Posted on 08/12/2013 10:42:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
I was out in the desert this weekend at our second home, where, borrowing the words from an old song "nothing is heard of a discouraging word" except if someone is discussing their round of golf. While waking my dogs for their morning ride in my golf cart I got to 'thinking of what's going on in this country and all I could think of was What Happened? And when did it happen?
Let me start in the middle of this discussion to try to illustrate my point. This part of my essay should be subtitled: “me and the Presidents” or for the English majors “the Presidents and I.” When I was under 10, and that is a close as I can pin it down, my father took us to the desert, which was Palm Springs and some interesting places surrounding Palm Springs. One of them was the La Quinta Resort which I guess was in Indio at that time and we stopped for some food or drinks.
We went into a big room and my father said after looking across the room, “that's Eisenhower.” I can't remember whether he said President or General but I do remember the name. The rest is much clearer than that.
1. In the mid to late 50's I saw President Truman at a Rams game in Los Angeles walking up the aisle as everyone was yelling "Give them hell, Harry".
2. In 1967 I believe, I got off the plane from Los Angeles to New York and went to the baggage claim and there was former Vice President & Governor Richard Nixon waiting with some people for his luggage. He had flown first class and I obviously didn't.
3. In the early 1990's my son and I were going to an office in Century City and as we turned the corner in the lobby my son walked into Ronald Reagan. The security guys with him laughed as my son said he was sorry.
4. In the mid 2000's I went to a luncheon in Century City which was attended by Jimmy Carter. When I parked in the building I had to open my trunk for an inspection. I met him and had a picture taken with him as my company had built a house for Habitat for Humanity.
5. In the middle 2000's Bill Clinton was the honored guest at a house in my gate guarded community and as I drove by the house he was going in so, I honked and waived and he waived back. I bring this up because none of it was a big deal. Today, however, when the President travels, streets are closed, Freeways in Los Angeles are closed, sections of downtowns are closed. WHY?
I grew up in the 50's and knew nobody who did drugs, smoked the funny stuff and basically didn't have respect. In high school if you were in the hall during school hours without a written pass you were in for a bad day. You might be suspended, given an invitation to spend an hour or two after school or on a weekend or maybe even paddled. Do I need to mention what most high schools look like now all day long?
In college our drug of choice was Beer. That's right, beer. There was some hard liquor around but very few drank it. The only birth control we had was abstinence, condoms, rhythm or good luck. I didn't know but a handful of girls who got in trouble (hersay) and I am not sure any of it was true. There obviously were some rush marriages, then and now.
What really changed America, in my opinion, began with the Vietnam War. To say that it was unpopular was a real understatement. I was too young for Korea and had already been drafted and deferred during the German crisis, when Russia surrounded Berlin, so Vietnam didn't impact me. But it did a lot to this country starting with the resistance to the draft, huge rallies and marches and the peace movement, although I am not sure I spelled it right.
The above mentioned war gave us the militant crowds of both men and women. With the advent of new forms of birth control we started expansion of the moral code and the rewriting of the America we knew. From then to now things started going downhill. Maybe it wasn't much different than earlier days, decades and centuries but we found out about what was going on with the evening news. Do you think we are all better off now?
It seems to me that what we lost is much dearer to the average American than what we gained. Losers include
1. Fun
2. Respect
3. Our Constitution
4. Faith in God
5. The American Dream
6. COMMON SENSE!
It doesn't seem worth it to me and it doesn't seem to be getting better. We all need to become vocal, start voting for the person, not the party, and stand up for your beliefs. It's much easier for things to keep going the way they are unless a massive effort is put forth to change it.
Bumped into Reagan and didn’t get vaporized by bodyguards! Bet it hurt though. :)
I read somewhere that (just under) 100 years ago, Pres. Wilson could walk out of the White House, alone, and take an evening stroll on the street.
BINGO!
He lost to Moonbeam’s Dad, right?
It’s not so much the perniciousness was allowed, it became a federally enforced civil right of sodomic acts on Lot’s daughters, taxing us of our own children and custodies, in the name of peace and feminism.
The draft? What draft? The war on poverty and the LBJ draft for perversion are the real culprits.
First they start going for the poor and against tobacco, next they go rape your kids and take your guns.
Few people know about what hippies were and confuse them with yippies and college kids, and politically active lefties.
Hollywood and the media somehow morphed all those non, and even anti-hippies, into "hippies", think of all the TV images that would portray the judge, or the PHD, or the Senator as an ex "hippie" when in reality hippies were drop outs who wanted to go live their own lives outside of the system and politics, and they could not have simultaneously been obtaining law degrees, political careers and PHDs.
Yep... the demographic changes in this country are moving at a more rapid pace than ever before, far outpacing the rate of assimilation. Our schools don’t even teach American kids the facts about their country’s history, nor do they help foment a sense of national identity, not to mention the very mention of God in schools can get you suspended.
So, if American kids aren’t given the strong foundation in the education process, WTH are we to expect for those from other countries? The concept of a “melting pot” went the way of the Packard. Now, Americans are expected assimilate to the cultures of the immigrant communities.
Add to all that the shattering of any semblance of a moral and respectful social order, and it all adds up to a dying society. I don’t see a 50-state America entity surviving to the mid-point of this current century.
We had a good run, though... it was truly grand.
We’d like to think that we have a civilized country, and even the most passionate amongst us would not go around looking to molest and injure people on the street who do not agree with us.
The Left apparently does not feel the same way.
That's a good point. Nor would they have spent their lives working for the government they once rejected. The leftists are a ball of confusion and conflicting ideals. The one value they all share is the belief that no one is entitled to anything they government didn't give them.
Right we are finished due to demographics. Immigration has ruined our country. We will be a third world hell hole in less than a decade.
Number 7. Virtue
- Not from a biblical sense, but just a simple knowledge that people have between what is right, and what is wrong...
Number 8. Transparency
- Real transparency, that leads to real responsibility and thus real accountability for your actions...People are too quick to blame their mistakes on someone or something else...
Sublimation.
Conservatives feel that posting will fix the nation.
Since conservative sites started has the US gotten better or worse?
***What really changed America, in my opinion, began with the Vietnam War.***
It started with the beatnik movement and then the hippie movement as the bulk of the baby boomers began to challenge all authority for anything. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll! Tune in, Turn on, drop out!
No, it didn't. KGB Active Measures did. To believe otherwise is to believe that all those protesters sprang up out of the ground on their own, incensed by a war hardly anyone else, in 1965-67, was paying any attention to, and we were winning anyway.
Or do you belive in magic?
The above mentioned war gave us the militant crowds of both men and women.
No it didn't. The KGB did. After years and years of trolling and recruiting and influence-managing and cultivating stooges and fools, the KGB did.
Believe it or die. Because now everybody wants a piece of us. That is what the KGB's success during Vietnam did for us.
Democrats wrote a law to replace the American voter.
From unionizing government, to Vietnam, to the 1965 Immigration Act, JFK was the end of us.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
BUMP
Madalyn Murray O’Hair -— Christians should have banded together at that time and strongly fought her lawsuit. We should have stood our ground at that time and not budged.
I believe that the downward spiral started before the 60’s. I think of McCarthy, and I do believe he was right on. When the drug culture became rampant, the slide downhill went really fast. And here we are.
I would gladly tell you where you went wrong in that post except for one thing...you didn’t.
Oh give give me a home...
where the buffalo roam...
and I’ll show you a filthy house!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
