Viewers of the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night were treated to a bizarre dance routine from former Disney child actress Miley Cyrus, which CBS News describes as “one performance that won’t be forgotten very quickly:”

Cyrus gave Robin Thicke a lap dance, paraded around with dancing bears, twerked her butt off and grabbed her crotch a few times. Not to mention the tongue. We saw a lot of that.

[Robin] Thicke’s mother, Gloria Loring, told OMG! Insider, “I don’t understand what Miley Cyrus is trying to do. I think she’s misbegotten in this attempt of hers. And I think it was not beneficial.” She added, “I didn’t get what her point was. It was so over the top as to almost be a parody of itself.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “twerking” is a dance move that dispenses with all the other subtleties of dance to deliver pelvic thrusts and butt wiggles.  If a cell phone set to “vibrate” magically became human and started dancing, it would twerk.  CBS left out the part where young Miley grabbed a foam finger from a member of the audience and began rubbing it against her crotch.  She wound up simulating a bit of anal penetration with Ms. Loring’s son, who was singing with her on stage.  And the “bears” in the act were dancers dressed like children’s teddy bears, adding a lovely touch of pedophilia chic to the proceedings.

My first exposure to Ms. Cyrus music came when I was putting together a photo slideshow for my 6-year-old niece’s birthday party, back in the “Hannah Montana” days.  That wasn’t so long ago.  I remember how much my little niece adored “Hannah Montana.”  She’s just now entering her preteen years – that tender moment in a young girl’s life when liberals think she should be able to get morning-after birth control pills over the counter, without her parents’ consent.  “Hannah Montana” was a cute Disney fantasy about an ordinary girl who is secretly a millionaire pop star.  Is this how all the little girls who daydreamed about being Hannah Montana thought the dream would end?

I can tell Robin Thicke’s mom what Miley Cyrus was “trying to do.”  Most obviously, it was a bid for attention, another jolt of cheap electrical stimulus to the temples of a jaded, faded culture that expects nothing from young people, and is therefore shocked by nothing they do.  It’s not easy to generate controversy in a society whose only standard is that there should be no standards.  The only way for a barely-legal singer to get tongues wagging is to wag her tongue.  What else was she supposed to do, sing and dance modestly after endorsing abstinence, traditional marriage, and self-discipline?  That would have been plenty controversial, all right, but the people marketing her music wouldn’t like it, it’s hard to squeeze cash from rebellious teenagers with a message like that, and all the wrong people would have applauded.

Also, Ms. Loring, I would advise you not to underestimate the importance of the pedophile edge to Miley’s routine.  Sexualizing young people is an important mission of the Left.  They want little girls to jump right from teddy bears to Planned Parenthood.  That helps dissolve the bonds of family, which is a fading bastion of independence and self-reliance against collective power.  It’s important for the “Ozzie and Harriet” crowd to feel utterly marginalized, as unwelcome in 2013 as the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock.  We are supposed to accept that the world has forever moved on from those days.  Parents can’t control their kids – indeed, their influence is expressly unwelcome when it comes to sexual training, where the concept of “parental consent” has become as antique as the pocketwatch or bustle.  Liberal culture defines wanton sexuality and the rejection of family authority as “empowerment.”  It softens people up for hardcore government dependency when they’re forced to stop twerking and face the consequences.

Also, sexy children make a nice distraction for the older members of the Low Information Voter community, who crave transgression and worship youth, working as hard as possible not to grow up.

Miley Cyrus was on the bill with Lady Gaga, who is supposed to be the second coming of the aging Madonna, who has been busy transforming herself into a James Bond villain in her dotage.  Lady Gaga is said to have been “upstaged” by Miley’s re-enactment of a Japanese schoolgirl porn video, because all poor Gaga could think to do was dress up as a nun.  What kind of rebellion against authority is that?  Nuns are so pre-ObamaCare.  Religious conscience has given way before the power of the almighty State.  Nuns are just marking time until they’re legally compelled to perform abortions.

It might seem pathetic to watch these “edgy” artists flaunt their defiance against thoroughly vanquished traditions, but maybe it’s an encouraging sign.  Their marketing gurus apparently think there’s still a bit of milk in the old sacred cows.  The kids of 2013 can still savor a look of scandalized horror on Mom and Dad’s faces.  Someone apparently thinks “family values” haven’t quite been beaten to death.

Which is good, because “family values” remain our only hope for pulling out of the social and economic nose dive we find ourselves in.  The upper class retains the “secrets” of decorum, respect, and fidelity that everyone else has been tricked into forgetting.  Back when the Left set about turning the phrase “family values” into a post-modern joke, laughs were had at the expense of uptight squares who didn’t understand the difference between safeguarding important principles and having a bit of fun.  Well, the joke is on everyone else.

We never should have forgotten the potent connection between thought and expression, the importance of habit and ritual.  It is difficult to treasure what a saturation media culture treats like trash.  And it doesn’t help that the law of diminishing returns obliges the people who dug our cultural pit to dig more frantically as the hole grows deeper, madly searching for whatever flickers of shock value might still be left to uncover.

Societies die from thousands of cultural cuts.  Children are powerfully influenced by popular culture.  They yearn for guidance and inspiration from the adult world.  They receive the lesson transmitted by crap like the MTV Video Music Awards.  Kids a bit younger than Miley Cyrus remember what she used to be, and they see what she is now.  They see the road stretching between those points, and they follow it.  Unfortunately, they don’t understand that if you want to live a hedonistic anything-goes lifestyle, starting before you’re legally allowed to purchase alcohol, and avoid being destroyed by the consequences, it really helps to be a millionaire.