I've referred in the past to Imprimis as a source of thoughtful, very relevant essays and reading a couple more of those essays this morning reminds me to pass along that recommendation again. Imprmis, as you may remember, is the monthly publication of Hillsdale College in Michigan. And this particular text (a speech made by Dr. William Bennett at the February 1998 Shavano Institute for National Leadership seminar) is an example of the truly superb material you can find at Imprimis.Dr. Bennett's address was entitled, Does Honor Have a Future?
The modern age brings to mind Christian apologist C. S. Lewis’s chilling words in The Abolition of Man: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
America is the greatest nation in the history of the world—the richest, most powerful, most envied, most consequential. And yet America is the same nation that leads the industrialized world in rates of murder, violent crime, imprisonment, divorce, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single-parent households, teen suicide, cocaine consumption, and pornography production and consumption.
America is a place of heroes, honor, achievement, and respect. But it is also a place where heroism is often confused with celebrity, honor with fame, true achievement with popularity, individual respect with political correctness. Our culture celebrates self-gratification, the crossing of all moral boundaries, and now even the breaking of all social taboos. And on top of it all, too often the sound heard is whining—the whining of America—which can be heard only as the enormous ingratitude of we modern men toward our unprecedented good fortune.
Despite our wonders and greatness, we are a nation that has experienced so much social regression, so much decadence, in so short a period of time, that we have become the kind of place to which civilized countries used to send missionaries...
The entirety of Bennett's speech is right here. But again, you'll do well to check out the archives at Imprimis where you'll find articles of similar quality dealing with morality, economics, freedom, history, literature and more. That opening page is here.
