The lesson of the last decade or so seems to be that virtue and social order aren't, in fact, as closely linked as many conservatives believed — that you can have a reasonably stable, reasonably safe, extremely prosperous society even with a high illegitimacy rate, permissive divorce laws, a coarse popular culture, a million-plus abortions a year, universally-available pornography, and all the other cultural trends that traditionalist conservatives deplore.

I think Ross is correct about this perception, but it is mistaken. We shouldn’t think that the social disorder such trends cause is any less certain or potent because it proceeds so slowly that we are unable to see it (or feel we can ignore it without looking foolish). The last decade? As I suggested earlier, we’re still experiencing the consequences of late medieval ideas. I can’t recall if Rod says this specifically, but surely one of the main problems of the MSR is that it has become short-sighted.