A sign of progress...or of decline?

Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times that many Democrats assume their newly emerged majority is a sign of progress rather than decline. Douthat begs to differ.

"Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear."

"Consider the Hispanic vote. Are Democrats winning Hispanics because they put forward a more welcoming face than Republicans do — one more in keeping with America’s tradition of assimilating migrants yearning to breathe free? Yes, up to a point. But they’re also winning recent immigrants because those immigrants often aren’t assimilating successfully — or worse, are assimilating downward, thanks to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates and high dropout rates. The Democratic edge among Hispanics depends heavily on these darker trends: the weaker that families and communities are, the more necessary government support inevitably seems."

"Douthat also writes about the growing number of unmarried mothers, the secular voters, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of their disconnection from community in general, and the fact that both parties are failing to understand the ecomonic difficulties we Americans are facing."

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/douthat-The-Liberal-Gloat.html?hp&_r=2&