The Disappearance of Virtue From American Politics

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Yeah, the problem is very real but it goes beyond "muh kids these days". From what little I know, my impression most of what went wrong in Western societies took place at some point in the late 1970s and 1980s, when suddenly it was all about getting rich and famous and any greater ideal was seen as silly or outmoded. Conservatives can point to the 1960s and counterculture, but you can't deny that the movements of the 1960s were about making the world a better place and not just about hedonism (although it's true that quite a few hippies later converted into yuppies). Regardless, what we're seeing now is a product of at least 40 years of moral erosion, not something you can blame millennials for.

I think you are oversimplifying the 1960's.  At least in the United States, crime rates (including murder, rape, burglary, robbery, etc.) skyrocketed over that time period, from historic lows in the 1950's.  We also saw similar explosions in out-of-wedlock birth rates and other forms of social deviancy where the key "spike period" was the '60s as opposed to the late '70s or '80s, and were often unrelated (at least directly) to social reform movements.  I could see the argument that the 1970s and 1980s locked in some of those negative trends from the '60s, but the root of where those trends started to take place seems pretty clear.

I tend to think the biggest reason for this is that the mid '60s was the coming of age of the Baby Boomer generation, which grew up in a period of immense prosperity and a philosophy of lax parenting, courtesy of Dr. Spock and others, in response to wanting kids to experience nothing like the immense hardship the GI Generation suffered through the Great Depression and WWII.  The importance of 'scar tissue,' as Sasse terms this formation of resilience, toward the building of character is of immense importance.  I think we'd have common ground in that social norms of responsibility for one another was a component of that character development.

"Scar tissue" ? Seems like an odd metaphor. Isn't scar tissue generally weaker than the original skin? 
Some of Sasse's recommendations for encouraging character seem like good and important ideas, but one can't assume facing tougher challenges automatically makes one more resilient or, especially, more virtuous. It depends very much on the relational and psychological resources children have available to them in meeting and interpreting these challenges.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I don't want to buy this book, but I wish that I could have have a closer look at its core argument, which simultaneously intrigues and repulses.

That said, for nowI'll gawk at its more pornographic highlights, without context, as they reveal themselves:

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is a simpler - and less controversial - way of making that same point.

Isn't that a Nietzsche quote though?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Here is an interesting critical article:
https://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/5095/i-was-told-there-would-be-more/

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