moonshot925 from post #14: "How exactly has the country been in decline?"
Nice post Mach9, along with several others who expressed similar sentiments.
moonshot925 is correct in the sense that our nation is far wealthier and more powerful today than it was 50 years ago.
If you just consider the IRS's five quintile income categories, every category from lowest to highest is better off today than it was in 1962.
Yes the so-called 1% are much better off, but so are all the other income groups.
Indeed, a clever economist could probably figure out that the lowest quintile in 1962 has virtually disappeared (except for illegal aliens?) and nearly all of us live in what were then the higher income groups.
In the past 50 years far fewer farmers now produce far more food.
Fewer manufacturing workers produce more manufactured products -- yes, much has been off-shored, but we still make ourselves far more today than in 1962.
At the same time, Mach9 and several others have identified what we took for granted back then -- strong work ethics, families, communities, religious affiliations -- which are weaker to nonexistant today.
But there is a much more fundamental difference between then and now, a "forest" sometimes hard to see for all those "trees".
In 1962 each of us had almost no past and nearly infinite futures -- we were then nothing, but could become almost anything according to our abilities and the luck of life's draws.
Today all of us have established pasts, and far less future.
Our lifes' stories are not yet fully written, but we are into the final chapters, and many of us have already done the most important things we will ever do.
We are into the dénouement of retirement.
And so the real question is: if we could rewrite our stories, if we could go back in time, to a time when all the world was young and new, and our futures were infinite in front of us, would we?
Well, of course, but on the other hand, would we really want to relive some of those darker moments of the last 50 years?
As a generation we were educated for the world as understood then.
Today our children & grandchildren are being educated for a different world -- more "multi-cultural" less of "American exceptionalism," more "international government" fewer & fewer constitutional limits on government powers.
Will they be as well prepared (or unprepared?) for their challenges as we were for ours?
Hard to say. In terms of conservative Free Republic values, I don't see how we did a good job of it -- one genuinely conservative President (Ronald Reagan) in 50 years is not so much to brag about.
In 1962 non-defense Federal spending amounted to about 5% of GDP, today it's around 20% -- so what example did we set for our offspring?
Do you remember 1962 as the beginning year of John F Kennedy's 50 mile walk program -- to prove that Young America was still as physically fit as ever?
What are the chances we'd ever see such a thing again today?
“Do you remember 1962 as the beginning year of John F Kennedy’s 50 mile walk program — to prove that Young America was still as physically fit as ever?
What are the chances we’d ever see such a thing again today?”
Hell, kids today do that, and MUCH MORE. They are braver than anyone in the 1960s ever dreamed of, have accomplished more, are more socially aware. It’s not even close.
Of course that all applies to their video games...
Thanks—all great points but one:
“I don’t see how we did a good job of it — one genuinely conservative President (Ronald Reagan) in 50 years is not so much to brag about.”
Can’t agree there. Thanks to Free Republic and a certain unmentionable group, we kept a known traitor from becoming President. Now, if we could just manage to repeat that miracle . . .