Yin and Yang, Sleaze and Moralizing

A study released in October reported that Americans have less sex than everyone thought they did. In 1994 they were probably too busy moralizing.

More exactly, they may have been too caught up in the uniquely double- jointed exercise of 1) worrying about the deterioration of American morals, and 2) savoring every lurid manifestation of the decadence. Americans, in other words, found themselves torn between enjoying filthy pleasures guaranteed by the First Amendment and wistfully admiring the Singapore caning. By such almost unconscious dialectics, the people worked at sifting out the rules for a society paganized by sheer information and searching...

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