Is America trending towards being more conservative?

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAND: Ben, in your book you say that really your concerns can be boiled down to one over-arching concern, which is the loss of American values. You talk about that even islands of morality will be swamped in a rising tide of immorality if we don’t turn this around and this goes back to one of my favorite themes, for people who have been listening to this program, and that is you can’t hunker in the bunker; you can’t go into some kind of strong social values ghetto, that we are part of a society, and if the society goes, it will wash everything along with it. So what is at stake is everyone’s children’s future.

SHAPIRO: Yes, there’s no question about that. I mean, I think that Judge Bork who should be Justice Bork, expressed it well in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, when he said, “Look, we can all run to the monasteries and we can attempt to build our own cloisters, but the bottom line is that we are abandoning the battle fields when we do so.” So, yes, it is important to build these bulwarks, and I think the family is a bulwark against the encroachment of a socially liberal popular culture. But when it comes right down to it, your kids are going to have to enter the public square, and, again, as the tide of immorality rises, we can all be swamped. So, I think that half of the story that really has to be told is the social rights abdication on a lot of these issues. The social left would not have won had the social right not abdicated because the vast majority of people in this country agree with the social right.

LAND: In fact, the percentage is going up.

SHAPIRO: It is going up. It is going up in terms of what they think about sex education; it is going up in terms of what they think about same-sex marriage. The last election cycle was a perfect proof of what we are seeing here.

LAND: And Ben, the reason is that you know the percentage of people in America who take religion very seriously is not getting any higher, but the nature of the religion that they are taking very seriously is much more conservative. Catholics are becoming more traditional, evangelical protestants are becoming more traditional and growing, and main line protestants are diminishing, and even in the Jewish community we see a rising tide now of the children of Jewish parents who were not observant, who are becoming observant Jews and Orthodox Jews.

SHAPIRO: Absolutely. The term in Hebrews, “Bal Chuva” and that is really becoming a big movement in the Orthodox Jewish community, but there is no question also that just across the board people are getting more conservative in their social mores. I mean, look at the last election cycle where eleven states had same-sex marriage rejection on the ballot, and all eleven rejected same-sex marriage overwhelmingly, I mean, by a huge margin, 70 to 30 margins, 80 to 20 margins, and I think that that really says a lot, but I think that what that also says a lot is people who are my age, by and large, back same-sex marriage, so people who are our parents, are realizing the damage that they did in the 1960s and 1970s, and realizing that the society they have built cannot hold and that the center cannot hold essentially, that we are spinning off into oblivion. But people who are my age, who have been brought up with the kind of 60s’ idea that personal fulfillment trumps everything else, we really do believe in same-sex marriage, so we are the only subgroup that believes that same-sex marriage should be legal in this country. We are the only subgroup that believes that pornography should be legal by and large in this country, and polls tend to bear this out. We are much more socially liberal than our parents because we don’t want government involved at all. We think that it is all about individuals, it is not about community, and it is not about society at large, so, with that kind of future on our hands, I mean, that is the destruction of traditional American values. And when I say “traditional American values,” I am talking about basic values, values that uphold institutions like marriage. The value of protecting innocence. We are part of a society that does not believe in innocence anymore. People of my generation are so jaded, I think that is probably the hallmark of a society that has lost it’s innocence, is a society that is absolutely cynical and jaded. People who are my age, I don’t know that you can find a more cynical and jaded group of rich and spoiled people probably in world history. As I say in Porn Generation, we are the richest generation in history; we are probably the most spoiled generation just because we haven’t really had to face any foreign policy challenges until the war on terror. We are really privileged and, yet, at the same time, we are absolutely cynical and jaded about our own lives. I mean, one of the most astonishing things is going to Harvard Law where opportunities are essentially unbounded because once you get into Harvard Law, there is no question that you are going to be making a lot of money, at the very least. I mean, the average salary coming out of Harvard Law is well about $125,000 a year, and that is the first year out of Harvard Law. So people are coming out making a lot of money, and they are coming out being very successful, but they are incredibly jaded and cynical and really not that happy. I think that what we have to be concerned about at root, is societal happiness. Are more people happy now than they were in the 1950s? I mean, obviously there were problems with the 1950s, segregation being the chief one, but beyond segregation and in terms of just societal morality in terms of marriage, in terms of family, are we happier with the situation now? I would say that we aren’t. Rising rates of divorce tend to bear me out. The broken homes, the kids who are depressed because they don’t have a mother and a father tend to bear this out. What is good to see is that people on the social right are really picking up on this message and getting involved, so, I just hope that this can contribute to the debate, that it can open up the debate again, and that people will really awaken to the mire that we have become enmeshed in in our pop culture and the fact that we really need as a society to stand up and say “enough.”