An airport brawl seems like a microcosm of America

 Andrea Widburg  "A few videos are making the rounds showing a wild brawl taking place at one of the gates in Miami International Airport.  We don't know what started the brawl, although the media are reporting that the police did eventually arrest one person for disorderly conduct.  The primary victim, however, does not want to press charges, so the matter will almost certainly disappear.

"What makes one of the videos so compelling is the fact that it seemingly represents the breakdown of law and order across American cities." . . .

. . . "This is what America seems to have become in 2021: a place unconstrained by any societal norms, in which even once peaceful venues become the setting for wildly antisocial behavior.  Moreover, there are almost no men with chests to step in and make things right.

"If you're not familiar with the phrase "men without chests," it's from C.S. Lewis's 1943 book, The Abolition of Man.  In it, Lewis writes,

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

"It's a densely written book, which makes it hard to read because it begins by attacking what we've come to know as moral relativism or postmodernism — that is, denying objective facts
and values and replacing everything with subjective feelings.  In that context, his men without chests weren't weaklings.  They were, instead, men who no longer stood for anything because moral relativism left them without values they could hang on to as guides through life.  Notions such as bravery, honor, decency, loyalty, and chivalry are meaningless if everything is supplanted by feelings.

"And so, at the airport, brutal men fought because they've been raised in a world without objective values of decency and morality. " . . .

Pictured, right: Amazon "In the classic The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis, the most important Christian writer of the 20th century, sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. Both astonishing and prophetic, The Abolition of Man is one of the most debated of Lewis's extraordinary works. National Review chose it as number seven on their 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century."