 months in Scandinavia, talking to hundreds of Danes and Swedes about religion. It wasn’t easy.

Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.

It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier.

Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.”

Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.”

[snip]


At one point, he queries Jens, a 68-year-old nonbeliever, about the sources of Denmark’s very ethical culture. Jens replies: “We are Lutherans in our souls — I’m an atheist, but still have the Lutheran perceptions of many: to help your neighbor. Yeah. It’s an old, good, moral thought.”

To be clear, I myself am not anti-religious. For the most part, I was raised outside of a religious context, and so I don't really feel particularly strongly one way or the other about it. When pressed about the nature of the Almighty on one occassion, I replied, "What can I tell you? I don't have well-formed opinions on the matter."

Religious belief and community obviously has great meaning for an enormous number of people and for that I am thankful on their behalf. However, what I can never fully appreciate is the absolute certainty with which some (especially conservative religionists) claim that an unreligious environment leads, without possible exception, to complete and utter societal breakdown and chaos.

Which is just to say that it seems that there is demonstrable evidence that there are still ethics even without specific doctrinal religious belief. Even people who are full blown atheists do not intentionally raise their children to be sociopaths.

In other words, what exactly is the problem with Scandinavia? And, why isn't there more smiting in progress there anyway?