, Columnist
U.S. Gains Ground in War on Cultural Decay
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The U.S. political system is dysfunctional and the economy is still struggling, especially for those in the middle and working classes. But when it comes to the biggest concern of some experts a generation ago -- the decay of our culture -- there is evidence that the country is doing all right.
In the 1990s, the conservative Bill Bennett, a former education secretary and drug czar, devised his “Index of Leading Cultural Indicators.” He worried about a pervasive decline in U.S. moral values and “eroding social pathologies.” A few years later, he tempered his negative assessment, seeing some improvements, but he was still pessimistic.