A handshake and one's word were more binding than any legal document. Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and the nation's response is yet another example of Murray's proletarianization of America. We make excuses and apologies for failures, and make mascots out of social misfits such as bums. Murray is not entirely pessimistic. He says there are signs that the upper half of American society is beginning to reknit itself, even as it continues to disintegrate in the lower half.
Religion seems to be taken more seriously.
Abstinence is becoming more respectable. Murray speculates that these contrasting trends might foreshadow a bimodal America with elites doing well and the underclass growing. Contents protected by copyright. Unauthorized redistribution prohibited.