OPINIONSnThe Ties That Bindnby Jean Bethke Elshtainn’The state has no tool dehcate enough to deracinate the rooted habits andntangled affections of the family.” — G.K. ChestertonnFamily Questions: Reflections onnthe American Social Crisisnby Allan C. CarlsonnNew Brunswick: Transaction Books;n335 pp., $34.95nAllan Carlson is a humane man, anneffective polemicist, a dedicatednfamilialist, and a scholar trained in macroeconomicntheory with its panoply ofntechniques and its characteristic lingo —nopportunity costs, utility curves, and thenlike. This makes for an interesting, atntimes convincing, at other points unconvincingnapproach to the many terriblenproblems that bedevil contemporarynAmerica as a society as well as individualnmen and women arid children. In thenpast several decades we have witnessed anrise, sometimes dramatic, sometimesnless so, in abortion, divorce, child abuse,ncrime, youth suicide, and female employmentnoutside the home; a declinenin the birthrate; and a rise in what usednto be called “illegitimacy” but is now tonbe characterized in ways that involve nonnormative judgment (e.g., “out of wedlocknbirths” or, if that is too heavy,n”independent motherhood”). Is therenany connection between these diversenphenomena? If so, what might it be?nAre each of these developments equallynto be deplored? If so, why?nCarison is angry about the way thesenproblems, often seen as crises, havenemerged; about how experts havenmoved in to “manage” them after having,non his reading of the situation,nhelped to create the trouble in the firstnplace; and about the hegemony of anJean Bethke Elshtain is CentennialnProfessor of Political Science atnVanderbilt University.n26/CHRONICLESncertain sort of cool, public-policy,nneostatist liberalism that sees ordinarynAmericans, so he claims, as so muchngrist for the managerial mill. His populistnire gives passion and movement tonhis text. I found especially interesting,nand lots of fun, his attack on those whonattack shopping malls as consumeristnnnsites that speak only to American greednor to a collective taste for banality.nUnfortunately, here as elsewhere,nCarlson’s understandable desire to defendnthe “choices” and “moral preferences”nof ordinary folks against the loftynand snide ministrations of various socialncritics blinds him to some real problemsnthat do not lend themselves to such anclear-cut case of good Ordinary Joe andnJane vs. their elitist tormentors.nI will stay with the case of thenshopping mall, love it or leave it, for anmoment just to illustrate the strengthsnand weaknesses of Carison’s overall approach.nFirst, he attacks the literati whon”despise the shopping mall,” and somenof the citations from some of the diatribesnare pretty amazing, especially thenwild correlations proffered by one WilliamnKowinski who, in a book arguingnthat America has been mugged bynmalls, notes knowingly that WilliamnCalley of My Lai infamy “left prison tonwork in a mall,” or that “The history ofnatomic terror parallels the growth ofnmalldom.” As Bob Dylan once said,n”Wowee, pretty scary.” Coing after thisnsort of silliness is like shooting fish in anbarrel, although, as a good polemicist,nCarlson is well within his discursivenrights to clobber these folks. But inncountering the most extreme version ofnhis opponents’ case, he mounts such anstrong pro-mall argument that I begannto feel derelict in my civic duty that Indon’t spend at least several hours a daynhaunting my local malls.nTo make the pro-mall case as anninstance of free-market populist democracynin action, Carlson paints an appallingnpicture of the big city—as a “prisonncampus” run by “an antidemocraticncabal of judges and bureaucrats” whonforce various amoral visions upon then