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To: SpyderTim
‘Forgive me for questioning what you refer to as "common knowledge."’

In Koestler's book Darkness at Noon the protagonist, a member of the pre-revolutionary intellectual class, who became a Marxist and joined the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, is interrogated by a younger member of the Communist Party who knew nothing of the world prior to the Revolution and had no way of knowing. The protaganist has no common language beyond political rhetoric with which to dispute his inquisitor. He talks about the new generation as being "born without umbilical cords" to describe their complete and total ignorance of all that went before them.

This is a fair description of how I feel when I get into discussions such as this, involving life in the USA when the Second World War generation was still in charge. That was not so long ago. There is no sense of the connection between the here and now with the extremely recent past. I see no evidence of such awareness in your posts.

I'm in my early forties and am by no means an aged, hoary sage, but I swear I feel about two hundred years old when I read stuff like this. It can also be described as feeling like I'm talking with someone from another planet. There are no common points of reference beyond the merely actual.

For example, when I was a mere six years old living in Los Angeles, my parents would regularly give me thirty five cents to walk about three blocks down the street unaccompanied to go to a drugstore to get the latest issue of MAD magazine. Is such a thing possible today? Can you imagine what would be required to restore that level of law abiding tranquility to the nation?

216 posted on 04/23/2002 2:36:24 PM PDT by Mortimer Snavely
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To: Mortimer Snavely
I can see where you are coming from. I wish that there wasn't such a disconnect. All of my education has been from Roman Catholic private schools, and it clearly indicates how bad our current education system is if they don't even teach about such things. It is truly unfortunate.

It does not change the fact that I'm just looking for evidence. I didn't live during the '70s. I've yet to see someone provide a convincing defense of the "common knowledge" that "bra-burning" occurred. Of course, I must admit that I haven't been convince that it didn't occur either. I'm only seeking to be presented with evidence, and to make my mind. Both sides have thus far provided insufficient evidence.

217 posted on 04/23/2002 2:53:26 PM PDT by SpyderTim
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