Over the last few years, we have more than once had occasion to cite Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s brilliant 1993 article from The American Scholar called “Defining Deviancy Down.” In that essay, Senator Moynihan outlined some of the manifold ways in which our society has attempted to deny deviancy by redefining it as normal or even, in some instances, as glamorous. In case after case, he showed, behavior that would have been considered unacceptable even a few years ago is excused or championed today as normal. The result has been a blunting of our sensibilties and an increasing impotence in the face of social breakdown. Inured to the outrageous, we often can barely recognize deviance as such, much less take effective action against it.

In “Defining Deviancy Down,” Senator Moynihan was concerned primarily with such glaring urban pathologies as illegitimacy, drug abuse, unemplo ...

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