ONE OF THE HIDDEN PROBLEMS OF THE eND OF hISTORY...:

One way to measure social change is to look at the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, a statistical overview of social indicators like crime, the family, youth behavior, popular culture and religion launched by the conservative commentator Bill Bennett in 1994.

After soaring for decades, many key indicators of social decay started to fall in the first years of the 21st century. Violent crime, abortion and divorce, for example, began trending downward. So did out-of-wedlock births

Credit for the latter should be given to educational efforts in the public sector and to private groups like the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies. Carol Hogue, a maternal and child-health specialist at Emory University, says women are engaging in "better use of contraceptives," adding: "If all couples used a combination of condoms with an IUD or combined oral contraceptive, there would be fewer maternal deaths, 80 percent fewer unintended pregnancies and about 150,000 fewer abortions."

Today, rates of crime and divorce have fallen to levels unseen since the 1970s. By 2014, the abortion rate had dropped to the lowest level since the Supreme Court made abortion a constitutional right in 1973.

There's still too much crime, too much illicit drug use, too many fractured families, and still too much bigotry. Blacks and whites see racial progress in depressingly different terms. A rising death rate among middle-aged white Americans, reflecting increases in alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide amid the decline of middle-class jobs, is also cause for profound concern.

But the country's social fabric is nevertheless healthier than it was a decade or two ago. So are its social attitudes. The hatemongers of Charlottesville are a despicable fringe.

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