Defining Deviancy Down (2007 edition)

In 1993, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late scholar and senator, coined a phrase that became very popular among conservatives: "defining deviancy down." It referred to the way practices all decent folks once considered beyond the pale suddenly were taken to be acceptable. You know, like the old Cole Porter song: "In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking/Now heaven knows, anything goes."

He was talking about violent crime. He quoted a friend of his, a federal judge: "A society that loses its sense of outrage is doomed to extinction." True enough. When taken-for-granted, reasonable rules of thumb that served a democratic society in good stead for centuries are forgotten as if they never existed, yes: we're in trouble.

Remember when the principle of advancement according to merit instead of blood ties seemed one of those pretty obvious principles? Hiring your relatives used to be considered vaguely sinful. Now, heaven knows—I learned while flying cross-country a few months back, flipping through Continental Magazine—anything goes:

“Nepotism is alive and well here,” says Ike Reighard, chief people officer at Atlanta-based HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. “We have a culture where we look for something that we refer to as the HomeBanc DNA, and we have found that we can find that DNA many times by recruiting and hiring among the family members of people who already work here. If one member of a family has the right type of work ethic and honesty and those kinds of things, then there’s a high probability that their brother, sister, husband, or wife is going to share those same types of characteristics.”

Melvin Smith, professor of the practice of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, agrees and notes that there can be additional advantages, especially when dealing with spouses and other domestic partners.

“In this day and age,” he explains, “you have a number of dual-career couples, and it often becomes difficult to recruit, hire, [and relocate] somebody who is high on your list if they have a spouse who needs to find employment as well. By hiring spouses or couples you can gain an advantage because you don’t have that issue.”
Once they are on the payroll, family members tend to reinforce each other’s sense of belonging. The company becomes, in effect, part of their extended family. “That can engender greater motivation and connection to the organization,” says Smith. “And that can lead to greater commitment to the organization.”

Greater commitment to the organization: Really, isn't that what family values are all about?

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future