[ZULU]

You said we have "matured".

I expressed some facts that would tend to refute the employment of that term.

[Tall_Texan]

I said nothing about whether we have matured or not (that was another poster), but I think there are ways we, as a society are better now than the "good old days" and ways that we are not. You did an excellent job of detailing some of the ways we are not - the lack of respect for others, the lack of modesty, the lack of moral fiber, the tolerance for deceit and lies in our culture and the disintegration of family and community which has been assaulted both by communism and liberalism.

But I would also point out that if you turned back the clock fifty years (where most of us would view the "good old days"), there was wide-spread racial discrimination, there were limited opportunities for women outside the home other than low-wage menial positions, drunkeness and drunk driving were winked at, cigarette smoke was everywhere all the time because nobody had yet seen it as a health hazard, health standards in general were quite lax, few remedies existed for victims of domestic violence and $5,000 was considered a good annual income.

I think in terms of public morality, community and individual responsibility, those days were far superior than today. But there were also some major blind spots in those times that I would not like to revisit.

But all that has little to do with a 45-year-old dentist who runs over her cheating husband with a car. She is guilty of murder now - and I'd guess she would have also been found guilty of murder then. At no time in our society has murdering the spouse been viewed as the correct way to resolve a marital conflict.