I remember using my major league arm to throw the ball so hard that the ball would bounce off the heads of my victims with such velocity that it would hit the gym ceiling. 
Posted on 06/09/2008 11:35:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced, I said to my then-teenage son, "David, please forgive me. I am handing over to you a worse America than my father handed over to me."
Unfortunately, I still feel this way.
With the important exception of racial discrimination -- which was already dying a natural death when I was young -- it is difficult to come up with an important area in which America is significantly better than when I was a boy. But I can think of many in which its quality of life has deteriorated.
When I was a boy, America was a freer society than it is today. If Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern their speech and behavior within one generation, they would have been certain that they were being told about some dictatorship, not the Land of the Free. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, all employers in California are now prohibited by law from firing a man who has decided to cross-dress at work. And needless to say, no fellow worker can say to that man, "Hey, Jack, why not wear the dress at home and men's clothes to work?" An employer interviewing a prospective employee is not free to ask the most natural human questions: Are you married? Do you have a child? How old are you? Soon "How are you?" will be banned lest one discriminate on the basis of health.
When I was boy, what people did at home was not their employer's business. Today, companies and city governments refuse to hire, and may fire, workers no matter how competent or healthy, who smoke in their homes. Sarasota, Fla., the latest city to invade people's private lives, would not hire Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy if they applied for a job.
When I was a 7-year-old boy, I flew alone from New York to my aunt and uncle in Miami and did the same thing coming back to New York. I boarded the plane on my own and got off the plane on my own. No papers for my parents to fill out. No extra fee to pay the airline. I was responsible for myself. Had I run away or been kidnapped, no one would have sued the airline. Today, fear of lawsuits is a dominant fact of American life.
When I was a boy, I ran after girls during recess, played dodgeball, climbed monkey bars and sat on seesaws. Today, more and more schools have no recess; have canceled dodgeball lest someone feel bad about being removed from the game; and call the police in to interrogate, even sometimes arrest, elementary school boys who playfully touch a girl. And monkey bars and seesaws are largely gone, for fear of lawsuits should a child be injured.
When I was boy, I was surrounded by adult men. Today, most American boys (and girls, of course) come into contact with no adult man all day every school day. Their teachers and school principals are all likely to be women. And if, as is often the case, there is no father at home (not solely because of divorce but because "family" courts have allowed many divorced mothers to remove fathers from their children's lives), boys almost never come into contact with the most important group of people in a boy's life -- adult men. The contemporary absence of men in boys' lives is not only unprecedented in American history; it is probably unprecedented in recorded history.
When I was a boy, we had in our lives adults who took pride in being adults. To distinguish them from our peers, we called these adults "Mr.," "Mrs." and "Miss," or by their titles, "Doctor," "Pastor," "Rabbi," "Father." It was good for us, and we liked it. Having adults proud of their adulthood, and not acting like they were still kids, gave us security (as well as something to look forward to in growing up). Today, kids are surrounded by peers twice, three, four times their age.
When I was a boy, the purpose of American history textbooks was to teach American history. Today, the purpose of most American history texts is to make minorities and females feel good about themselves. As a result, American kids today are deprived of the opportunity to feel good about being American (not to mention deprived of historical truth). They are encouraged to feel pride about all identities -- African-American, Hispanic, Asian, female, gay -- other than American.
When I was a teenage boy, getting to kiss a girl, let alone to touch her thigh or her breast (even over her clothes) was the thrill of a lifetime. Most of us could only dream of a day later on in life when oral sex would take place (a term most of us had never heard of). But of course, we were not raised by educators or parents who believed that "teenagers will have sex no matter what." Most of us rarely if ever saw a naked female in photos (the "dirty pictures" we got a chance to look at never showed "everything"), let alone in movies or in real life. We were, in short, allowed to be relatively innocent. And even without sex education and condom placement classes, few of us ever got a girl pregnant.
When I was a boy, "I Love Lucy" showed two separate beds in Lucy and Ricky's bedroom -- and they were a married couple. Today, MTV and most TV saturate viewers' lives with sexual imagery and sexual talk, virtually all of which is loveless and, of course, non-marital.
When I was boy, people dressed up to go to baseball games, visit the doctor and travel on airplanes. Today, people don't dress up even for church.
When I was a boy, Time and Newsweek were well written and relied little on pictures and illustrations. Today, those magazines often look like adult comic books by comparison. They are filled with large illustrations and photos, and they dumb down the news with features like "Winners and Losers" and "Who's Up and Who's Down." And when I was a boy, it would have been inconceivable for Time to substitute anything, let alone a tree, for the flag planted by the marines on Iwo Jima.
One might argue that these are the same laments that every previous older generation has expressed -- "Ah, when I was young" But in America, that has not been the case. In America, the older generations tended to say the opposite -- "When I was a kid, things were worse."
Can we return to the America of my youth? No. Can we return to the best values of that time? Yes. But not if both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court move the country even further leftward. If that happens, many of the above noted changes will simply be accelerated: More laws restricting "offensive" speech will be enacted; litigation will increase and trial lawyers will gain more power; the American military will be less valued; trees will gradually replace the flag as our most venerated symbol; schools will teach even less as they concentrate even more on diversity, sexuality and the environment; teenage sex will be increasingly accepted; American identity will continue to be replaced by ethnic, racial, gender or "world citizen" identity; and the power of the state will expand further as the power of the individual inevitably contracts. It's hard to believe most Americans really want that.
Television.Television is too trite an answer. The main culprit in the destruction of American culture is cheap and easy transportation, the car and the airplane. Back in the day, you had to be upstanding because everyone knew you. Most people were in the same place their entire life. There were changes, wars, depressions etc... but these were blips comparatively. Now nobody knows anyone else, so the government (gladly) tries to fill the void.
Modern liberalism is not a conscious evil, it's a symptom of the underlying cause, the social disconnect caused by easy movement and economic growth.
I remember using my major league arm to throw the ball so hard that the ball would bounce off the heads of my victims with such velocity that it would hit the gym ceiling.
Way too eerie...
Oh, I get my contemporaries to answer it, but it's the usual "Obama will tax the rich people who make too much money." It's fun to irritate them because many of them simply don't get it. Dangerous because they're going to take over at some point, but fun.
Great poem. I don’t know why you got so much flack for it. This country is definitely moving leftward. I love this country, but I don’t love the direction things are moving. If Obama should get in, I think things will definitely get worse.
Starting with the second grade, I walked to and from school by myself. Maybe a distance of two to three miles. I enjoyed it, even when it rained. Does any kid walk to school any more? It was a simplier time.
Cheap and easy transport, enabling people to change residences, only transfers the point of absorption from television. Having new faces around where you live is nowhere near the impact as having the same faces and messages transmitted right into your home and to your children.
Thus, people not knowing each other is a symptom of the main illness called television because people are tied to their TV's rather then getting to know each other.
So again I say: Television.
I can think of a few... When I was a boy the internet was the dewey decimal system at the library, and it did not allow me to purchase any appliance, tool, service, entertainment or trinket I desire or think of. There were 4 liberal sources of TV news, and AM radio played baseball and country & western. Workers had no right to a raise and companies had no right to increase their price during 1,000 days of Nixon's wage and price controls. The right to own the fruits of one's labor was threatened by inflation of 12%, interest rates of 9% and unemployment of 9%. Carter would make America long for those numbers, the quality of President has gotten "significantly better," IMO. Men were drafted to fight in Vietnam and 60,000 lost their right to live. Battered wives, victims of child abuse and drunk driving had little right to a pursuit of happiness. The speed limit was 55. The postal service was a presidential cabinet position, and women were entitled to greater federal subsistence for each child they squeezed out.
“When I was a 7-year-old boy, I flew alone from New York to my aunt and uncle in Miami and did the same thing coming back to New York.”
I was just recalling to my wife and kids how when I was 9 and my brother was 6, we spent a week visiting my granparents in Boston and they put us on the Trailways bus and we rode all the way home to Virginia where my parents met us on the other end, about a ten hour journey. Everyone was great to us and that included a stop at the Port Authority in New York.
Our house was always unlocked.
Kids should be kept as innocent as possible for as long as possible.
“I remember using my major league arm to throw the ball so hard that the ball would bounce off the heads of my victims with such velocity that it would hit the gym ceiling.”
Is that you, Stinky? How ya been?
I read a recent CDC report about our generation that was very disturbing.
http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/figures/figure40.htm
Thank you for your post.
” Better yet lets return to the victorian era “
Now let’s not get TOO carried away .
We live longer, are healthier, wealthier and safer than any previous generation.
Part of it is technology. I have 100 channels plus of TV in very living color. There were 3 when I was little in the 50’s and they weren't on half the time.
Besides segregation of black and white. Jews and women were discriminated against too.
The 20th century was the most violent in History. Millions were dying in conflicts around the globe.
Does this dufus miss smallpox, measles, polio, TB, etc.? We once had “asylums” for some of these diseases where people were put against there wills. We also hid away the mentally ill.
You used to be able to smoke anywhere, but you weren't told that it would kill 10’s of millions.
I grew up knowing where the closest nuclear fallout shelter was located.
I will take my blueray, microwave popcorn,and FReerepublic, and he can have Howdy Doody. I luv Lucy may have had two beds on the show, but Desi had a lot more in real life and young boys were having sex with Young girls, they just got married at 16 or 17 to do it and had to have a blood test for syphilis before the government would give them the license.
” I wish we would return to the 1950’s (values wise-and I really don’t care about all the technology ) ...”
I would agree that taking everything into consideration , the 50’s was our best era . It’s been downhill ever since ...
Hmmm. Why did entropy and the 2nd law only get into gear since the 1960's, after being dormant for a thousand years? I thought these were universal laws . . .
Television is but a word, but the scope of its reach and impact is extremely vast. Especially on young minds that are the main target and later grow up to be dysfunction bungling failures and idiots, who are prime pickings for the Democrat Party's indoctrinizational messages of angry have-nots and victimhood.Television has the ability to define reality, but not as much as the family and a person's immediate environment. If television was really as powerful as you believe then the western media, while powerful enough, would have a much greater impact on the Islamic world.Cheap and easy transport, enabling people to change residences, only transfers the point of absorption from television. Having new faces around where you live is nowhere near the impact as having the same faces and messages transmitted right into your home and to your children.
Thus, people not knowing each other is a symptom of the main illness called television because people are tied to their TV's rather then getting to know each other.
So again I say: Television.
A Totalitarian state needs to establish a one-to-one relationship with its citizens, families get in the way of that. Television is *much* less effective against groups with strong social ties.
I'll agree with the general supposition in your remarks, all things change, some for the better, some for the worst. I take exception to some of it too.
Your thoughts about adult male role models, father figures, I think misses the mark. My kids complain about my working too much. My daughter says, "Daddy, I wish you didn't have to go to work. When do we get to do Daddy Daughter time again?" It breaks my heart. But at the same time, my kids are learning about what the expectations should be for a man. His loyalty to the family. His responsibility and work ethic are measured and sized by those ever so young and curious eyes. They watch and they listen. They learn and eventually emulate much of the behaviors of their parents.
I like to think ours is a unique family (maybe not to this crowd, however). I coach little league and soccer. I play with the kids and they "help" me with projects in the garage and around the house. My wife stays home with the kids and I work 60 hours a week to support the family.
I guess we are a little old fashion. The liberal mantras that say kids don't need a father on one side and then fathers are not around because of work anyway on the other, have woefully missed the mark when it comes to the staple of behavior that nurtured youth evolve to emulate.
I don't think the relevance of a solid two-parent family can be overstated enough. The core values of a child are established early in life (though teenage years). The core values become the basis of character for young and old adults. Values are unwaivering and uncompromising. Values are not usually something parents "teach" kids. But they do learn them (IMO). Priorities change as we grow older. Girls, Friends, College, Parties, Job, Wife, Children, Children, Children, retirement, Grandchildren,....
All that said, I have to agree with the article in this way. The general character of a typical American seems to have degraded over the years. The values which should be the foundation of that character does not seem to be as evident as say 30 or 40 years ago. I still call old teachers and coaches by their titles. I still hold doors open and say sir and ma am. I hope my kids are watching. I hope my son develops these traits and I hope my daughter comes to expect these traits in a mate down the road.
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