Moral Confusion

I’ve had a nag­ging thought for a while now, some­thing about how our soci­ety is begin­ning to view risk (or lack there­of) to be a cen­tral part of moral­i­ty (and how this is not a good thing). I’ve nev­er been able to artic­u­late it as well as I would like, which is why I was so pleased to run across this essay by Den­nis Prager: Would You Rather Your Teenag­er Smoke Or Cheat?

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Here are his open­ing para­graphs, I encour­age you to read the whole thing: Decades of lec­tur­ing around Amer­i­ca and of speak­ing with par­ents on my radio show have led me to an incred­i­ble con­clu­sion: More Amer­i­can par­ents would be upset with their teenage chil­dren if they smoked a cig­a­rette than if they cheat­ed on a test.

How has this come about? This is, after all, an entire­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Almost no mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a mem­ber of any pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, could ever have imag­ined that par­ents would be angri­er with their teenage child for smok­ing than for cheat­ing.

There has been a pro­found change in Amer­i­can val­ues. In a nut­shell, health has over­tak­en moral­i­ty. Or, if you pre­fer, health has become our moral­i­ty.

Read the whole essay.