Daniel J. Flynn

Examples of radicals using higher education as a tool for cultural transformation are by now familiar to readers of Campus Report. Princeton University’s Center for Human Values hires Peter Singer, who argues that it is morally acceptable for parents to kill young children. "Beings who cannot see themselves as entities with a future cannot have any preferences about their own future existence," decrees the professor. Duke, Harvard, Stanford, and countless "elite" institutions offer more courses in the ideologically loaded field of women’s studies than in economics or computer science. Pedophilia, once considered taboo, is promoted as upstanding behavior by such respected academic publishing houses as New York University Press and Routledge. UC-Santa Cruz’s Gayle Rubin complains, "boy lovers are so stigmatized it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone erotic orientation."

While those waging war on Christian culture have had their greatest success in hijacking the academy, relativists have had major victories in taking over other institutions of influence as well. In The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture, Robert Knight argues that the final years of "the twentieth century might be best thought of as a massive, brutal hangover from the God-is-dead party." Its cause, he opines, is largely due to a revolution in popular culture. Producers of television, music, the arts, and countless other media now view their mission as not entertainment or enlightenment, but as catalysts for social change.

"In 1997," Knight points out, "more than thirty openly homosexual characters inhabited prime time, and Ellen Degeneres became the first lead character of a network show to ‘come out’ as a homosexual."

The Age of Consent quotes pop culture critic Ella Taylor complaining that there exists "all kinds of families, but there is no such thing as the family, the nuclear family." Taylor opines, "I am quite worried about the impact of such shows like ‘The Cosby Show,’ ‘Growing Pains,’ and to some degree, ‘Family Ties,’ which give us these extraordinary families that approximate nobody’s life."

It is not enough for television writers to inject into scripts a disproportionate number of characters leading alternative lifestyles. Traditional families must be altogether erased as well.

V.I. Lenin remarked, "Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important." From Moscow to Havana, utopian visions always seem to fail in practice. Yet on the big screen, the most unlikely can be easily transformed into reality in the minds of viewers. In real life, it is not typical to encounter heroic prostitutes (Pretty Woman) or villainous men of the cloth (Priest). But on screen where anything is possible, writers, directors, producers, and actors work together to present a portrait of society that does not, and could never, exist. Films of an earlier era are criticized for jingoism by presenting stories of wartime heroism—Sgt. York, Bridge Over the River Kwai, The Sands of Iwo Jima—that merely retold stories based on real life examples. So bent on vilifying the military is modern Hollywood that it turns out movies—The Rock, A Few Good Men, Crimson Tide—with no basis in reality that attempt to enforce a stereotype that military men are evil, and at times, psychotic.

Knight laments the explosion of violent and sexually explicit lyrics of many modern rock and rap performers, noting that such acts as Marilyn Manson and 2 Live Crew seem to reap increased success by out-profaning other acts. A similar phenomenon pervades the art world. Examples of critically-acclaimed modern "art" include Andres Serrano’s depiction of a crucifix submerged in urine, Sally Mann’s photos of children going to the bathroom, and HIV-positive performance artist Ron Athey’s practice of sending blood soaked towels on a clothesline over his audience. It’s as if artists are children outdoing each other by scribbling vulgar messages on the restroom wall. As Knight observes, "The artist, we are told, is not truly an artist unless he is standing outside his society and slamming it."

"The code word for the Age of Consent is tolerance," Knight observes. "Like a magic oath, it is intoned on television, in education, and even in corporate personnel training. Like any other good thing that has been twisted, tolerance was originally a virtue. Now to an increasing number of Americans, the word has come to symbolize heavy-handed liberalism, officially sanctioned sexual deviancies, group privileges, big government, and hostility toward Judaism and Christianity."

Those expressing disapproval over pornographic lyrics or obscene art are told they are not sufficiently "cultured" to make such judgements. Nonsense! The very word "culture," after all, derives from the cult—religion. The kind of society that denigrates religion and morality at every turn is not a culture at all. It’s an anti-culture.

As difficult it is for those living in the modern age to understand, the subject of most works of art historically has been religion. Even the classics of the supposedly secularized Renaissance—Raphael’s Pearl Madonna, the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo, Correggio’s Saints John and Augustine—are dominated by Christian inspired art. Faith serving as a stimulation for creativity is by no means uniquely Western. God inspiring artists is something that seems to be universal cross-culturally. The earliest known work of art that has been preserved in India is an assortment of Buddhist frescoes. Historian Will Durant points out, "Amida Buddha became as frequent in Japanese art as Annunciations and Crucifixions on the walls and canvases of the Renaissance." In the Middle East, Islam’s influence on art has been so dominant that prohibitions on representations of the human form have forced artists to create works relying on shape and design. Yet if an artist goes to the National Endowment for the Arts, hat in hand, and asks to have his religious artwork funded, he is laughed out the door.

"Instead of trying to impose their values on everyone else," Knight proposes, middle Americans now "see themselves as defending their beliefs and traditions from constant assault…. All viewpoints are welcome, they are told, except their own."

In The Age of Consent, Robert Knight dissects American popular culture and finds a rotten core. That such a depressing topic is transformed into such a marvelous book is a tribute to the author’s talents as a writer and researcher.

The Age of Consent demonstrates how our culture degenerated into such a sorry state. The next step is to find out how it can be rescued.