Beltway Books: The enemies of America

A look at our cultural, political, economic, military challenges | Doug Bandow

Even President Clinton believes in individual responsibility and family values, or so he recently told students at Penn State. That America's moral fabric is under siege is evident from Maggie Gallagher's excellent The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love.

Ms. Gallagher's message is a sober one: "The overthrow of the marriage culture and its replacement by a postmarital culture is the driving force behind almost all of the gravest problems facing America-crime, poverty, welfare, dependence, homelessness, educational stagnation, even child abuse." Two statistics sum up her book: One-third of children are born out of wedlock and two-thirds of new marriages will fail.

The onset of what she terms "the culture of divorce" was incredibly sudden. Between the 1940s and the 1970s divorce rates tripled. Since then, she reports, "the marriage rate has fallen almost 30 percent, while the divorce rate has jumped nearly another 40 percent." Four of every ten unmarried women in their thirties have had an illegitimate child.