Those who think demographic statistics should be of interest only to social scientists and policy wonks should pay close attention to Stanley Kurtz’s recent article, “Demographics and the Culture War,” published in the current edition of Policy Review. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, Kurtz is one of the most thoughtful observers of social trends on today’s scene.

America’s pop culture is now a worldwide phenomenon. The music, movies, television programming, and assorted entertainments enjoyed by Americans–especially young Americans–are quickly carried around the world in a global cultural exchange that is now leading to a cultural backlash.

Signals of distress continue to come from multiple sectors of the culture. Issues ranging from sexuality and politics to art and education register seismic shifts of cultural consequence. Turning its back on a rich moral inheritance and severing its few remaining ties with Christian morality, this culture seems absolutely determined to bring itself to the very brink of moral collapse.

Does a Christian school have the right to expel a student for immoral conduct? That may seem at first to be a ridiculous question, but the right of Christian institutions to enforce biblical standards of conduct is now under assault. The latest case comes from Dallas, Texas where Trinity Christian Academy forced an eighteen-year-old high school senior to withdraw after he acknowledged his homosexual identity and promotion of a homosexual web site on the internet.

Christmas is at the center of controversy once again as school boards, municipal governments, and shopping malls become arenas for battle in what has emerged as one of the most active fronts in the Culture War.

Right up to the present, the most tasteful and appropriate response to the Michael Jackson controversy has been to ignore it altogether. This freakish morality tale has seemed to be more fitting for the tabloids than for serious moral consideration. Nevertheless, millions of Americans and others around the world are captivated by this macabre mess even as the brute reality of criminal charges now formalizes the controversy.