3/29/2004 95 Alistair Cooke Journalism,Entertainment
"About the immediate future of the Republic, I can only remind the reader that an historian has no business with prophecy. But, having read over my last chapter, I have to add that since it was written both Western Europe and America have suffered from greatly underestimating the long-term effects of the Nineteen Sixties' hippie counterculture. There has been a continuous decline in the general respect for an unquestioned authority, either religious or secular. Marriage is no longer Aristotle's essential model of society but, along with single parenthood an "alternative life-style." Drugs have settled in as a chronic social problem in every class of the nation. The highest courts have given up defining adult obscenity or prosecuting it. Unprecedented corruption has been revealed in the world of investment banking and accountancy. Among two generations that have never known either war or hard times, freedom has come to mean freedom to do-as-you-wish, no longer "the luxury of self-discipline." But, against these developing flaws, must be set virtues abundantly exemplified in this book: inventiveness, imagination, idealism, vast philanthropy, a gift for ruthless self-criticism." -forward from Alistair Cooke's America.
That person knew what was going on. To bad the rest of these so called Journalists can't see the writing on the wall.
Geez I musta been asleep- totally missed his death.
I enjoyed immensely watching him on PBS.