The Death of the Grown-Up is a book by Diana West that argues that American culture has become overly focused on youth, leading to a decline in maturity and responsibility among adults. West suggests that this cultural shift has serious implications for society and its ability to confront global challenges.
The Death of the Grown-Up, Diana West, 2008.
From Amazon,
A provocative look at the rise of youth culture, the worship of perpetual adolescence, and the sorry spectacle of adults shirking the responsibilities of maturity. Firebrand conservative columnist Diana West looks at the mess America is in and wonders "Where did all the grown-ups go?"
Diana West sees a US filled with middle-age guys playing air guitar and thinks "No wonder we can't stop Islamic terrorism." She sees a landscape littered with Baby Britneys, Moms Who Mosh, and Dads too "young" to call themselves "mister" and wonders "Is there a single adult left anywhere?" But, the grown-ups are all gone. The disease that killed them was incubated in the sixties to a rock-and-roll score, took hold in the seventies with the help of multicultralism and left us with a nation of eternal adolescents who can't decide between "good" and "bad", a generation who can't say "no".
With insightful wit, Diana West takes readers on an odyssey through culture and politics, from the rise of rock ‘n' roll to the rise of multiculturalism, from the loss of identity to the discovery of "diversity," from the emasculation of the heroic ideal to the "PC"-ing of "Mary Poppins," all the while building a compelling case against the childishness that is subverting the struggle against jihadist Islam in a mixed-up, post-9/11 world.
From the inability to nix a sixteen year-old's request for Marilyn Manson concert tickets to offering adolescents parentally-funded motel rooms on prom night to rationalizing murderous acts of Islamic suicide bombers with platitudes of cultural equivalence, West sees us on a slippery slope that's led to a time when America has forgotten its place in the world. The result of such indecisiveness is, ultimately, the end of Western civilization as we know it.
Diana West serves up a provocative critique of our dangerously indecisive world leavened with humor and shot through with insight.
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