In every institution, she traces the irrationality and social upheaval to its root-the false ideas of liberation and liberal compassion energetically imposed by elites and government agencies. The social wreckage Mac Donald describes raises new questions for neoconservatives and for all moral and political realists. The overriding theme of Mac Donald s book is that the ideology and social policies that treated people as victims of social conditions, rather than individuals responsible for their own behavior, destroyed the lives of the urban poor. To say that it is impossible for such a child to transcend his conditions is false, since such examples of moral heroism and perseverance certainly exist. But to expect such heroism is itself somewhat unrealistic.
Children born into madness are likely to continue that madness.
But inevitably this means holding individuals accountable for actions that, in a certain sense, are not fully their fault. It means accepting that life is unfair, and acting accordingly. Mac Donald, a brilliant observer of the culture, does not attempt to address such theoretical concerns as the nature of justice or the legitimacy of law and morality. Conservatives accept that the world is unfair and always will be, and seek to uphold laws, traditions, and moral institutions as the most just alternative to social disorder. Clearly, for the last three decades, it is the progressives who have ruled, and it is their sins that have left us in the quandary we re now in.