The Death of the Grown-Up How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization

by West, Diana

• ISBN13: 9780312340490
• ISBN10: 0312340494
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-16
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GROWN-UPS GONE? That is the provocative question Washington Times syndicated columnist Diana West asks as she looks at America today. Sadly, here's what she finds:It's difficult to tell the grown-ups from the children in a landscape littered with Baby Britneys, Moms Who Mosh, and Dads too young to call themselves mister. Surveying this sorry scene, West makes a much larger statement about our place in the world: No wonder we can't stop Islamic terrorism. We haven't put away our toys!As far as West is concerned, grown-ups are extinct. The disease that killed them emerged in the fifties, was incubated in the sixties, and became an epidemic in the seventies, leaving behind a nation of eternal adolescents who can't say "no," a politically correct population that doesn't know right from wrong. The result of such indecisiveness is, ultimately, the end of Western civilization as we know it. This is because the inability to take on the grown-up role of gatekeeper influences more than whether a sixteen-year-old should attend a Marilyn Manson concert.It also fosters the dithering cultural relativism that arose from the culture wars in the eighties and which now undermines our efforts in the real culture war of the 21st century'”the war on terror. With insightful wit, Diana West takes readers on an odyssey through culture and politics, from the rise of rock 'n' roll to the rise of multiculturalism, from the loss of identity to the discovery of diversity, from the emasculation of the heroic ideal to the PC-ing of Mary Poppins, all the while building a compelling case against the childishness that is subverting the struggle against jihadist Islam in a mixed-up, post-9/11 world. With a new foreword for the paperback edition,"The Death of the Grown-up," is a bracing read from one of the most original voices on the American cultural scene.

Author Biography

DIANA WEST is a syndicated columnist whose essays have appeared in The New Criterion, The Public Interest , the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Magazine, The Washington Times and The Weekly Standard. She has also written fiction for The Atlantic Monthly.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Preface to the 2008 Edition	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Rise of the Teen Age	p. 1
The Twist	p. 19
Clash	p. 48
Parents Who Need Parents	p. 69
Sophisticated Babies	p. 89
Boundaries	p. 105
Identity	p. 126
The Real Culture War	p. 148
Men, Women ... or Children? Or: The Fate of the Western World	p. 187
Epilogue	p. 215
Endnotes	p. 219
Index	p. 239
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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