Originally Posted by jammies
That's a fair question, and I don't know the answer - while I don't think much of the argument that society is becoming "less moral", the collapse of marriage has indeed had a hugely negative effect on the proper socialization of - especially - young men. Good fathers are important, most humans denied proper structure and hierarchy will take whatever they can find to replace it, no matter if that be otherwise entirely malign.
I suspect new familial institutions need to be created, maybe developed along the lines of the Israeli kibbutz, although that has been somewhat of a failed experiment. This is where we can look at more traditional societies, where grandparents and siblings and cousins are more involved in the upbringing of children, and try to reinvent that in a way that spreads the responsibility more equally among many adults rather than expecting mothers to do all the heavy work.
There are, contrary to what it might seem, many things I admire about less cosmopolitan societies. One thing I don't agree with, though, is the idea that different cultures are equal, or that some cultures aren't better than others. I realize that there was an understandable and entirely fair reaction against the pernicious idea that the white man was obliged to teach the benighted his civilized ways, when the white man wasn't all that civilized himself. Still, though, if your society doesn't accept basic human rights because your culture (hello Saudi Arabia!) believes women are chattel, your culture is inferior *in that way*, just as Canadian culture is inferior to, for example, Filipino culture in respect and caring for the aged.
That's the one myth of the left I really take issue with - cultural relativity. It's contradictory with the liberal idea of human progress, for one: if all cultures are equal, why even try to change your culture, since you're just going to end up with something different, and not better? It's a pessimistic view of humanity that is logically only consistent with fatalism.
If you accept that progress is possible, the inescapable conclusion is that some cultures really have progressed more, and are better, than others. This shouldn't be a cause for complacency and smug self-congratulations, but rather an opportunity to look at other cultures to see what *they* do better than *we* do, then to understand how they do it, and then to emulate them.
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