In Touchstone this month: America’s drug problem, Objectivism, and more!

by OriginalSoapbox

The July/August 2011 issue of Touchstone came in the mail yesterday. Most of it is not available to read online (because you should subscribe!) but you can read a few features at this link.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the print edition to whet your interest. Patrick Henry Reardon offers non-partisan musings on the “immigration problem” and ends with the following as a sort of coda:

“. . . if the conflict in Mexico is truly a war, it is a war in which the United States has assumed the burden of financing both sides: Every dollar that goes from our national treasury to support the anti-gang efforts of the Mexican government is matched by another dollar from some United States citizen who purchases illegal drugs. That is to say, our northern drug problem has spilled over, violently, into Mexico. To put the fact as brutally as the circumstances warrant, the poorest people in Mexico are paying, with their lives, for the vices and self-indulgence of their northern neighbors.”

“It should be obvious that there is no political solution to this disaster. It is a clear case where politics and economics lie very much downstream of culture. The abuse of narcotics in this country is, first of all, a spiritual and moral symptom, not a law enforcement problem.”

Meanwhile, S.M. Hutchens suggests one reason why Christian-raised young people seem to like Ayn Rand: it allows them to have their moral cake and eat it too:

I have had some opportunity to observe Randian objectivism among young people raised in conservative Christian homes, and cannot escape the impression that for these it serves as a freestyle substitute for button-down conservatism (religious or political) which allows them to sit loose to the sexual mores of Christianity. They find it better than modern liberalism because it permits them to maintain a modicum of reason with regard to the nature and operations of the real world, but is less demanding than Christianity. It is a practical answer to the hardships imposed by their parents’ religion, chief among them constant confrontation with sin and guilt with scant present opportunity to enjoy the consolations of superior righteousness (that being rejected as Pharisaical). Objectivist philosophy provides them this righteousness at a cost they are able to pay.

This issue of Touchstone also includes Patrick Fagan writing on “The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family,” and, of course, much, much more!