When I Was A Kid: Reflections Of A 50-Year-Old American

The Family Security Foundation ^ | 01-16-2013 | EDWARD L. DALEY

[Cocoa2012]

The United States of America was the greatest nation in the history of the world, bar none, and just about every American school kid knew why

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/when-i-was-a-kid-reflections-of-a-50-year-old-american?f=must_reads

[SoftballMominVA]

There wasn't a single kid in my school who couldn't read, write, do basic math or recite the Pledge of Allegiance by the time they were eight years old... not one.

Those kids existed, they were just in the boiler room where they couldn't' be seen...or they were in institutions...or kept at home...

The past wasn't a bed of roses for anyone not white, middle-class, or average. Romanticizing it denies how far we've come in many ways.

However, I miss the innocence. That is something we lost that may not ever return. THAT is indeed sad.

[duckman]

“Those kids existed, they were just in the boiler room where they couldn’t’ be seen...or they were in institutions...or kept at home...”
I must respectfully disagree. In 1953 I was 8 years old and in the 3rd grade. I went to P.S 41 in the Bronx N.Y and we did accomplish all those tasks. In addition we also had those dreaded air raid drills.

[SoftballMominVA]

I believe that you did those things, as did I.

However, I teach children with special needs and I know our nation's past history with this population. It's not pretty.

[DARCPRYNCE]

People often confuse the fact that while blacks voted overwhelmingly for certain Democrat presidential candidates as far back as FDR, most still self-identified as Republicans and voted for GOP candidates in lesser races more often than not until the mid to late ‘60s. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was the beginning of an irreversible trend to Democrat from Republican of blacks generally, primarily because the GOP presidential candidate of that year, Barry Goldwater, had voted against the legislation while LBJ had signed it into law.

The statement that the greatest movie ever made was The Great Escape is merely an opinion, yet it is one held by a lot of American males who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

If the author was born in 1963, he would still have been a kid in 1975 when Atari Pong came out.

Mother Teresa’s name was well known to people all over the world before she won the Nobel.

While abortion may have been a growing political concern in the ‘60s, and while the Supreme Court did indeed decide the Roe Vs. Wade case in favor of abortion rights advocates in 1973, those facts do not suggest that the majority of people in the U.S. were “pro-choice” during that era. They were not.

[DARCPRYNCE]

The author doesn’t suggest that some kids in America couldn’t read, write, etc, only that in his school, everyone could.

As far as romanticizing the past goes, I’d trade every technical advance of the past 35 years for a return to basic, common sense, patriotism and the standards of decency in art, music, literature, theater and political discourse that most people used to embrace.

[DH]

Like I said, I’m 66 and there is no need to try to teach me what was life was back then.

LIKE I SAID “BACK THEN (prior to 1964) THERE WERE NO FOOD STAMPS...only commodities!”

The 50 year old kid that wrote the article was born in 1963 for crying out loud! He was not old enough to even experience life until 1968 and understand was was going on.

ALL that he speaks of happened many years before his time.

Good old President Johnson’s “Great Society” started in 1964 and the “kid” was only 1 year old. Food stamps came a few years after that.

[Gay State Conservative]

As a kid my household wasn't quite as “civilized” as Father Knows Best or Leave It To Beaver but it was a very good home led by two fine,decent,hard working parents.And their four kids all turned out to be decent,hard working adults.My entire family,in fact,since first arriving from Ireland and Scotland have been law abiding,normal,productive people who've made things like ObamaPhones possible.But we're clearly in the minority today.I say we secede.....the red states should form a new nation like Scotland and Quebec eventually will.We get most of the food and energy (among other things) and they get most of the ObamaPhones,heroin addicts and wetbacks!

[Fiji Hill]

The 1964 Civil Rights Act was the beginning of an irreversible trend to Democrat from Republican of blacks generally, primarily because the GOP presidential candidate of that year, Barry Goldwater, had voted against the legislation while LBJ had signed it into law.

Seems they overlooked the fact that it was Republicans, especially conservatives such as Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) who saved the Civil Rights act from being filibustered to death and that Barry Goldwater had pushed for the integration of the Phoenix airport in the 1950's.

[Responsibility2nd]

Odd that most posts are responding to the TV part of the article and if the guy was accurate with the TV show, dates ad his age. What I found compelling what the entire article and how things use to be and how they are now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not odd at all. The reason why most replies ignored the meat of the article is because YOU ignored the meat of the article in your post.

[ansel12]

The last time republicans won the black vote for president was in 1932, I also think that few of us knew who Mother Theresa was in the early 1960s, but Dr. Albert Schweitzer was a huge international hero of the time, before he was 'erased'.

Here is a chart for black, party ID.

[ansel12]

Actually the permanent black switch was made in 1936.

They were 100% a majority GOP vote up to and including 1932, then they totally reversed that for the 1936 election and forward.

The change was instant, and total, and permanent.

[ansel12]

Seems they quickly got into the '60's counterculture.

They didn't get into it, they were part of the people who created it.

[Mr Rogers]

“Most folks had home computers, although they were more commonly known as calculators.”

I bought a calculator...in 1975. It was $100, and could add, subtract, multiply, divide AND had one memory storage place.

The 60s had slide rules.

[TArcher]

To my mind, the big cultural shift happened from 1967-73.

Uhuh, and today the progressivist (Communist) hippy Grateful Dead rejectards are "changing the system from the inside":

 

Dn't need n Weatherman t see which way the'wind

blws.

 

"Behind the Violence, Says Jane Alpert, Was Sex"

--November 09, 1981--
"The leaders of the Weather Underground, she believes, followed a similar pattern of constantly shifting sexual alliances..."

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080637,00.html

"He [Bill Ayers] also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to 'smash monogamy.' The Weathermen were 'an army of lovers,' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend."

Source: New York Times, September 11, 2001: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

"...the Weathermen, when not engaged in group sex, committed such revolutionary acts as parading with a Viet Cong flag through a local park on Independence Day and spray-painting the walls of a high school with the slogans, "Off the Pigs," "Viet Cong Will Win," and "F#$k U.S. Imperialism."..."

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement At American State Universities in the Vietnam Era

 

"What happens next bears watching closely, as does the response of the president, ex-Speaker Pelosi, and others on the left.  Encouraged by leftists in the Democratic Party and funded by left-leaning nonprofit organizations and celebrity contributors, Occupy Wall Street may in time morph into something resembling the radical factions of the late 1960s and 1970s."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/predicting_the_weatherman.html

The Osawatomie Coincidence

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2818309/posts