RR Reno doesn’t pull any punches here as he chronicles the widespead acceptance of vice in America.

In my lifetime, American society has been transformed by widespread accommodation of vice. Marijuana has been legalized in many jurisdictions, as has addictive online gambling. Not surprisingly, pot use and regular gambling have increased. In 2025, 17 percent of adults report smoking pot daily, up from 8 percent in 2020. Less than a decade ago, nobody had a sports betting app on his smartphone; today, half of American men between eighteen and forty-nine have opened accounts. And pornography is readily available on the internet, protected as free speech by the Supreme Court.

Social norms have likewise shifted. Open use of ­illegal drugs is widely tolerated. Silicon Valley titans use ketamine and other substances, making a mockery of the restriction of these drugs to medical use only. The New Yorker publishes essays cheering “throuples” and other sexual arrangements. Activists campaign to remove the stigma from “sex work,” which few local governments make efforts to prevent. 

He concludes,

We need to talk more frankly about what it means to have a good society, one that promotes human flourishing. And we should not shy away from the obvious truth that a good society discourages vice because it is vicious.