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Christina Hoff Sommers Is MARCH 1998 Volume 27, Number 3 IMPRIMISBecause Ideas Have Consequences 26th Are We Living in a year Moral Stone Age? Christina Hoff Sommers W. H. Brady Fellow 775,000 subscribers American Enterprise Institute Philosopher Christina Sommers charges that hristina Hoff Sommers is the today’s young people are suffering from “cognitive CW. H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in moral confusion.” They not only have trouble dis- Washington, D.C. She is also a tinguishing right from wrong–they question professor of philosophy at Clark whether such standards even exist. The threat this University, where she has served moral relativism poses to society is greater than on the faculty since 1980. any external danger. Dr. Sommers has appeared Dr. Sommers spoke at the Shavano Institute on such programs as 20/20, the for National Leadership fifteenth anniversary McLaughlin Group, program, “Heroes for a New Generation and a Donahue, 60 Min- New Century,” last October. utes, Nightline, and Crossfire to discuss the future of femi- e hear a lot today about how Johnny nism, gender bias in can’t read, how he can’t write, and the the schools, and trouble he is having finding France on moral education. a map. It is also true that Johnny is Whaving difficulty distinguishing right from wrong. Her articles have appeared in the New Along with illiteracy and innumeracy, we must add England Journal of deep moral confusion to the list of educational Medicine, the Wall problems. Increasingly, today’s young people know Street Journal, the little or nothing about the Western moral tradition. Journal of Philos- This was recently demonstrated by Tonight Show ophy, USA Today, host Jay Leno. Leno frequently does “man-on-the the New Republic, the Washington Post, the Chicago street” interviews, and one night he collared some Tribune, and the Times Literary young people to ask them questions about the Bible. Supplement. “Can you name one of the Ten Commandments?” She has edited Vice and Virtue he asked two college-age women. One replied, in Everyday Life and written Who “Freedom of speech?” Mr. Leno said to the other, Stole Feminism? Currently, she is “Complete this sentence: Let he who is without at work on a third book, The War sin. .” Her response was, “have a good time?” Mr. Against Boys. Leno then turned to a young man and asked, “Who, according to the Bible, was eaten by a whale?” The confident answer was, “Pinocchio.” As with many humorous anecdotes, the under- Also in this issue: lying reality is not funny at all. These young peo- H. Norman Schwarzkopf ple are morally confused. They are the students I Ethical Leadership and other teachers of ethics see every day. Like most in the 21st Century Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242 IMPRIMIS Because Ideas Have Consequences professors, I am acutely aware of the “hole in the between saving their pet or a human being, they moral ozone.” One of the best things our schools would choose the former. can do for America is to set about repairing it–by We have been thrown back into a moral Stone confronting the moral nihilism that is now the Age; many young people are totally unaffected by norm for so many students. thousands of years of moral experience and moral I believe that schools at all levels can do a lot to progress. The notion of objective moral truths is in improve the moral climate of our society. They can disrepute. And this mistrust of objectivity has help restore civility and community if they commit begun to spill over into other areas of knowledge. themselves and if they have the courage to act. Today, the concept of objective truth in science and history is also being impugned. An under- graduate at Williams College recently reported Conceptual Moral that her classmates, who had been taught that Chaos “all knowledge is a social construct,” were doubt- ful that the Holocaust ever occurred. One of her hen you have as many conversations classmates said, “Although the Holocaust may not with young people as I do, you come have happened, it’s a perfectly reasonable concep- away both exhilarated and depressed. tual hallucination.” Still, there is a great deal of simple A creative writing teacher at Pasadena City Wgood-heartedness, instinctive fair-mindedness, and College wrote an article in the Chronicle of Higher spontaneous generosity of spirit in them. Most of the Education about what it is like to teach Shirley students I meet are basically decent individuals. Jackson’s celebrated short story “The Lottery” to They form wonderful friendships and seem to be today’s college students. It is a tale of a small farm- considerate of and grateful to their parents–more so ing community that seems normal in every way; its than the baby boomers were. people are hardworking and friendly. As the plot In many ways they are more likable than the progresses, however, the reader learns this village baby boomers–they are less fascinated with them- carries out an annual lottery in which the loser is selves and more able to laugh at their faults. An stoned to death. astonishing number are doing volunteer work (70 It is a shocking lesson about primitive rituals percent of college students, according to one annu- in a modern American setting. In the past, the al survey of freshmen). They donate blood to the students had always understood “The Lottery” as a Red Cross in record numbers and deliver food to warning about the dangers of mindless conformi- housebound elderly people. They spend summer ty, but now they merely think that it is “Neat!” or vacations working with deaf children or doing vol- “Cool!” Today, not one of the teacher’s current unteer work in Mexico. This is a generation of kids students will go out on a limb and take a stand that, despite relatively little moral guidance or reli- against human sacrifice. gious training, is putting compassion into practice. Conceptually and culturally, however, today’s young people live in a moral haze. Ask one of The Loss of Truth them if there are such things as “right” and t was not always thus. When Thomas Jefferson “wrong,” and suddenly you are confronted with a wrote that all men have the right to “life, lib- confused, tongue-tied, nervous, and insecure indi- erty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he did not vidual. The same person who works weekends for say, “At least that is my opinion.” He declared Meals on Wheels, who volunteers for a suicide pre- Iit as an objective truth. When Elizabeth Cady vention hotline or a domestic violence shelter Stanton amended the Declaration of Independence might tell you, “Well, there really is no such thing by changing the phrase “all men” to “all men and as right or wrong. It’s kind of like whatever works women,” she was not merely giving an opinion; she best for the individual. Each person has to work it was insisting that females are endowed with the out for himself.” The trouble is that this kind of same rights and entitlements as males. answer, which is so common as to be typical, is no The assertions of both Jefferson and Stanton better than the moral philosophy of a sociopath. were made in the same spirit–as self-evident truths I often meet students incapable of making and not as personal judgments. Today’s young even one single confident moral judgment. And people enjoy the fruits of the battles fought by these it’s getting worse. The things students now say are leaders, but they themselves are not being given more and more unhinged. Recently, several of my the intellectual and moral training to argue for students objected to philosopher Immanuel Kant’s and to justify truth. In fact, the kind of education “principle of humanity”–the doctrine that asserts they are getting is systematically undermining the unique dignity and worth of every human life. their common sense about what is true and right. They told me that if they were faced with the choice 2 Let me be concrete and specific: Men and names, such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the women died courageously fighting the Nazis. twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.” The itching They included American soldiers, Allied soldiers, and the manginess eventually began to vex the hip- and resistance fighters. Because brave people took pies, leading them to seek help from the local free risks to do what was right and necessary, Hitler was clinics. Step by step, they had to rediscover for eventually defeated. Today, with the assault on themselves the rudiments of modern hygiene. objective truth, many college students find them- Wolfe refers to this as the “Great Relearning.” selves unable to say why the United States was on The Great Relearning is what has to happen the right side in that war. Some even doubt that whenever earnest reformers extirpate too much. America was in the right. To add insult to injury, When, “starting from zero,” they jettison basic they are not even sure that the salient events of the social practices and institutions, abandon com- Second World War ever took place. They simply mon routines, defy common sense, reason, con- lack confidence in the objectivity of history. ventional wisdom–and, sometimes, sanity itself. Too many young people are morally confused, We saw this with the most politically extreme ill-informed, and adrift. This confusion gets worse experiments of our century: Marxism, Maoism, and rather than better once they go to college. If they fascism. Each movement had its share of zealots are attending an elite school, they can actually and social engineers who believed in “starting from lose their common sense and become clever and zero.” They had faith in a new order and ruthless- adroit intellectuals in the worst sense.
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