“One thing that we must come to recognize is that prosperity in the sense in which it has been defined by economists and politicians for generations now is a chimera. Working the coupon center screen at CVS is not meaningful labor. Unlimited access to cheap consumer goods manufactured by foreign wage-slaves is not leisure. Taking your children to a restaurant and handing them an iPad game is not parenting. Spending four hours a day waiting to see whether a star or a heart or an arrow has appeared next to a picture or a caption you have posted on a computer network is not community. Watching pornography is not human intimacy. Grinding away to achieve a certain test score is not education, nor is signing away half the price of a modest house in order to finance a four-year pajama party. Taking drugs is not a reprieve from the misery of what you do with the rest of your time but the consummation of it.”
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Matthew Walther, national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications.
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