The Way We Love Now #
Ross Douthat’s been on the editorial page of the New York Times for a few months, and while none of his columns have been out-of-the-park exceptional, most are rather good. Yesterday’s example:
When it comes to divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, Americans with graduate degrees are still living in the 1950s. It’s the rest of the country that marries impulsively, divorces frequently, and bears a rising percentage of its children outside marriage. Indeed, if you’re looking for modern-day Percy Shelleys or Mary Wollstonecrafts (to pluck a pair of Nehring’s romantic risk-takers), you’re more likely to find them in Middle America than among the environmental lawyers and documentary filmmakers who populate Tsing Loh’s depressing social world.
He’s exactly what I thought he could be — a Brooksian conservative who’s not afraid to venture deep into the personal, religious, and moral weeds that Brooks himself mostly avoids.