Events Detail

In her new book, "The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization," Diana West argues that the unprecedented transfer of cultural authority from adults to adolescents that got underway in the 1950s (not, as commonly thought, the 1960s) has dire implications for the survival of the Western world. In other words, our culture of perpetual adolescence isn't just about sophomoric music or babyish movies (although it's about that as well). Having redirected our natural development away from adulthood and maturity in order to strike the pop-influenced pose of eternally cool youth--ever-open, all-inclusive, non-judgmental, self-absorbed, searching for (or just plain lacking) identity--we have fostered a society marked by these same adolescent traits. This might not matter much in a world at peace, but it becomes potentially fatal to a society struggling against an intolerant, doctrinaire and expansionist foe--jihadist Islam.

Diana West's syndicated column, which appears in numerous papers including The Washington Times every Friday, often examines the war and Islam through a cultural lens. She is a regular contributor to CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and "Lou Dobbs This Week," and her journalism has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion, The Public Interest and elsewhere. George F. Will has called her new book "penetrating and witty," and Steven Emerson says it's "a must-read for anyone who wants to understand...what we need to do to win the war on terror." She has a new blog at dianawest.net.