The sexual revolution may have not turned out too terrible for those who came from upper-income families of privilege and means. It may not have turned out terribly for those with access to higher education and connections. But the sexual revolution has helped ruin poor and middle class families.

The rise of single households in minority communities, the rise of teen pregnancy, the incentive for young men to go from one conquest to the next and the relaxing of attitudes and societal judgment have degraded the stability of the nuclear family. Combine that with the federal government’s war on poverty and there is decay, collapse, crime and social breakdown in too many poor neighborhoods and a harder path for the poor to climb to the middle class.

Now add the legalization of drugs to the mix. Gone may be the crime and gangs funded on the drug trade. Maybe. That is not a given. But young men and women in loosened social mores now with more readily available drugs might not turn out so well beneath the upper incomes. Upstairs and downstairs in the American manor house may behave largely the same, but the upstairs lords and ladies will have a harder time ignoring the blight their pursuit of hedonism has caused downstairs.