Rating: 
Summary: Bennett popularizes the marriage movement
Review: "Each divorce is the death of a small civilization." William Bennett quotes the words of novelist Pat Conroy as he eloquently explains why marriage and family are critical to the healthy community in his recent book, The Broken Hearth. Bennett has always been timely in his writing. During the impeachment, Bennett quickly produced The Death of Outrage". After the invasion of Afghanistan, Bennett published Why We Fight to make the moral case for the war against terrorism. The Broken Hearth was the exception that proves the rule. Hearth was poised to serve as a forceful summation for the marriage movement which would bring the message to the large audience his books typically reach. Like so many other good things, however, Hearth was somewhat lost in the wake of September 11. Now that Congress is considering the re-authorization of welfare reform that emphasizes the importance of marriage lifestyles over serial cohabitation, it's a good time to revisit Bennett's superb work. In six quick chapters, Bennett brings the reader up to date on the need for marriage-based families better than virtually any who have tried. He surveys the current situation, the meaning of family in history, and suggests productive ways to repair a culture that does too little to keep families together. Perhaps more importantly, Bennett analyzes homosexual unions with the sensitivity and erudition the topic deserves. He makes his points firmly, but without rancor. Get the book and read it with pencil or highlighter. It's the kind of volume that rewards careful reading.
Rating:
Summary: Bennett popularizes the marriage movement
Review: "Each divorce is the death of a small civilization." William Bennett quotes the words of novelist Pat Conroy as he eloquently explains why marriage and family are critical to the healthy community in his recent book, The Broken Hearth. Bennett has always been timely in his writing. During the impeachment, Bennett quickly produced The Death of Outrage". After the invasion of Afghanistan, Bennett published Why We Fight to make the moral case for the war against terrorism. The Broken Hearth was the exception that proves the rule. Hearth was poised to serve as a forceful summation for the marriage movement which would bring the message to the large audience his books typically reach. Like so many other good things, however, Hearth was somewhat lost in the wake of September 11. Now that Congress is considering the re-authorization of welfare reform that emphasizes the importance of marriage lifestyles over serial cohabitation, it's a good time to revisit Bennett's superb work. In six quick chapters, Bennett brings the reader up to date on the need for marriage-based families better than virtually any who have tried. He surveys the current situation, the meaning of family in history, and suggests productive ways to repair a culture that does too little to keep families together. Perhaps more importantly, Bennett analyzes homosexual unions with the sensitivity and erudition the topic deserves. He makes his points firmly, but without rancor. Get the book and read it with pencil or highlighter. It's the kind of volume that rewards careful reading.
Rating: 
Summary: CERTAINLY GIVES US SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT HERE
Review: Before reading this work, you do have of understand that the author is coming at the problem(s), and yes, we all have to agree that there are many of those, from a conservatives point of view. This is no a bad thing, just something that must be considered while reading the book. I had few problems with the litany of problems Mr. Bennett listed. They do indeed exsist. As to the cause, I can agree with some of his assertions, others I cannot. As to fixing the problems...there again, some of his arguments are quite strong...others seem to come from the lips of other reactionary right wingers, e.g. J. Falwell, Pat Robertson and their ilk. That is what worries me. Those folks scare the hell out of me - no pun intended. Iran is run by men such as these, just different clothing. I have problems blaming the 9/11 horror and all the other problems in the world on the poor gays. Good grief folks, just leave them alone. That just is not logical. But on the other hand, some of his work does hold more than a grain of truth in other areas and this work, along with others, certainly should be given some consideration. Mr Bennett has obviously given this subject much thought. I do recommend you read this one. It is one of those you will have to make your own mind up after reading it. All the reviews in the world won't help there.
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Summary: The de-evolution of thought
Review: Bennett book is underpinned by fear and loathing. He blames parties not responsible for the so-called collapse of the family and of morality. Self-righteous myopic heterosexuals like himself need to take stock of their own role in what ever de-evolution they perceive. Stop scapegoating minorities!
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Summary: Marriage and the Family was done in by Psychology
Review: Bennett has correctly described the present dilemma of marriage and family in America. Maybe Bennett can raise it up again like Lazarus because Marriage has died and psychology has killed it. In a psychologized society, it isn't just that we are no longer required to bear suffering. It becomes an act of self-betrayal not to leave our unhappy marriage and seek our "soul mate" or our "true selves." The traditional family has degenerated from a social institution to a psychological relationship; from a married man and woman with their own biological children to any kind of loosely-gendered partners, haphazardly-acquired progeny or drive-in occupants of any single abode.
The remnants of Freud's seduction theory can be seen in the psychologized fusion between sex and love in the last 50 years, a fusion that did not exist before in Western civilization, except as poet's flights of fancy which only the most naive would care to emulate in their real life.
The combination of Freud's theories that has sex funding most human behaviors, and our psychologized cultural paradigm shift from goals and principles to roles and feelings has turned our emotional and love relationships into a competitive manic-depressive playing field. The reason we have such difficulty is that sex has been thrust forward as a role rather than remaining in the background of our lives as a biological goal. Our natural sex drive has been twisted into an unnatural self-image that we term "sexuality," or "sexual orientation." We have subverted the physiological sex drive to be the handmaiden of psychological self-esteem.
In today's culture we are not a human being with a biological sex drive so much as a sexy person based upon our looks, our age, our clothes, our personality, our self-esteem, or how much money and power we have. In a society where most people would choose to be sexy and high rather than loveable and stable, sex and power naturally begin to seem more important than love and community. We have questions that no one seems to be able to answer. How do I know when it's "real love?" What about romance, stars in my eyes and soul mates?
The desire for a soul mate is a misapprehension. We must each relate to the cosmos alone, not through another person. Any soul mate we may find will devolve into a person with flaws, and unless we understand this our search will last forever. The mystics have always told us that love is the basic material we are all made of, what the universe is made of, and when we chip away all that is not us, we are all revealed as being love-not being in love, being love itself. When we become revealed as love we no longer have stars in our eyes, we are the very stars themselves.
The idea of marriage and family as moral principles sustaining a civil society has systematically devolved to the idea of marriage and family as psychologically sanctioned methods of securing happiness, legal rights and government benefits for individuals. Yes, Bennett is right. The institution of marriage has been so eroded in the last few decades that it is barely hanging on as a sane, noble, common-ground, higher-mind harbor into which we may profitably steer our primal-mind sexual instincts. Hollywood and romance novelists notwithstanding, our culture needs to renew the idea of marriage as an institution rather than some kind of a psychological goody box that we dip into until we come up empty and then we just walk away. A. B. Curtiss author of Depression is a Choice: Fighting the Battle Without Drugs.
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Summary: The family is the foundation of any society.
Review: Bennett has written an excellent book showing how the strength of a nation depends on the family and the decay that sets in when the value of family is not supported.If one considers any society which has fallen apart;look to the families there and you will see the problems first occurred in the home.The leftist, socialist agenda that "It takes a Village to raise a child"is diabolically wrong;it takes a Family to raise a child properly.The time for a village to raise a child is only after the family has been destroyed;a poor subsitute,but an agenda.If you don't believe in the importance of the family ,give this book a read,it will expose the Socialist rhetoric for what it is.
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Summary: Silly Anti-American Rants
Review: Both our Founding Fathers AND the authors of the Consitution of the United States made it PERFECTLY CLEAR that there should be freedom of individual religious belief OR NOT. That is what they were running from: forced adherance to a state run religion. A majority of Americans choose to believe in the many gods available to them, and that same majority believes that if you choose NOT to believe in a god, that's OK, too. This same majority despises the MINORITY of "so-called Christians," of which Willam J. Bennett claims to be, who want to force feed their brand of morality down the throats of American Citizens. That in itself is not only unconstitutional, but ANTI-AMERICAN--and ultimately ANTI-FAMILY. People like him can speak their wishes all they want, but when action comes to bear, THEY MUST BE STOPPED. As a Christian who believes in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and his Father, and a True Conservative, I believe, as Jesus does, that the way one lives their lives is the best witness available, and that others may choose the same, or they may not. The consequences are grim, but their choice is NONE OF MY BUSINESS. Bennett shall burn in hell.
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Summary: A conservative outlines what's wrong with America
Review: Conservative stalwart and political lightning rod William Bennett believes America is rotting from within and the deterioration of family values is to blame. With a mountain of evidence to back him up (single-parent children are more likely to drop out of school, use drugs and suffer physical abuse at home), Bennett shows how co-habitation, divorce and fatherlessness are doing more than just harming the traditional view of "family"; they are working to undermine our country's productivity, safety and way of life.
Clearly, the reaction to this book will rely heavily on the reader's own values. Those who believe in the model of the nuclear family will agree with most of Bennett's points, as his logic and evidence are solid. But acceptance of Bennett's arguments will require a reader to believe the nuclear family and civilization go hand-in-hand, and many in our country do not share that opinion. To some, the nuclear family works as an institution of oppression against women, children and individuality, and to those people, Bennett's entire premise will appear faulty.
Bennett's strongest arguments come in his evidence of how fatherlessness harms children tremendously and how the current politically correct culture works to suppress that fact. To back up his claim, Bennett uses the opinions of two men who would be on the 20th Century Liberal Mt. Rushmore, Martin Luther King and Daniel Patrick Monahan. Through their words, Bennett is able to create a strong argument that this issue is not just one for conservatives. Dr. King himself said one of the greatest ills in the black community was the increasing presence of single-parent homes. Bennett says today's numbers would shock King, as fatherlessness has increased three-fold throughout much of the country. If Dr. King were concerned about that issue in the 1960s, what would he think of it today?
While his evidence on divorce, co-habitation, and fatherlessness seem to work well in his argument, Bennett becomes sidetracked on the issue of homosexuality and seems to have an almost obsessive fixation on the subject. He never makes a clear case as to why this issue as important as the others (he tires, but it is a reach), and would have been wise to stay avoid the subject.
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Summary: Gambling and obesity ruin families, too, Bill.
Review: Dr. William J. Bennett, who has made tens of millions of dollars telling the American people how shamefully degenerate and immoral they are, is back with more of his penetrating social commentary. I am a HUGE fan of Dr. Bennett's--who could not admire an obese, greedy, compulsive gambler who cynically makes (and spends) his fortune by lecturing others on their lack of consistency and restraint? Therefore, I was extremely excited to find "The Broken Hearth," which I have placed in a prominent position on my mantle next to my picture of President Bush and my Bible. I was troubled, though, by two things Dr. Bennett fails to mention in this seemingly endless inventory of anti-family elements in our society. Where are the examinations of obesity, a trend which wreaks havoc by robbing wives of their husbands and children of their fathers? What if obesity were to rob America of its most prominent right-wing moral arbiter? How could Dr. Bennett, who looks witheringly at homosexuality, alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce, single parenting, and virtually everything else one can think of to fill a book and fulfill a seven-figure contract (right, Bill?), fail to mention the destruction wrought by obesity? My burning question was answered by the picture of Dr. Bennett on the back of "The Broken Hearth." If Dr. Bennett's hearth is broken, it's probably because he sat on it. Dr. Bennett is apparently so busy worrying about the death of the American family that he has turned to comfort food--lots and lots and lots of comfort food--to calm his troubled psyche. Thanks for caring, Bill. And what about gambling? As a conservative Christian who takes an extremely literal--I guess you could say a "strict constructionist"--approach to the Bible, I know that gambling is a sin. A venal, evil, horrible sin. So why did Dr. Bennett not examine the horrors of compulsive gambling in "The Broken Hearth"? Did it slip his mind? Then I remembered. Bill Bennett is a compulsive gambler who has spent hundreds of nights (and over $8,000,000) playing $500-a-pull slot machines in many of our nation's most sinful cities. He must have been so busy blowing his millions in Las Vegas casinos that he didn't have time to refer to gambling in "The Broken Hearth." Hey--you try playing slots until 5 a.m. and then having to write a book. You'd forget things, too. Again, I'd like to thank Dr. Bennett for writing this book. And I must say that his tactic of criticizing everything but his own eating and gambling habits was a stroke of brilliance. That way no one can call him a hypocrite! This is the kind of creative thinking that makes us so much smarter than Democrats.
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Summary: Some important truths about us
Review: I am sure Mr. Bennett is used to ad hominem attacks, as in Mr. Zimmerle's review of this book. While I don't agree with everything Mr. Bennett has to say, he's pretty much on the mark here. Mr. Bennett starts with a review of the current state of our culture, which could be summed up as "do your own thing". He then provides a brief historical background on the way marriage and family evolved. Some of his better points come in a chapter entitled "Cohabitation, Illigitimacy, Fatherlessness". The biggest problem facing the black community in this country is not racism; it fatherlessness. Eighty percent of black children are born out of wedlock. This is profound. As for cohabitation, if you read between the lines the message is pretty clear: women have been duped. There is much less respect for women now than 30 years ago. Further, despite its "common-sense" appeal, cohabitation is much more unfavorable to women than marriage. Bennett addresses the push by homosexuals to be able to "marry". The one point I am in total agreement with him here is that homosexuals want more than "equal rights"; they want societal "approval" of their lifestyle. If history is any teacher at all, we know this is something we dare not allow. Up until 1950 or so, the strength of this country came from our social fabric; those that deviated from established norms received public censure. This is no longer the case. In this respect, America is most certainly in deline. Can it recover in time, or at all? Mr. Bennett's proposed solutions will not be very successful unless we can "unprogram" an entire generation. Through movies and television, young people have been programmed to think of their own gratification first and foremost. Until that is changed, any significant progress towards restoring the importance of marriage and commitment will be greatly impeded.
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