America In Moral Decline

Picture a gorgeous landscape of lush green, exotic flowers, and the bluest ocean you have ever seen. The sun gently warms you while you attempt to absorb the explosion of colors around you. Your'e patiently waiting on a Hawiian beach to meet with the love of your life, except your'e not alone. There are fifteen other women also patiently waiting to meet "the love of their life". This is the opening scene for My Antonio, one of the many reality t.v. shows that grace our television sets today. One might claim that this is an example of how the american morale has declined. Trying to find love on national television by having multiple prospects at one time. David Whitman writer of "America Is Not In Moral Decline" contests that the American morale is not one of a declining matter. He continues to go through a list of hand picked facts in the attempt to give his claim value and relevance. Let's take a moment to picture and compare America today with America 50 years ago.
While his source may have been correct the historical data from the Crime and Justice Atlas 2000 shows that the U.S. murder rate was down in the late 1970's after the Vietnam War, but peaked twice after that in the 80's and the early 90's. There is also evidence that different statistics like state prison population, releases from state prisions, capital punishment, general crime rate and the U.S. drug arrest rate all have had major leaps and increasing numbers from the early to mid 1900's to 1998 (Crime & Justice 2000). Now while his drug statistics in general are vague and cover only a few street drugs he fails to take into account the tremendous growth in the abuse of prescription drugs. Being that I have personally had a connection to someone who shouldn't have lost their life to drugs, here is a disturbing list of facts in relation to prescription