When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.
Category Archive: Christopher Lasch
The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.
Ideologies, however appealing, cannot shape the whole structure of perceptions and conduct unless they are embedded in daily experiences that confirm them.
The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.
Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.
Make it new is the message not just of modern art but of modern consumerism, of which modern art is largely a mirror image.
We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.
The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine.
A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.