For the briefest while this past spring, America enjoyed the kind of national group hug that other countries, usually Scandinavian, seem to excel at in times of high crisis. Aghast at Columbine, the nation huddled, held town hall meetings and wrote letters to the editor, lamented a culture of violence, and resolved to take action. Last Friday, the hug officially ended when a cranky House of Representatives killed its attempt at gun control legislation. The bill had been promoted as a major opportunity to curb violence, but in the end became the victim of vicious, partisan infighting. Luckily, other politicians have stepped in to save America's soul.
Morality is hot.
The questions are lofty, the answers tricky. Something's Gone Wrong' The news is not good, according to Michael Novak, a theologian and someone who thinks about these matters much harder than most people. Novak won the Templeton Prize in religion in 1994 and is the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. There's practically a universal sense that something has gone wrong, but when we go to name it, we disagree. From the Civil War to civil rights, suffrage to the feminist movement, our social institutions have made great moral progress.