[Excerpt is cited from a review by Matt Forney]

No doubt there are many reasons why some women will accept the illogic of feminism. Anyone wishing to explore this area should examine a contemporary America in which the rage of young women protesting professional discrimination is complemented by a revulsion toward professional roles by the men who are “supposed” to fill them. For an understanding of the forces that lead to the feelings of meaninglessness that so many men and women now seem to attach to their traditional roles perhaps one should begin not with the content of roles that were formerly capable of providing meaning, but with the failure of contemporary American society to inculcate in the society’s members the feeling that the society’s value system, its way of defining reality, is correct and meaningful. It is this ability, rather than the specific characteristics of the value system or the value system’s “humaneness,” that is the precondition for the society’s survival and that is relevant to the members’ current feelings of meaninglessness and the feelings of aloneness that are inevitable if the members have no meaning to share. When a society loses its ability to inculcate values its members fall into the abyss—