https://freerepublic.com/tag/civilizationdied/ en-us Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:57:13 GMT Focus Forum 15 https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4393494/posts Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to the land of my childhood and youth exposed me to a culture very different from the one that nurtured me. Growing up as a grammar schoolboy in 1970s and ’80s England, I absorbed the importance of personal restraint; emotional self-control in public; privacy; acting with honesty and fairness, even to one’s own hurt; and respecting others regardless of their social status or opinions. At the level of society, such personal values... First Things https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4393494/posts#comment Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:57:13 GMT