Boom and Gloom.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Declinists place undue emphasis on social and economic problems in US

Accentuating the negative in an age of plenty

Every party needs a pooper, even the overwhelmingly robust and upbeat shindig that is end-of-millennium America. In the broadest terms possible, things are going pretty damn well, and the future looks pretty bright, too.

The economy has been nothing less than miraculous. Inflation appears relatively stable, while buying power and overall compensation for virtually all segments of the population are growing. According to the Census Bureau, poverty is at its lowest rate in 20 years, and median household incomes are at an all-time high. Home ownership hovers at the historic high of around 67 percent while unemployment shrinks below supposedly "frictional" levels--despite an influx of welfare recipients once thought to be unemployable. Between 1991 and 1997 (the latest year for which there are full data), the total crime rate dropped almost 17 percent, while violent crime reached its lowest point in a decade. More kids than ever are going on to college (two-thirds, according to American Demographics magazine), and the birthrate for unmarried teens is dropping steadily.

So what's the response of America's political and intellectual classes to such generally good times? A sinking feeling, mostly, and a somewhat desperate search for the mist-shrouded iceberg that will sink us all.

To wit, a September 13, 1999, article in National Review about sex and teenagers: "For the first time in decades, more than half of America's high-school students described themselves as virgins," writes Amy H. Holmes of the Independent Women's Forum. "The rate of sexual activity among 17-to-19-year-old boys in urban areas declined from 75 percent in 1979 to 68 percent in 1995. Over the same period, the proportion of young men who approved of nonmarital sex fell from 80 percent to 71 percent." After granting that "the statistics maybe improving," Holmes nonetheless asserts that "sexual practices among teenagers are becoming increasingly dehumanizing," a conclusion supported only by a few dubious anecdotes about ostensibly disturbing new trends that would hardly seem novel to anyone who has come of age since the publication of Tropic of Cancer.

Declinists can barely stomach the idea that something other than imminent ruin awaits the country unless their prescribed course of action is enacted but fast; progress is inevitably measured not in terms of how far we've come but only by who or what has been left behind. Hence...