This is for me the moment when the new America began: I was at a graduation ceremony. ... It was 1971 or 1972. One by one a stream of black-robed students walked across the stage and received their diplomas. And a pretty girl with red hair, big under her graduation gown, walked up to receive hers. The auditorium stood and applauded. I looked at my sister, who sat beside me. "She's going to have a baby," she explained.

The girl was eight months pregnant and had had the courage to go through with her pregnancy and take her finals and finish school despite society's disapproval.

But society wasn't disapproving. It was applauding. Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, and not good for us.

The old America had a more delicate sense of the difference between the general ("We disapprove") and the particular ("Let's go help her"). We had the moral self-confidence to sustain the paradox, to sustain the distance between "official" disapproval and "unofficial" succor. The old America would not have applauded the girl, ... but some of us individuals would have helped her not only materially but with some measure of emotional support. We don't so much anymore. For all our tolerance and talk we don't show much love to what used to be called girls in trouble. As we've gotten more open-minded we've gotten more closed-hearted.

Message to society: What you applaud, you encourage. Watch out what you celebrate.