But I'm not talking strictly about violence. I'm talking about TOLERANCE of crime and criminality.
Here is the major difference as I see it. The American West (which is what I think you have in mind) was lawless, but that was a function of "law enforcement few and far between." But the penalty for criminal behavior was lethal, and the great majority of folks, who were law-abiding, would not tolerate a continuation of criminal mischief the way we do today.
There was no quarter given to lawbreakers, none. They received a fair trial, and that was it. For most of the serious crimes we see today the penalty was death. And people were not only allowed, they were EXPECTED to protect themselves.
The difference of what I am talking about today is our passive acceptance of evildoing in our midst. We had decades of "victimization" of lawbreakers, in which they were put on a pedestal as "victims" of racist, sexist, class-conscious society. That was the first major chink in society's armor.
Soon it became not only tolerable, but chic to be a criminal in many of our subcultures ("Gangsta" rap is a good example of this glorification of the criminal, not as a rebel with a cause as it would be centuries gone past, but as a purveyor of murder and mayhem for its own sake, for the "juice").
But I'm not talking strictly about violence. I'm talking about TOLERANCE of crime and criminality.
An almost laughable claim. It has been cited many times in the last decade or so that we now have more people in jail, per capita, than any so called 'free' society, -- ever.
You are simply ignoring history to advance your fanatical repressive agenda.