Edit: I should say I enjoyed the video. It's much more nuanced than the post that accompanies it. I thought historians abandoned "moral decline" arguments with

Edit: I should say I enjoyed the video. It's much more nuanced than the post that accompanies it. I thought historians abandoned "moral decline" arguments with the 19th century. What I find funny about them is they're always characterized as a decline in morals particularly important to the observing historian. And of course, no empirical measure of moral decline is ever given or even suggested. So what arguments like this really amount to are a feeling. A feeling felt by curmudgeonly historians throughout time. Nostalgia. And most likely, nostaligia for a time they themselves never inhabited. All the better because there are no negative memories to sour the nostalgia. America in my opinion is not in moral decline. We are reaching for a moral high point actually (but just barely). But that's just my feeling, so it's about as valuable as the ideas on offer here.