Your generation was sluttier
I am sick of hearing Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers complain about a perceived cultural decline among the younger generations. For a variety of measures, things started to go bad already by the 1950s, became obscene during the 1960s and ’70s, and plateaued some time during the 1980s. Since roughly 1990, however, things have gotten steadily better. This series will catalog such a trend for measures typically given in support of the declinist hypothesis: we begin with sexual behavior, and will eventually cover violent crime, divorce, narcissism, the arts, and whatever other examples I come across or that readers suggest in the comments. The hope is that the series will prevent the real-world picture from disappearing down the Memory Hole, as every generation thinks that patterns among its usurpers spell doom, regardless of what the data show.
Importantly, I am more interested in the slope or derivative of an indicator at some point in time, and less so in the value of the indicator at that point. The reason is simple: those who claim that our culture is declining, decaying, rotting, dying, and devolving are making an argument about whether some indicator is increasing or decreasing over time. What the declinists are really saying is that there are forces that cause promiscuity, say, to increase or to decrease. Therefore, even if some Bad Thing was lower in 1958 than in 2008, it may have been in a state of worsening then (increasing), and in a state of improving now (decreasing), so the underlying corrosive forces must have been stronger then and weaker now. It is the strength of these unseen “causes of decline” that I’m interested in.
Sluttiness is perhaps the most frequently given example of how far kids these days have fallen — fallen, that is, from the zenith of innocence embodied by fucking your gf in the back of your car at Make-out Point (or the drive-in theater), round-robin pairing off during the sexual revolution, and the barely-covers-you costumes of the disco era and its spillover into the nightclub scene of the 1980s. Although there are not national probability samples (as opposed to convenience samples) going back decades for the entire diversity of perversions, indicators of sexual misbehavior correlate with each other, so we may need to rely on a proxy indicator if data are lacking for another.
The most straightforward indicator of sluttiness is simply the percentage of people who have had a “high” number of partners for their age. Since the declinists target the younger generations, let’s look at the percentage of high schoolers who have had 4 or more sexual partners. Here are the data from the representative National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. From 1991 to 2007, this percentage has decreased. This is the strongest argument against the declinist hypothesis.
I could not find a good national probability sample that included a straightforward measure of sluttiness before 1991, but we can look at some proxies. The percentage of adolescents who have ever had sex is one: if you haven’t had sex ever, you can’t have had multiple partners, and earlier age of first intercourse is correlated with having more partners (that is not a tautology). The YRBS data above show that this indicator too has been decreasing from 1991 to 2007. Before then, we turn to a different dataset, although it is also national and representative: the National Survey of Family Growth. According to the CDC’s summary:
Proportions were calculated for adolescent women in each year of age from 15 through 19 who reported having had premarital sexual intercourse by March 1 in 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1988. For all ages combined for each of these periods, the proportion of adolescent women who reported having had premarital sexual intercourse increased steadily (from 28.6% in 1970 to 51.5% in 1988 (Table 1)).
The 1988 figure of 51.5% is nearly the same as the 1991 figure of 50.8% from the YRBS data (see here, where the data are broken down by male vs. female). Thus, at least as far back as 1970 (and probably earlier), the fraction of teenagers who had had sex was already increasing, it peaked around 1990, and has been decreasing ever since.
We can also look at the spread of sexually transmitted diseases that are very common and have been around long enough for there to be decades of relevant data. First we look at gonorrhea. This table of gonorrhea rates by year shows that it increased from 1941 to 1946, decreased until 1957, increased until 1975, and decreased until 1997, leveling off thereafter. The main trends that emerge are a 20-year period of increase from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s, and a 20-year period of decrease from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
A widespread campaign to treat gonorrhea began when the rate started to decrease, so some of the decreasing trend may be due to better medicine, but combined with the data on number of partners and virginity, some of it must also be due to lower promiscuity. In any case, the data do suggest an increasing trend in promiscuity starting in the late 1950s and lasting at least until the mid-1970s.
Next we look at type 2 herpes. Its prevalence has been decreasing since some time in the late 1990s, especially among adolescents (free full text here, popular journalism write-up here). It had been increasing at least from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. Because herpes is not treatable like gonorrhea is, it must be that more responsible sexual behavior has curbed its spread, again in particular among adolescents.
Taken together, these various indicators — what percentage of teenagers have had “many” partners, what percentage has ever had sex, and what percentage has a common STD — all argue for a period of cultural decline starting in the 1960s, perhaps as early as the late 1950s, which lasted until about 1990. Since then, however, our culture has been in a state of progress regarding teenage sluttiness. Thus, if any age cohort gets to brag about improving sexual mores, it is those born about 1975 or after.
Finally, note that the average female’s appearance tells us nothing about the actual level or rate of increase/decrease in sluttiness. Because this is what most older people use to support the declinist hypothesis — “young girls didn’t used to wear thongs or jeans that low-cut when I was a boy!” — it’s worth emphasizing. Note also that more salacious dance practices among youngsters don’t tell us anything real either, something I pointed out with a field study on my personal blog. Girls these days may give you a standing lapdance on the dancefloor, but — although the male receiver may wish otherwise — this doesn’t mean she is going to fuck you. One plausible reason for the disconnect between appearance and reality is that appearances are largely driven by fashion, which changes for its own sake, rather than reflect underlying changes in preferences or behavior.
Post-script
While oral sex is not worth looking at as a measure of sluttiness compared to intercourse-related indicators, it’s worth mentioning that there is no “oral sex epidemic,” as Oprah phrased it in a typically anti-male way. (The guys would refer to it as the “efflorescence of oral sex.”) Nor is oral sex being substituted for intercourse, another worry in the mind of the declinists. Read the free pdf of the study here, or if you’re lazy, a Newsweek editorial summarizing it. As is usual in these cases, the only thing that is epidemic here is a fear of an epidemic.
Labels: babes and hunks, previous generations were more depraved
What’s so good about having less sex? It certainly our civilization, born in the 1960s (roughly), seems to be declining according to your data. And that’s too my subjective opinion: nothing good has happened since the late 80s or early 90s. Once rock became replaced by techno-pop and the revival of disco… well, it explains it all, doesnt it? Even gregorian music became a hit not so long ago.
Hopefully it’s just the countertide and things will return to normality with the next generation.
Enjoy.
No kidding. We’re a more prudish society today than 30 years ago.
Surely a decline in the amount of teenage sex is regressive from the perspective of teenaged boys.
What’s so good about having less sex?
I’m not talking about what’s good or bad, but whether or not the “cultural decline” arguments are true. People make them all the time, and they are wrong — and it is even more annoying since these arguments come from the most debauched, self-absorbed, and philistine generation of the 20th Century.
Another reason for the series is to point out the danger of basing public policy on assumptions about how the world is. The true function of the alarmism is to argue that we need to control kids’ sexual behavior. This is fine, but the reason should be: “We are the adults, so what we say goes.” Not “studies show _____, so we have to protect you from ____.”
It’s rather ironic, since adults are always warning children never to “cry wolf.”
What’s so good about having less sex?
The results cited by agnostic do not say that the young generation has less sex. Just less partners. Might that be a preference for quality over quantity?
Operating on the premise that adults base their opinions of young people not on what the young do, but on what the adults did themselves at that age: wouldn’t we expect the most complaining roughly one generation after the worst behavior, as the adults presume the kids are as bad as they were?
I suspect unfamiliarity with social norms is probably a contributing factor, though, and so it probably increases with age regardless of how people behaved. Perhaps part of the problem is that the elderly are comparing the social standards of the past to the social norms of the present. Social standards often seem far more conservative than actual behavior.
young girls didn’t used to wear thongs or jeans that low-cut when I was a boy!
They had miniskirts and go-go boots instead. Which outraged the older generation at that time. The Boomers are (on balance) huge hypocrites.
One oft-cited evidence of general decline is the number of children in single-parent households. It does seem that our species evolved to prefer two parents (Dawkins says that love’s purpose is to motive males to stick around for three years and participate in parenting).
So this might something you could look at in a future post, unless it contradicts your hypothesis.
If you have access to Sci Am, there has also been an increase in teen virginity and later age of first intercourse.
If that continues into the 20s is more questionable. I looked into the GSS, and IIRC, number of sex partners increased between the 1990s and 2000s. (that is that 1975 cohort is accumulating more sex partners than previous cohorts did) Related: Age of first marriage jumped up again as well.
Could the increase in fundamentalist Christianity be the cause of the decline in sexual behavior?
Free copy of that Sci Am article:
http://192.192.169.81/sa/pdf.file/en/e060/e060p022.pdf
The concept of the “slut” is itself highly negative and damaging, and is based on the implicit assumtion that there is something morally wrong with women having and enjoying sex. This article does women no favors for featuring it.
The concept of the “slut” is itself highly negative and damaging, and is based on the implicit assumtion that there is something morally wrong with women having and enjoying sex. This article does women no favors for featuring it.
you may read minds & hearts, but luckily you have no power to enforce your Will oh Great Leader of all that is Good.
John, quit talking like a fag.
enge2002.pdf
Since you’re so concerned about the damage done by terms like “slut,” you would want to target the group most responsible for hurling them: other women. Read this:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/baumeistertw
And in any event, I’m not interested in judging female sexual behavior (in this post anyway) — just on whether or not sluttiness, reasonably defined, is on the rise or decline.
The 60s and 70s may have been full of fuck-ups, but I’ll second the above commenter that they had better music.
I’m not talking about what’s good or bad, but whether or not the “cultural decline” arguments are true. People make them all the time, and they are wrong — and it is even more annoying since these arguments come from the most debauched, self-absorbed, and philistine generation of the 20th Century.
It rings no bells in my European head. I thought all people who said that were already dead.
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The results cited by agnostic do not say that the young generation has less sex. Just less partners. Might that be a preference for quality over quantity?
Ok, noticed. Anyhow it sounds more like a preference for stability over adventure than what you say: I don’t see how quality (speaking of sex) can be guaranteed that way – the opposite would seem more logical, right? It’s a perfectly reasonable option in any case (for other reasons, more emotional than merely sexual) but I wonder if it’s, also, a product of the shock caused by the AIDS epydemics.
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The concept of the “slut” is itself highly negative and damaging, and is based on the implicit assumtion that there is something morally wrong with women having and enjoying sex. This article does women no favors for featuring it.
I understand that the term applies to men and women equally in this post. The subject is “your generation”. So guess guys are “sluts” too when they look for sex out of the couple.
But it implies an ideological judgement against freely chosen promiscuity in any case. It’s adopting a moralistic slur to make free sex look bad. It’s Christian, even if it’s written by “agnostic” – ahem!
John, quit talking like a fag.
That was indeed sexist. Lately I’m getting a feeling of nausea when visiting here and it’s because of stuff like this. Why don’t you rename the blog something like “conservative nearing fascist blog with an occasional note on genetics just out of tradition”?
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Could the increase in fundamentalist Christianity be the cause of the decline in sexual behavior?
I think you are onto something. Actually in my reality kids are surely more promiscuous or at least more sexually active now than 20 years ago. It’s just that now it’s normal and preservatives are available everywhere.
But, unlike in the states, in my offline reality, Christian fundamentalism is something of the past, something that has mostly been buried deep underground with the last ayatollah-fuhrer of Western Europe and that almost nobody, even those who were not born then, wants to revive.
“let’s look at the percentage of high schoolers who have had 4 or more sexual partners. Here are the data from the representative National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. From 1991 to 2007, this percentage has decreased. This is the strongest argument against the declinist hypothesis.”
I am a declinist, and I consider this to be the strongest argument in support of my position. The reason kids today don’t fuck around as much as previous generations has entirely to do with the fact that teenage boys don’t pursue sex as vigorously as the boys in previous generations did. (Not sure why this is, but it probably has something to do with internet porn; the boys have just masturbated themselves into indifference.) But the girls today are more eager for sex than ever. I know this because I’m in my late 30′s, and I have never had an easier time sleeping with college girls than I do today. This has nothing to do with money (don’t spend a dime on ‘em), and everything to do with the craving young women have for sexual adventure with men who really want to fuck them. And, in this respect, the boys their age are conspicuously lacking.
For whatever reason, teenage boys today are squeamish, scattered, and conspicuously lacking in exuberant vitality. But the girls… well, girls are the new boys. So, even for a declinist like me, I guess there is something to love about Gen Y.
Keep on sucking, boys. More for me.
So Jack, our culture peaked sometime in the late 1980s in your view?
Maybe it was video games that killed the American male then?
Speaking as someone who came of age in the late 70s early 80s and partied on thereafter, yes we got laid more often, with more variety and had better drugs(Gen X). The music came and went. Aids really hurt the scene but…(People are still having sex)old song. The boomers are the most hypocritical generation in American history as they have become far more prudish as they age. I think this is because they were raised in a more church going era and after discovering personal mortality are frightened of hell/death. That they cause restrictive fascist laws to be passed is an artifact of that generations size and simple-minded herd-like mentality. Generation Y, (how I hate those imposed terms) is coming along nicely. They are beginning to loosen up as time erodes the credibility of conservative/religious authority. Lastly the Zs, well they could go either way. Having the Iraq war/911 as a background to high school is twisted but they do love guns and games. This is a good sign in my opinion.
I remember from sociology that a century ago, the age of consent for girls was 12 in many states! So much for the “innocence” of the “good old days”.
Language has certainly coarsened. People used to say ?butt?. Now, only ?ass? will do. And what?s wrong with ?stuff?? Why must it always be ?shit? these days?
Yes George, but what was life expectancy 100 years ago? I think we need to keep those kind of facts in context of the era.
Clio has made the argument that serial monogamy is in many ways worse than casual hook ups:
There is something in the nature of uncommitted sexual relationships (and as far as I’m concerned, all non-marital sex is uncommitted) that brings out the worst in people. Mere casual sex with multiple partners, though hardly morally or aesthetically appealing, is less harmful than these passionate but ambiguous relationships that are now our standard form of courtship and a prelude to marriage.
http://aliasclio.blogspot.com/2008/06/bad-boy-encounters-no-2-part-iv-as-well.html
Declinists are boring in general, and declinists complaining about the sluttiness of youth are pretty obviously just jealous old farts.
A civilization that spent no time having sex would soon die out. A civilization that spent all of its time having sex wouldn’t accomplish much. So the optimal point must lie somewhere inbetween, but I have a hard time believing that anybody knows where that point is and can pin it to a specific decade.
Could the increase in fundamentalist Christianity be the cause of the decline in sexual behavior?
A more likely cause is the popularity of Saved by the Bell among adolescents.
I’ve got a new post showing that, according to General Social Survey data, the percent of young people with 5+ sex partners hasn’t changed since 1988, and that celibacy might be up a bit for girls.
Agnostic – you are on the money, and I have never doubted this. There was a ‘window’ between when effective treatments for STDs like syphilis became available, and effective and easily procurable birth control became available, especially birth control pills which put birth control in the hands of women rather than men, and when AIDS emerged, or the knowledge of it emerged, during which sex with a lot of different partners seemed like just harmless fun. That coincided pretty much with the emergence of the beat generation, the hippie movement and popularisation of recreational drug taking. So it emerged in the 1950s, really started to build up steam in the 1960s, probably peaked at the height of the hippie era in the late 1960s, kept momentum in the 1970s, and started to lose momentum in the 1980s as the reality of AIDS and the risks from having a lot of partners became readily apparent again.
Before the 1950s, incurable STDs and unwanted pregnancy were real deterrents. After the 1970s, AIDS emerged as a real deterrent. In between, there was no deterrent. There seemed only upside and no downside.
“Preservatives are available everywhere” – Ain’t that the truth? Whatever happened to fresh preservative free produce?
@Jack: “teenage boys don’t pursue sex as vigorously as the boys in previous generations did.”
I think there’s a major theme in our culture that says men are bad – men are responsible for all the world’s ills – and women are good. example 1: Look at scholarly papers containing the phrase, “women are better at” and you’ll find many telling you how wonderful the female brain is, how great they are at everything from communication and negotiation to management. Most papers containing the phrase “men are better at” actually contain the phrase, “it was once thought that men are better at” and those papers are “correcting past biases.”
example 2: look at popular culture, like the ads on television. Men are typically slobbering idiots. There’s one where a guy tries to paint his house with a paint ball gun. haha! men are retarded! it’s funny!! An ad has been running for over a year where a little girl asks her father why the sky is blue and he gives her a condescending answer, but mommy told her the truth. The ad closes with the message that “too many” women lose interest in math and science. Clearly, it’s the fault of men like this retarded father. Women make up more than 60% of college students, but that’s not enough. “too many” lose inerest in science. What sexism!
So basically, I’m suggesting that one part of the problem is that boys are just brow-beaten into a sort of depressed lethargy. They are picking up these constant messages about how terrible they are and eventually they just quit trying.
So basically, I’m suggesting that one part of the problem is that boys are just brow-beaten into a sort of depressed lethargy. They are picking up these constant messages about how terrible they are and eventually they just quit trying.
You may really have some reason in this. In fact the stereotype of men in many pop culture items (I’m thinking in The Simpsons right now) is certainly not like any sort of model or ideal. That is also sexism.
But overall I suspect that guys may be just being tired of having too many idealized expectations on them just for being guys (not just erotic success, but success in general). The “purple band” may come with some privileges but is also a burden.
I think the posters who mentioned AIDS were most on the money with this. My generation grew up with massive brainwashing about drugs, and later, an unrealistic fear of AIDS pounded into our brains. But at the same time, we saw the results of massive drug use which the baby boomers didn’t know about. In the 80s I would walk, with my mom, down the street and see crackheads and heroin addicts. I knew what they were. That was probably the biggest deterrent.
As for AIDS. Well, I have a friend who basically went through panic attacks whenever he had unprotected sex by negligence and would freak out, and just assume he was going to die.
The chance of contracting AIDS from unprotected sex is actually pretty low if you’re a guy, but they never tell you that.
Hello – found this blog though a link on someone’s comments on another (http://voxday.blogspot.com/2008/06/england-is-toast.html)
One comment here: People here are from different countries, and what is true of social changes in one is not necessarily true of another. (Even in the USA, I gather there’s a major cultural difference between their rural heartland and the big coastal cities.)
To the guy who said he didn’t want Fundamentalist Christianity back – I think you’re going to get Fundamentalist Islam taking over there instead, unless you lot wake up and stop allowing unlimited immigration from north Africa and the Middle-east.
And all your “gay rights” nonsense will vanish in a puff of smoke when its literal ayatollahs and mullahs making the laws there. And women will be stoned to death in public for sexual offenses.
One day America might have to invade across the Atlantic to liberate you…
The chance of contracting AIDS from unprotected sex is actually pretty low if you’re a guy…
If you are a heterosexual guy doing it in a standard way. But they exist anyhow. Protection is never in excess anyhow, as you don’t want to be causing unwanted pregnancies either, right?
But you’re right about drugsters, Hyperbole. I also grew with deep respect for drugs like heroin (crack was never popular or really available in Europe for some reason).
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To the guy who said he didn’t want Fundamentalist Christianity back – I think you’re going to get Fundamentalist Islam taking over there instead, unless you lot wake up and stop allowing unlimited immigration from north Africa and the Middle-east.
And all your “gay rights” nonsense will vanish in a puff of smoke when its literal ayatollahs and mullahs making the laws there. And women will be stoned to death in public for sexual offenses.
One day America might have to invade across the Atlantic to liberate you…
Guess that was me. By the moment I’m more worried about all the hatred that the USA and Israel are sparking in the Mediterranean. And certainly I do not want fundamentalists of any sort. There’s no difference between them: they are in perfect agreement to push ahead for apocalyptic war (or pretend to do while they make business). It’s just a farce of cold war.
All western allies in North Africa and West Asia are fundamentalist tyrannies: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan… If at least the western powers (not just the USA, also France and the rest) woul push for civil rights and democracy but they just want vassal tyrannies, they don’t care at all if they are fundies or not, just if they cause problems (in which case they are demonized) or mostly do not (in which case their abuses are silenced). It’s like Hitler and Franco: the first caused international trouble and was demonized and eventually defeated, the latter did not and was protected, financed and perpetuated for 40 years at the expense of the people.
And that (Francoism) was Christian Fundamentalism in pristine form. I can tell you. Certainly we have already been invaded by the USA in the form of payements and political support for fascism. We don’t need that again, thanks.
I too once had sympathies for the view all of culture was getting more and more degenerate, but one day I read a passage by Nietzsche where he claimed that the music of his era were debased and needed to return to the stylings of the previous era. Now I question those sorts of thoughts.
There certain seems to be an increase in anxiety over the future, but much of the data that I have for that is circumstantial (increased emphasis on children’s education a la baby Einstein, for instance).
Luis, if you honestly think Franco’s ideology was the same as that of American Fundamentalism, or that there’s no difference between either and Islam, then you know very little about any of them.
Let me offer you a clue: Spain under Franco was Roman Catholic in religion, and Fascist in politics.
Compare that with being Baptist or Pentecostal in religion, and Libertarian in politics.
(Do you know what the words I put in capitals all mean?)
frank, luis is a citizen of spain. just a FYI before you try to “school” him on spanish history….
Frank,
Not to get off topic, but I dare say you would have a hard time finding anyone, anywhere who is Pentecostal and Libertarian – unless of course we’re talking about multiple personality disorder?!
Levi; one day I read a passage by Nietzsche where he claimed that the music of his era were debased and needed to return to the stylings of the previous era. Now I question those sorts of thoughts.
But maybe Nietzche was right, and music has been in decline for a very long time. Seems to me that human music reached its peak in Europe, in the Baroque period. The newest musical style is rap. Looks like deevolution to me.
But maybe Nietzche was right, and music has been in decline for a very long time.
This is true — but we have to be careful about what we’re talking about. The decline is in the quality of musical composition, and so has something to do with composers, potential composers, the culture of music, etc.
However, a greater fraction of the population appreciates Baroque or Classical now more than at any time in the past — even the sub-elites have Classical music ringtones — so there is no decline in appreciation of great music among audiences.
It’s like how a greater fraction of the population, now more than ever, has some understanding of how the world works, thanks to science education, journalism, and the incorporation of science into the larger culture. “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” “He is a very left-brained thinker,” “This shows diminishing returns,” etc.
At the same time, it seems like there aren’t as many brilliant minds, as a fraction of the population, as there were during previous, recent centuries.
In fact, to link this to the “East Asian creativity” post, you might say the West has undergone a process of Japanification — we can appreciate culture a lot, but we just can’t produce it.
Hey agnostic, your post is dead on. As I’ve said before on numerous occasions, the promiscuity epidemic is another figment of the media’s imagination. Similar to the meth epidemic that’s supposedly sweeping through America……
I’ve looked over a lot of data about sexual behavior in the West, and the trend seems to be towards:
-Very low numbers of sexual partners
-Long term serial monogamy
-Low frequency of sex, especially for those not married/cohabitating
-Low rates of STDs
-Generally declining rates of abortion and teen pregnancy
Anecdotally, I’ve had a similar experience in the nightclub/bar environment. As provocative as some may appear, I’d be surprised if more than a handful of young females could be characterized as promiscuous….
dullsville, dullsville, dullsville. Many years ago I left your boring country and decamped for Asia, where the women know how to have a good time.
BTW, wtf is an “adolescent woman”? An oxymoron, no? Better to say “minor female,” or how about “teenage girl”?
Luis, if you honestly think Franco’s ideology was the same as that of American Fundamentalism, or that there’s no difference between either and Islam, then you know very little about any of them.
Let me offer you a clue: Spain under Franco was Roman Catholic in religion, and Fascist in politics.
Compare that with being Baptist or Pentecostal in religion, and Libertarian in politics.
(Do you know what the words I put in capitals all mean?)
Try to be less patronizing and know-it-all, ok?
I see absolutely no substantial difference between Roman Catholicism, Baptism, Islam or whatever: they are all NeoJudaistic monotheistic sects with the same kind of ideas about restriction of individual liberty based on “God’s word”. The differences are in detail.
As for “Libertarianism” it is you who has little idea of what it means: historically this term has been basically synonim of Anarchism, what we could call left-wing Libertarianism, historical Libertarianism or Libertarian Communism (the term used by most followers of Kropotkin). Unlike right-wing pseudo-Libertarianism that is not but extreme Liberalism (in the historical meaning of the word), Anarchism acknowledges (read Kropotkin) that private property cannot survive without the support of the state or equivalent (mafia or other de-facto militar rule, like in Somalia).
Anyhow, US Fundamentalism is actually in favor of more state, not more welfare surely, not more public investment in infrastructures or regulation of competence, but of more police and armed forces. In fact that’s what they have been wasting the money in since their leaders are in the White House (and it’s about three decades with the Clinto parenthesis). Real Libertarianism would not interfere in Iraq nor reinforce the border with Mexico: all that is state intervention and therefore anti-libertarian. It’s just the classical liberal blah-blah about freedom while the state actually gets bigger and bigger but also less useful for the common of mortals (not for the corporations probably though).
Get real: it’s more state – but state for the big ones and against the little people.
Luis, I get the idea you think of religion primarily in terms of its philosophy of government. Ie: Not in terms of what it tells believers to do, but what it tells them the government should try to force unbelievers to do.
American “Social Conservatism”, with its support for Big Government, goes back a few decades. Of Ronand Reagan, it was said (and I believe justly) “he has consistantly confused Christian interests with Conservative ones”.
But I get the impression that many Christians in America are starting to realise that this policy isn’t really producing the results they hoped for.
(I am not an American myself, btw)
Someone joked that the Republicans will NEVER ban abortion, because then what would they have left to promise the “Moral Majority” folks next election?
The Republicans as I see it are a strange alliance of three causes: they’re the party of patriotism and national security, they also project themselves as the party of Christianity and conservative morality, but more than anything else, they are the party of Big Business.
And when its about what the Big Money people want, any pretense of following a Christian ethic gets shoved aside. I hear disturbing talk of how private property rights are being trampled, people kicked off their land, their ideas stolen, blatant lies legally tolerated in advertising, all as part of a “business friendly” policy. The Christian ethic of “thou shalt not steal” or “Do to others as you would want them to do to you” seems to mean nothing to these people.