On the other hand, Himmelfarb does make explicit something that too many conservatives often do not: The news is not all bad. If America is plagued by widespread moral disarray, it is also simultaneously undergoing an unmistakable moral and religious revival.
To be sure, the prevailing values in America at the turn of the twenty-first century are those of the old counter-culture. From the mainstreaming of "alternative lifestyles," to the vulgar and violent offerings on television, to the common fear of appearing "judgmental," the subversive attitudes of the 1960s have long since achieved respectability. But degeneration is only part of the picture.
Those who lost the culture war have not gone away. They have become the opposition—"the dissident culture," Himmelfarb calls them. And while they may be heavily outgunned by the elites—academics, journalists, entertainers—"who occupy the commanding heights of the dominant culture," they are nevertheless beginning to have an effect. The New York Times, she observes, regularly reports on the "explicit sex, language and behavior" being aired on television. College students are showing more interest in religion. As baby-boomers age, many polls suggest, they are turning against the sexual permissiveness of their youth. And while many conservatives have kept themselves busy charting the signs of declining social health—crime, welfare, drug abuse, illegitimacy, promiscuity and so on—Himmelfarb correctly points out that some of these statistics have recently improved. Violent crime is down, fewer people are on welfare, and the rates of out-of-wedlock births, divorce and abortion have stabilized or even declined.
What can be done to build on these improvements? How should the traditionalists and religious conservatives who make up the dissident culture go about remoralizing American society? Here, perhaps unavoidably, One Nation, Two Cultures is at its weakest. Himmelfarb is a historian of civic culture, not an activist or a crusader, and she offers no prescription for curing the social ills from which America suffers. Indeed, she seems not to expect a cure. There will be no mass return to traditional standards, she says, no far-reaching transformation of American society. The best she hopes for is that as the influence of the current revival spreads, "more and more people [will] leave the state of denial in which they have so long taken refuge." And even about this modest prophecy she is tentative: "Historians," she cautions, "have not been notably successful in predicting the future."
Fair enough. The historian's job is to understand what happened. It is for others to figure out-or attempt to influence-what is going to happen. One Nation, Two Cultures reflects Himmelfarb's considerable strengths as a scholar: It is balanced, coherent and resolutely non-alarmist. It is a highly useful survey of where the culture wars have brought us. Himmelfarb has done an admirable job of charting how far we have sunk. It will be for other writers, inspired perhaps by her critique, to find a way to unsink us.