A disturbing scene from Charles Murray in the beautiful Rockies.
Charles Murray has made a splash with his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, a book not as controversial as his previous blockbuster, 1994's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (produced with co-author Richard Herrnstein), but one interesting as a study of the social aspects of even rural life, such as in Salmon, Idaho, where I live. Some of the social pathologies of which Murray writes are also present in this small town in the Rockies that in many ways recalls Norman Rockwell's America. Readers familiar with Murray's work know that Coming Apart concerns America's rising white underclass, thus avoiding the howls of racism from the left that greeted The Bell Curve. His first book, Losing Ground (1984), a study of the social ravages of welfare dependency, was also a political lightning rod.
The Lemhi River runs behind my apartment complex here, and on a recent Sunday afternoon I took a walk along the river. Coming back on a dirt road I saw from a distance a small child leaning over the railing of a second story terrace on one of the backside apartments. This is not good, I thought.
I crossed through the sagebrush and onto the back lawn and was soon standing beneath a little boy about a year old with towhead blond hair. The day was warm and he wore nothing but a diaper. He had a knobby, protruding belly button. He smiled down at me and chattered away in baby talk. Something seemed to amuse him as he gripped the railing with one tiny hand and pointed at nearby trees with the other. He had climbed onto a chair against the railing and had thus attained his precarious perch ten or twelve feet above me. The beaming little face looked down at me and continued its babbling.
"Hey, is anybody up there?" I called out, thinking to rouse the apartment's occupants.
Nothing. I considered going around to the front to knock on the door, but wasn't sure of the correct apartment number. On second thought I decided it wouldn't be smart to leave the kid, who was still chattering away and swaying on the railing as if buffeted by a breeze. I thought that if he fell I would try to catch him in my arms.
"Is anybody up there?" Again, nothing.
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