We’ve already highlighted Niall Ferguson‘s take on Coming Apart, Charles Murray‘s new book. Now Roger Lowenstein digs into the text for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Murray’s second part details the declining hold of the “founders’ values” among lower-class white Americans. Murray identifies these values as industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity. He marshals an array of statistics to show that white Americans are having more babies out of wedlock; indeed, fewer are marrying at all. More are working part-time or have ceased working, independent of the economic climate. They have lost the industriousness that visitors to America since de Tocqueville identified as a national trait; they are perhaps even less honest. Murray all but avoids the fact that crime has been decreasing. Rather, he argues that personal bankruptcy, which has lost its stigma, has become a form of shoplifting—a socially acceptable way to steal.
While acknowledging that relative wages for manual labor are falling, he rejects the notion that this should discourage people from wanting such jobs. He is nostalgic for the era when nonworking men “were scorned as bums.” He thinks the rich have abdicated their responsibility to society by failing to preach that their lifestyle—married, gainful, law-abiding—is indeed superior. The politically correct will find his language obnoxious, or so Murray dearly hopes. Regardless, he builds a strong statistical case that among the lower socioeconomic rung, the bonds of community, work, family, and faith are fraying.