Acton Line

In this episode, Eric Kohn sits down with Yuval Levin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor-in-chief of National Affairs, to discuss his new article featured in The Dispatch, "The Changing Face of Social Breakdown."   Levin notices a strange cultural trend. Although things may look great from a mere statistical perspective, something more ominous is going on in the background.    Levin writes:  “This mix of seemingly good and bad news is no paradox. The good news is often just one consequence of the bad. There are fewer divorces because there are fewer marriages. … There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies. …  There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. … Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”