Interesting essay.
He speaks, of course, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his prescient warnings about moral decline in America.
"Every day the media burlesque spotlights an American with too much
binge-drinking, drug abuse, sexual violence, family breakdown, celebrity
worship, and psychic pain. America’s soul hurts partially because we
lack moral anchors in our new, ultra-liberal and libertine Republic of
Nothing."
"Modern liberalism remains too entwined with media-fueled, and
now Internet-operated, nihilism."
"Millions of us, and some of our leading
thinkers, may have started rediscovering the value of tradition, but
have yet to embrace the traditional values that anchored and guided our
parents and grandparents—or a valuable new tradition."
Actually, droves of people have found a new tradition, and it's religion.
I think a lot of people drift from nihilism to certain extreme forms of religion (one could call it another form of nihilism) precisely because the human spirit requires an anchor, just as the human body requires oxygen.
