Family Values

There is a road that runs from the land of the Ik to the dog track in Idaho.

The Ik were the mountain people the anthropologist Colin Turnbull found in northern Uganda some years ago. They were going hungry and mistreating one another in horrible ways.

The Ik were as hideous as family values can get. Adults would sit around the $ fire and think it was uproarious when a baby toddled toward the flames. Children would excavate food from the mouths of weakened grandparents and run away laughing. A wife would die by the roadside, and her husband would walk...