In the 1970s, there were very few Jewish thinkers on the political right, and no more than a tiny handful of them were women. One was Midge Decter, who had already established her bona fides among the New York intellectuals as a journalist and editor when she, along with her husband, Norman Podhoretz, helped found the persuasion that became known as neoconservative. A year after her death, Matthew Continetti reflects on Decter’s legacy:
Decter had a keen understanding of and an appreciation for social roles. She grasped that individuals are meant to play certain parts in the drama of society. Men and women, parents and children, singles and marrieds, and congregants and citizens have different functions in sustaining the institutions of civilization and in transmitting learning, rituals, and manners from one generation to the next.
Each of these roles carries special responsibilities. Children honor and obey their parents. Husbands and wives are faithful. Parents are committed to their children. Citizens respect the law. When we forget or abandon our duties, there is chaos. “Assuming responsibility for one’s life, for one’s everyday choices as well as for one’s moral conduct, is a practice that has been eroding in American life for a long, long time,” Decter wrote in [Commentary] in 1992.
Nowhere has the flight from responsibility been more destructive than in the turn against the traditional family. Decter neither romanticized nor idealized this foundational institution: “The rock of family can sometimes have a pretty scratchy surface,” she said in 1998.
Decter would have been the first to admit that living up to what the world demands of us is not easy. But the rewards of fulfilling our responsibilities are sublime.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/articles/matthew-continetti/midger-decter-reflections/