Crisis of Responsibility

by David L. Bahnsen

  This narrative of American life is at the heart of the commercial success of conservative talk radio and many of the different expressions of right-wing media (internet, social media, cable news, and so forth). It has a clear protagonist—millions of American men and women who simply want to love God and country and take responsibility for their own economic well-being. It has a clear antagonist—leftists opposed to America’s foundations who seek to reshape our country into a secular, humanistic, European welfare state.

  The Unraveling of Virtue

  Let’s start with the parts of this narrative that are painfully true, if only incompletely so. There are elitist forces within education, the media, and the government who disdain the principles undergirding the American experiment. This fact is as obvious in modern America as any sociopolitical truism could be. For many on the Right, the efforts of the cultural Left to suppress religious liberty, to invite humanism into all aspects of the pop culture, and to redefine the story of America is a form of “civil war.”6 Indeed, this author is the first to acknowledge that the nation we wish to preserve must be protected from the immoral and anti-intellectual parasites that live off America’s cultural heritage while, at the same time, trying to disconnect her from that heritage in which she can best thrive.

  These leftist threats to the American project are real and often concentrated in bicoastal capitals of snobbery and anti-Western sentiment. Any comprehensive audit of the institutional forces in our society would reinforce the belief by those on the Right that elitists are actively trying to change how we live and think.

  But believing that there are external forces (external to the core American nucleus of working-class folks who value God and country) accelerating our cultural and even economic demise is not the same as agreeing that those forces are the primary cause. Indeed, as Murray’s book so ardently demonstrated, the cultural deterioration we see today started when the social fabric of what was once a virtuous working class began to unravel. The true story of our “coming apart” is this: rather than being the result of globalization and other contemporary challenges, the unraveling of virtue within the working class is actually the root cause of our inability to properly respond.

  Murray uses the following four categories, or “founding virtues” as he calls them, to illustrate the divide between those in the higher social and economic strata of American life and those in the middle and lower segments: industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religion. Murray demonstrates using carefully analyzed data that divorce rates have come down in more affluent cities and counties. Out-of-wedlock births are also extremely rare in those places. A happy marriage, as can best be demonstrated by data from self-reporting assessments, is a more prized commodity in those communities perceived as thriving economically. These communities are often vilified as being the “winners” or “inside players” in the present global economic transformation.

  The view of virtue in “blue-collar America” isn’t quite as rosy. Marriage often creates and protects economic stability. It’s a nearly indisputable fact. That’s what’s so troubling about the basic decline in the percentage of people who are married or ever have been married in our society. While over 85 percent of thirty- to forty-nine-year-old males in upper-class America are married, that number has plummeted in middle America—from 85 percent one generation ago to below 50 percent today.7 As the chart below demonstrates (Fig. 3.1), the total percentage of married adult men has dropped from 70 percent in 1960 to only 50 percent in 2016. The percentage of never-married men has risen from 25 percent to nearly 40 percent.

  All the data reinforces a basic theme: the cultural fibers in middle America haven’t merely weakened over the last forty years—they have unraveled. And in nearly every case, the delta between the upper class and middle class hasn’t just expanded, it’s been blown out. Unmarried men living at their parents’ homes, birth rates, divorce rates, marriage rates—in every category over the last forty years, the statistics have worsened for white middle-class and lower-class America and have largely remained unchanged or improved for upper-class America. Today, only 46 percent of American children live with both birth parents, down from 61 percent in 1980 and 73 percent in 1960.8 Fully 34 percent of children today live with an unmarried parent, up from only 9 percent in 1960 (Figs. 3.2, 3.3).9

  Figure 3.1

  Figure 3.2

  Figure 3.3

  The Disappearing Able-Bodied American Male

  One need not hold to “puritanical” views of marriage and family to recognize the critical role family structure plays in a productive society. Not only is the statistical correlation between strong family units and prosperous families undeniable, but the social construct is also intuitive and easy to understand. Marriage creates responsibilities—civilizing responsibilities. In addition to being an economic unit of shared resources, the family becomes a vehicle for instilling values, sharing experiences, and learning moral cooperation. Marriage can often be a miracle cure, creating a middle-class family out of two individuals from a lower economic class. The economics (and social forces) behind even two poor people marrying each other means less poverty and more access to the middle class.10

  There is plenty of reasonable debate to be had about what these various data points do and do not mean. Statistics often force difficult discussions about correlation versus causation, but few sociologists entertain the idea that declining marriages, nuclear families, and children born in wedlock is anything other than a net negative for the economic and emotional well-being of society. I’m not writing a book on the merits of strong marriages or healthy and happy homes for kids, but I would hope all would agree that to aspire for both is a good thing. The more relevant point here is the decline of both amongst those who feel “left out” by the economic advancements of the past quarter century. These declining social conditions (and the decision making that leads to them) are decreasing access to opportunity for middle America.

  The best retort to my claim would be to counter that it is the decreasing access to opportunity that is causing the decline in social conditions. It’s not true, but it can create a “chicken or egg” stalemate if left unchallenged. By this theory, men are remaining dependent on their parents, often well into their thirties, because of the challenging economic conditions they face. Thus, the thinking goes, obsessive video game use and eight-hour-per-day television watching is the consequence of what is happening in working-class America, not the cause.

  This response should strike most reasonable people as patently absurd, for surely human history has recorded many millennia of men facing extraordinary challenge and economic frustration. Yet never has the response to adversity resulted in an extended, even unending adolescence. In fact, the historical norm has been quite the opposite. When faced with wretched economic conditions and perilous adversity, men’s character was enhanced as they embraced hard work and a rugged individualism that would be totally foreign to today’s culture. The virtues and industrious sensibilities deep in the American DNA have been progressively numbed since the 1960s, and the result is a declining social fabric worsened by the complexities of modern life. That numbing is most evident in the very places most prone to struggle in the realities of a new, global economy.

  These conditions feed upon each other in a vicious cycle that does irreparable harm and intensifies the need to pursue re-moralization—to seek stronger social binds and a renewed sense of family, community, and industriousness. A broken-down family structure obstructs efforts to overcome poverty in every generation, for every civilization, throughout all history. The negative feedback loop is daunting: a collapsed family structure leads to a collapsed work ethic, which leads to a more daunting family environment, which leads to an even more daunting economic reality. There is no self-correcting mechanism in this cycle, other than flight. When a determined “exception to the rule” individual leaves the pain and toxicity of a daunting environment, he or she
may leave the dysfunctional situation behind to create a flourishing dynamic and a new reality. But, this also further widens the gap between performance and productivity (virtue and character) in those areas where social conditions have broken down. This has been a very real cycle in American life for over two decades.

  This change in the able-bodied American male in less than one generation captures the gravity of what I am describing in the decline of middle America’s social fabric. The proponent of strong families and marriages in me finds the aforementioned data points deeply concerning, but the financial economist in me finds the data around increased manipulation of disability claims downright horrifying. Alas, it is impossible to conclude that the two subjects are not significantly more correlated than any of us would want to believe. In 1990, less than 2.5 percent of working-age Americans claimed disability from the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund. Today, the number is over 5.2 percent and climbing (Fig. 3.4).

  Figure 3.4

  *Social Security Administration, Lam Thuy Vo, NPR.

  In the same period of time that medical advancements and medicinal innovations grew exponentially, the percentage of our population unable to work and requiring government financial assistance due to a medical “disability” more than doubled! Any objective, rational person must find those two conflicting trends to be irreconcilable aside from the explanation that fraud, an unwillingness to work, and a comfort with exploiting the system have become socially acceptable. The percentage of disability claims around circulatory issues, respiratory issues, parasitic diseases, and other such medically objective problems have declined. Meanwhile, disability claims related to “musculoskeletal” challenges (i.e., back pain) have skyrocketed, as have “nervous system” issues (i.e., anxiety). We now have nearly nine million workers on Social Security disability (fig. 3.5) with cash payments that exceed the cost of food stamps and welfare combined—and what seems to be a legal way to skirt work requirements in the welfare code.

  Figure 3.5

  *Social Security Administration, Lam Thuy Vo, NPR

  Are many of these claims completely legitimate and outside the scope of the point I’m making? Of course. But no credible source believes that people are not taking advantage of the American disability system. It is not only an economic calamity (though it surely is that). The moral climate of Americans only one generation ago would have never tolerated the systemic use of government (or employer) disability programs to avoid work responsibilities.

  The Beginning of a Prescription

  If Charles Murray’s Coming Apart in 2012 was the statistical and sociological setup for the political consummation of what is taking place in our society due to this crisis of responsibility, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis in 2016 was its biography. Vance didn’t use a partisan message in this compelling bestseller, but pointedly told the Right to stop telling broken-down communities that the conditions they face are the government’s fault:

  I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.11

  I couldn’t possibly do justice to the correlation between social responsibility and economic vulnerability in one chapter. But those who believe middle America is the victim of an impersonal global economy are ignoring the fact that we’ve seen a 108 percent increase in working-age Americans living off a government disability check over the last twenty-five years, to list but one inconvenient truth.

  It would be reckless and idealistic to conclude that what the Rust Belt, Deep South, or Appalachia needs is merely to buck up and stay married (or get married) in order to see jobs and opportunities quickly flood back into their towns. Various geographic regions of the country have been disproportionately affected by changes in global economic conditions. The advent of cheaper labor in certain foreign countries didn’t impact Newport Beach, California, the same way it did factory towns in Ohio.

  The policy prescriptions of this book will have much to say about reigniting opportunity in those areas most impacted by shifting economic realities. However, every policy prescription I, or those much smarter than I, could craft will be worth less than the paper on which it is written if the cultural and social context isn’t also vastly improved in those areas.

  Put differently, you will not write a jobs bill, tax bill, or a trade treaty that means a hill of beans to a community struggling to find able-bodied men willing to work (or able to pass the drug test required for them to get hired). No effort from a civil magistrate will ever succeed in overcoming the malaise created by apathy, irresponsibility, and imploded family norms. We cannot ignore policy prescriptions, yet we must establish a sine qua non—a failure to ignite re-moralization and recapture industriousness, honesty, family, and religion will guarantee the failure of any attempt to improve civic life.

  The willingness of the Right to pretend that there isn’t a moral rot in middle America fertilizing this crisis of responsibility is counterproductive, to say the least. Conservatives have (accurately, in my view) passionately declared that the West cannot win the war against Islamic jihadist fanaticism if we will not properly identify it as such. I would argue that the same need for self-awareness and an honest diagnosis exists in addressing economic malaise. The crisis of individual responsibility is not going to be fixed by government policy.

  By suggesting social deterioration is at the root of the crisis we face, I realize I invite the burden of prescribing solutions to the problem. I am keenly aware that poor factory towns won’t see a resurgence of faithful marriages simply because a few sociologists or economists identify the declining family unit as the primary source of economic angst. I am, however, more sympathetic to J. D. Vance’s sentiment that solutions begin with initially acknowledging the real problem. We can treat the symptoms, but a cure requires a reprioritization of values and character. The practical ways to get there are few and far between, but important nonetheless.

  Charles Murray suggested that part of the problem exacerbating the “coming apart” between upper-class America and the rest is that while the highly educated and professionally successful are themselves statistically more likely to be in happy marriages and invest great effort into child-rearing, there is a remarkable failure to “preach what they practice.” What’s en vogue today is a nonjudgmental attitude about how other people live their lives. That attitude must end. The need of the hour is for thoughtful and caring people to condemn deadbeat-ism, not enable it.

  The moral relativism of our age has created a tricky dilemma. Many people are thriving because they’re making wise decisions that lead to more fulfilled lives, but they’re unwilling to declare wise decision making as a necessary prerequisite for the success of others. Practicing what one preaches is a long-heralded virtue; but preaching what one practices is the mandate for today.

  There is no shortage of books on the market prescribing character and virtue as the antidote to what plagues our society. That’s a good thing. Principles of self-reliance, responsibility over entitlement, thrift, and the virtues of hard work require a resurgence of popularity. Ben Sasse’s landmark The Vanishing American Adult suggests that fighting “passivity” and allowing young people to rediscover their “agency” is vital. There are dozens of reasons, from the economic to the physical, that this is true, but none are more potent than the mor
al and spiritual. A culture that has prized agency over passivity in the past, and seen the positive results in the lives and communities of the educated and elite, has failed to prize those values consistently today across all of society.

  We have taken a generation to get to the point we where we now find ourselves societally, and I have no reason to believe we will reverse course in less than another generation. Nevertheless, those who care for the disenfranchised will never pretend that there is one set of rules and norms that work for the privileged few, and a different set of rules and norms for the rest. When we find our voice as a society to sing the praises of family, character, and goodness, we will find the beginning of a prescription for reversing social and economic stagnation.

  4

  OCCUPY MAIN STREET

  The Moral Confusion

  of Vindicating the Culprit

  Covetousness bursts the sack and spills the grain.

  –SIR WALTER SCOTT

  It is a positively glorious ride—the ferry across the Hudson River from the World Financial Center Terminal in Manhattan to the Paulus Hook port in Jersey City. Unfortunately, it’s only a few minutes long, but it carries a lot of nostalgic value for me.

  When I first entered the financial world about twenty years ago, I did a training program in Weehawken, New Jersey, with my then-employer UBS PaineWebber. The ferry ride between Weehawken and Manhattan became a mainstay then. To this day it is impossible for me to be in that vicinity without overpowering memories. When I first entered the business, it was the most exciting, intimidating, nerve-wracking, curious, and thrilling time of my life. Two hundred trips to New York City later, and having opened an office for my company there, nothing has changed. I remain tremendously passionate about the financial markets around which I’ve built my career.