The Death of the Grown-up
by Diana West

What is the single greatest difference in American culture between the middle of the last century and today? According to journalist Diana West, it is the absence of moral authority in our society. She argues this passionately and persuasively in her new book called The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. We have seen a degradation of our entertainment industry and vastly increased levels of promiscuity and illegal drug use.

West argues that the real damage took place in the 1950s when parents provided their children with the means to become, for the first time in history, consumers in their own right. Entertainment and fashion industries began to target and glorify teenagers. By the time sex, drugs and rock-and-roll took over in the sixties, the authority figures—parents, professors, and cultural leaders— had relinquished control over their children. Now that the rebels of the sixties and seventies have children of their own, most are unwilling and unable to provide the moral authority so necessary for adolescents.

The author cites one appalling case after another of children and teenagers whose lives were ruined by adults who failed to do their duty. In the last part of her book, Diana West argues that in a post-9/11 world, America can no longer afford to relax in carefree adolescence. We don't stand a chance against Islamic terrorists unless we grow up and start judging some things as good and other things as evil. Our multicultural relativism, which is closely bound up in our refusal to grow up, will otherwise prove our undoing.

Diana West writes that the defense of Western culture requires a clear moral standard and a belief in its superiority. The chief faculties of adults are knowledge and judgment. The mature, successful adult knows what is good and is not afraid to denounce what is evil. We need to recover this ability as a society. Americans should read The Death of the Grown-up and then give it to their liberal friends as a challenge.

(St. Martin's Press, 2007, 272 pp., $23.95)