Huston Smith on tradition in America
When tradition is no longer adequate to hold society together, human life faces the gravest crisis it has encountered. It is a crisis the modern world should have no difficulty in understanding, for in recent years it has returned to haunt humanity in an acute form. The United States provides the clearest example. A genius for absorbing peoples of varying national and ethnic backgrounds has earned for her the reputation of being a melting pot; but in weakening the traditions that immigrant groups brought with them, the United States has not provided them with a compelling replacement. This leaves the nation perhaps the most traditionless society history has known. As the alternative to tradition, the United States has proposed reason. Educate citizens and inform them, and they can be counted on to behave sensibly — this is the Jeffersonian-Enlightenment faith on which the United States was founded. It has not been fulfilled. Until recently the world’s leader in education, the United States leads likewise in crime, delinquency, and divorce.
Huston Smith, The World's Religions