Newspaper Article

America's moral crisis is a threat to our freedoms

Voll, William H

2009

Overview

Susan Reimer, a columnist for The Baltimore Sun, wrote this fall, in a column published in The Tribune (\"Pill invention leads to loss of faith\"), that higher rates of cancer among American women probably are traceable to the pill. She also notes that a devout Harvard University professor, co-inventor of the pill, after lengthy efforts to \"reconcile the requirements of his faith and the results of his science,\" gave up his faith. The situation is spelled out in \"Habits of the Heart,\" published in 1985 as the result of a research study sponsored by the University of California. The authors analyze French nobleman Alexis De Tocqueville's \"Democracy in America\" (published 1837), which they term \"the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written.\" They follow Tocqueville's two-year search for the reasons democracy flourished in America after the American Revolution, but did not take root in France after its revolution. Through Tocqueville's eyes, they see a fledging American democracy much more transparent than ours at present. Here is how \"Habits of the Heart\" summarizes his conclusion:

• Publisher: South Bend Tribune Corporation