It might seem pathetic to watch these “edgy” artists flaunt their defiance against thoroughly vanquished traditions, but maybe it’s an encouraging sign. Their marketing gurus apparently think there’s still a bit of milk in the old sacred cows. The kids of 2013 can still savor a look of scandalized horror on Mom and Dad’s faces. Someone apparently thinks “family values” haven’t quite been beaten to death.

Which is good, because “family values” remain our only hope for pulling out of the social and economic nose dive we find ourselves in. The upper class retains the “secrets” of decorum, respect, and fidelity that everyone else has been tricked into forgetting. Back when the Left set about turning the phrase “family values” into a post-modern joke, laughs were had at the expense of uptight squares who didn’t understand the difference between safeguarding important principles and having a bit of fun. Well, the joke is on everyone else.

We never should have forgotten the potent connection between thought and expression, the importance of habit and ritual. It is difficult to treasure what a saturation media culture treats like trash. And it doesn’t help that the law of diminishing returns obliges the people who dug our cultural pit to dig more frantically as the hole grows deeper, madly searching for whatever flickers of shock value might still be left to uncover.