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Once When We Were Free

Posted by UncommonSense 8 years, 2 months ago to Culture
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Happy New Year Gulcher's. This article sums up my thoughts nicely. Enjoy.
SOURCE URL: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2771-once-when-we-were-free


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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 8 years, 2 months ago
    Lots of fantasy and generalizations, or maybe the author lived a more sheltered life than I did as a child. My father once noted that with the advancement of medicine, survival of the fittest no longer was the rule. As he so quaintly put it (usually after seeing an example of a not so bright individual) "the culls are breeding."

    There is an element of society that has had entirely too much influence recently, obsessing about protecting our young to an absurd degree ("Microaggressions?" PLEASE!). The real world can still be brutal, and we do our children no favors by excessive attempts to shield them from reality.

    My offspring are still amazed at my attitude that life is a gamble, and that fear obstructs reward more often than it avoids danger. I blew a million dollars on a space tourism venture, failed, and moved on. The lesson I hope they take from my attitude is that a life spent in avoiding risk is a life only half lived. There's more to existence than just survival.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
    I am not going to contradict every line. The main point, for me, here, is that the "good old days" were not. We had a child molester in my neighborhood. Much later, working in software development, a woman told me about one in hers - in Alabama in the 1950s. When she told the story, she expressed her surprise and dismay, as if Alabama in the 1950s was a perfectly moral place. In criminology, we say that crime knows no neighborhood. In other words, crime is not limited to some place, but is every place.

    "We got sick we recovered. We were stronger than kids are now." Actually, the strong survived, not much else. Babies died before age 6. Generally, the longer you live, the better your chances of living longer. When we say that life expectancy was 35, we are averaging infant mortality into it. Children died of childhood diseases before the acceptance of vaccination.

    "We didn’t ask for much protection and we weren’t given much, and we survived" Because no one speaks for the dead.

    "There was no talk about the needs of the group. When we went to school, we weren’t told about ways we could help others." Yes, there was, in many ways, in home, church and school. In my elementary school (1955-1960), we sang songs about giving for the community chest (later "Red Feather") drives.

    "When we played games..." It was pretty interesting in the 6th grade when the gym teacher explained that baseball was a girls' game. (See Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.)

    There was far less whispering and gossip. There were fewer cliques Baloney. In 1959, you had to be just as cool as James Dean or someone would knock your books out of your hand on the way to class.

    There was no compulsion to “share.” Oh, yes, indeed, there was (see above). Otherwise, Ayn Rand would not have challenged 2500 years of ethical philosophy.

    "School wasn’t some kind of social laboratory..._" You just did not realize it. School was always about that.

    "We still don’t take every word a doctor says as coming from God." Granted that, now that I am an adult. Nonetheless, I would not be alive had I not had heart surgery in 1956 -- but, then, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where medical science was (and is) a significant industry.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 2 months ago
      Today the bullies in positions of power in government scarcely try to hide their lack of ethics. The presumed morality of the culture 50 years ago had a profound effect of slowing the looters of liberty.
      When we were much younger we didn't have the experience to recognize the con game that the fedgov gangsters were imposing, but in some part the con had to be less obvious then because of the expectation of ethics by the naive public
      For Galt's sake, 98% of voters still haven't recognized the con today. Fedgov/NWO propaganda is even more effective today than it was 50 years ago.
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      • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
        When we were much younger we didn't have the opportunity to recognize the con game that the fedgov gangsters were imposing. The lapdog press hid FDR's health issues, JFK's and RFK's sexual escapades and who knows what other shenanigans. At least today we have much better access to information, and distrust of government in general is much higher than it was 50 years ago.
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        • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 2 months ago
          A good point, CBJ. Wonder if we would have been as utterly stupid as the current voters are? The truth is more visble now, but the media's alternate reality is pervasive.
          Some secrets did make it to the public in the past and still had little effect, specifically FDR's advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I recall my grandfather (who rarely talked about politics) telling me about that in the early 60's iirc.
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          • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
            Franklin D. Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy for seven years in the Wilson Administration. Like Richard Nixon and Watergate: "What did he know, and when did he stop knowing it?"

            As for the media, it was traditionally an "alternate reality." Louisa May Alcott was a "penny-a-liner" making up lurid stories for New York City newspapers. She was not alone. It was a way for writers to get by. Joseph Pulitzer engaged William Randolph Hearst in the same medium of lies and inventions. But Pulitzer left a bequest to Columbia, which created a School of Journalism, which set higher standards. Now, we expect the truth in the news.

            In Russian, Isvestia means "news" and Pravda means "truth." They used to say there was no news in the truth and no truth in the news.
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            • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 2 months ago
              I agree with much of what you say here, Mike. The media was manipulated. I think the public wasn't controlled by it as thoroughly as it is today. More people could think for themselves because fewer people were exposed to the propaganda. There were a higher percentage of independent businesses, fewer enslaved to big mortgages for McMansions (now required mostly by the woman of the family) and lower percentage employed by big gov and a few big companies. Education curriculum wasn't as uniformly propagandized, and students were encouraged to excel with more challenging courses instead of frustrating the achievers by sticking them in classes with politically correct failures.
              Lots of things were changed (under the false goal of equality) combined to result in the mass failure we have been warning of for decades and are now experiencing.
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        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
          how can you say all of that and believe the 'in force ready to go with registered lists draft will not be used ever...Do you know what a hollow reed is? that's the belief that A is B and it will never happen here. But it did the people gave the despots the power they didn't take it on their own. Distrust is higher than 50 years ago? You can't have it both ways.
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          • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
            Public support for reintroduction of a military draft was only 18% in 2007 and is probably similar today. As recently as 1980 a majority of the public supported the draft. Higher levels of distrust of government probably contributed to this change of sentiment. http://www.gallup.com/poll/28642/Vast...
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            • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
              What's that got to do with wishes of the government? They control the elections. The allowed to be cast will still be 95% in favor of the Government Party. Rino or Dino in the White House is still win win for the leftist coalition. All they need is another fortuitous or manufactured crisis. The only wild card is unacceptable as he's the worst kind of Socialist Corporatist Statist the other form of their two extreme versions. Right now at least for the primaries the effort is Dump Trump. All the Dinos need to do is transfer enough of their troops to the Republican Party registration long enough to pull a classic raid and that won't be hard. Screw the polls and public opinion. When the time comes....it will change the more leftist the easier to get change. the Republicans may be the lapdogs of the left but the left has the most unthinking slavish boot lickers.

              Another thread developed this thought ...the country has not a two party but a bipolar system on the surface. But underneath it is a hypocritical single party system with assigned role playing in a national charade of street theater.
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 2 months ago
        One think I notice is that "all bets are off" when it comes to the government's solutions to issues that come up. There seems to be nothing off the table now, whereas 50 years ago they seemed to be restrained in the new laws they could pass.
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    • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 2 months ago
      mikemarotta,
      I believe you basically missed Jon's point probably because you are not of my generation; 74 years of age. He wrote about the 40's and 50's which was my youth. I suspect you are not that old so you had a much different experience growing up. Then you found Ayn Rand which is a POSITIVE but picking out an quote here and there is being unnecessarily picky. Just take his observation of what his life was like and accept that this is how he saw things and remember that those of us from 60 and older do remember the times as he has written. It is a subject that comes up for me with people of my generation and we all agree what followed us are generations who do not know the freedoms that we had. It is unfortunate because it has been the generations that have followed who have made the difference. Maybe you are of one of the following generations.
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      • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
        If Mike had heart surgery in 1956, he certainly is of our generation or older. I'm 72 and pretty much agree with everything Mike said. Our generation was not so much free as it was naive, which partly explains why we have lost so many of our freedoms over the years.
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        • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 2 months ago
          I find it hard to believe that you were conscious of whether or not we had freedom. As far as I am concerned we had in retrospect freedom and never gave it much thought otherwise. However, I do agree the change started with our generation of teachers who just didn't teach the next generation to think and that was continued with each succeeding generation until the country ends up with what you see today, young people in general who just don't think. I still maintain the point of the article has been missed.
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          • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
            Socially we are a lot freer today than in the 1950's, when racism, homophobia and gender stereotypes were culturally dominant and often legally enforced.
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            • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 2 months ago
              how do you explain people who live in states that surround Colorado being stopped when they leave the state to go home to say Utah being stopped by highway patrol because they may have come here to buy grass even though they maybe 50 or 60 years old. I do not consider that freedom, do you.
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              • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                No, I don't consider that freedom, but what you describe is a rear-guard action by government in retreat. It's certainly an improvement over grass being illegal nationwide.
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                • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                  what rear guard action. The events of New Year Eve was hardly a government in retreat.
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                  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                    I was talking specifically about the marijuana legalization issue. Proponents of the drug war are slowly losing this battle.
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                    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                      It certainly supports the case for paying attention to the 9th and 10 Amendments and supporting the 50 separate and different solutions methods. Especially since the national government withdrew. All that's left are some interstate trade issues with out undue interference under the full faith and credit section of the Constitution.
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            • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
              That is the excuse for stopping? Hey we got up to step two aren't we awesome? How free do you feel today after Obamas pen took away the Bill of Rights ....again. Half measures are not acceptable. Socially? That ought to help when the lights go out in prison and some says BOHICA.
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              • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 2 months ago
                Damn, I thought King George Bush II took the Bill of Rights away, after Clinton tried hard but repeatedly failed.
                Since all the looter putzes after Reagan are still alive, how about a special party for all of them. Throw in Carter, too, since we don't dare hurt his feelings.
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                • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                  An attempt but they wanted it legal. Only applied to the other side so only the leftists complained. The idea tagged along more support from left than right though they are loathe to admit it.Bush II went full tilt. I've often thought of Clinton, Bush, Obama as a quarter century of failure Clinton well enough said about that, Bush t be somewhat fair inherited a deficit an unbalanced budget when viewed by competent book keepers and a war. He did the rest on his own and seriously unbalanced the economic structure using the Clinton era plan of free housing for everyone skippered by Dodd and Franck, and the ethanol scam. If the debt didn't sky rocket he certainly set it upright o the launch pad. Much of his debt increase was absolutely unnecessary and turned pork politics into a combination of swine flu based on the mainstay of Clintonomics - Pork Bellies. Along comed the third eight year trimester with a POS ham'n'egger who had no math skills, no economics skills, no employment skills, no military skills, no leadership skills, no ethics skills, a complete enigma, cipher, zero ethanol powered pig trough on wheels klutzmobile who managed...so far.... to double the national debt and made proof of the aphorism never send a boy to do a mans job. They could have elected Hillary and put Klutzcake in as VP and then matched him up against the Seig Heiler champion of the neo Nazi socialist media Donald Duuuuuuuuu Trump. The promised over the horizon and tired old leftist mantra of boys home by Christmas turned into a middle ages enactment of the 14 and counting years war 2002 to 2016 at least count. With no tunnel much less light at the end of ...But my war materials investments DID skyrocket. faster than the economy tanked and the budget blundered, stumbled and growing tired Pelossified awaiting it's own re-enactment coming soon to a bank near you.
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              • -1
                Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                Excuse for stopping what? I just pointed out that some things are better and some are worse than they were 60 or 70 years ago. The military draft is gone. So are 91% marginal tax rates. So are most of the anti-abortion laws. So are many of the anti-drug laws. So is legally enforced school segregation. So is J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Freedom is always under attack, but given a choice, I would much rather live in today's society than the one I grew up in.
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                • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                  The military draft is not gone. Tax rates ARE gone and the rest but the draft is still alive and well just waiting for that five minute vote and one minute signature to move into high gear. 18 year old boys still sign up every year to get student loan rights AND avoid some heavy fines and jail sentences. Read about it on the inter net they have their own web site. Ready and waiting. The anti draft movement got bought off. The current move is to add women. You can't add to something that doesn't exist. monitor military .com
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                  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                    Any party that tried to re-impose the draft would be committing political suicide. They would lose most of the young voters as well as the over-55's that remember Vietnam as if it were yesterday. Add to that the widespread disillusionment over our role in the never-ending war in the Middle East.

                    Way low on my list of imminent threats to freedom.
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                    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                      Then why is it there? The only part that tried three times already was an effort spear headed by Wrangel. Personally I am anti conscription but you are thinking good times. Get their back to the wall and the one party system will use that sucker in a heartbeat. You forget there is no two party system any more other than to fool the fools of the country . How you going to get rid of one party? Answer you are not.Both the two halves of the Government party are staunch government over people and the rest is just keep the mob entertained bull shit.
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                      • -1
                        Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                        There are two major parties. They may agree on having a big, powerful government but each party wants to run that government and despises the other party.
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                        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                          The two major parties are the left and right wing of the same major philosophy Government Controls People if not a party then a working Coalition ...same thing.
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                          • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                            Two gangs fighting each other for control of the same turf are not a coalition, even if their viewpoints and methods are similar to each other.
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                            • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                              What makes you think an orchestrated effort no different than christmas tree pork barrel earmarking is fighting for control? It's a charade, an act with a script. Like any play or movie you watch it then return to reality OR you put on costumes and go to Star Trek conventions.
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                              • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 2 months ago
                                Please elaborate. What person or group is "orchestrating" both major parties? Are Hillary and Trump following some controlling entity's script when they attack each other?
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                                • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
                                  No you get to answer my question first. It requires basic English and personal opinion. Hardly rocket science. What you want a thesis on pork barrel politics? You stated your opinion I stated my opinion. Balls in your court. 'what makes you think...."
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
        I am 66. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was rooted in that world of the 40s and 50s, when President Truman seized the steel mills and nationalized the railroads.

        In fact, when World War One was launched, President Wilson seized all the radios, and nationalized the railroads. The 1916 Dime has a fasces on the reverse.

        It was the "Trading with the Enemy" Act of 1917 that later President Roosevelt used for Executive Order 6105 seizing all the gold in banks.

        When we were kids in the 1950s, we watched Our Gang / Little Rascals shorts on television. Some of them were even silent and the kiddie show host read to us. We understood a continuity in the culture of childhood. That early life of the 1920s and 1930s was not "the Pepsi generation" or the "Me Generation" -- but it was an indication of changes to come. World War One destroyed more than "stuff", it ended the century of capitalism, 1814-1914.
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    • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 2 months ago
      I agree with you, MikeMarotta. The article describes a wistful universe that never was, and can only be imagined in retrospect. For example you could say that in 1950's Midwest, "There were no race problems." (Because no 'niggers' were allowed there.) You could say, "People were happy to get married and raise their families." (Because women did not have any other options.)

      I get really tired of the rose-glass nostalgia for the 1950's. I do not agree with the terrible CPS-driven group ownership of children nor with the gestalt education process that is in effect, but most of the rest of the 1950's was pretty bad.

      We need to go Forward into Freedom, not backwards.

      Jan
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      • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 2 months ago
        Please point out when this going forward to more freedoms is to start since all I see is more being taken a way. I completely agree that some of what existed 50 years ago had to be changed but the results of what is now in effect is an assault on all of our freedoms even those who initially benefited by the changes. so when does all of the return to freedom start?
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        • Posted by term2 8 years, 2 months ago
          I say the what the government wants is for people to sit at home and not move until permitted by the bureaucrats. All that a person makes goes to the state, and they then refund to your debit card an allowance to live.
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    • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
      I must be the generation before yours.
      We did take the doctors word -- after all, he was the one with the medical education, and he could write prescriptions. Otherwise, your experience and mine, were pretty different. (See post).
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    • Posted by Maritimus 8 years, 2 months ago
      Hello, Mike,
      My impression is that you do not seem to be able to see the forest because of the trees.
      Be well. Happy New Year.
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      • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
        Once there was a poltical cartoon that showed a forested land with one side all clear cut and the other marked Citizens there little blurb said It will never happen here. Will it?

        In the center was a recently felled log with two loggers wielding a cross cut saw one said to the other when I push you pull and when you push I'll pull ...Each had a button on their jacket one marked Democrat and the other marked republican.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
    When I was a pre-teen kid, there was one rule: Supper's at six. We played, ran, fought, made-up, and generally got dirty, bruised, and scratched up. There were friends, bullies and wierdos. There was a kid who fed a neighbors pet bird to a cat. We played in the street. Be careful on Halloween or your new car might get covered shredded paper, glued there with home-made paste. Still, with all that, the neighborhood produced Doctors, scientists, politicians, police, musicians, plumbers, and bicycle repairmen. No parents bothered to take their kids out of the cellophane. They came already working and were taught right and wrong by experience (You should have known better, were you raised in a barn?).
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 8 years, 2 months ago
    Perhaps oversimplified, but I agree with the article.
    We had hope, real hopes and dreams, not something the government promised us. We had time to play and learn to grow up. We were not little adults, but we did NOT feel perpetually entitled to be treated as helpless kids either. We learned to respect adults and to emulate those we felt worthy. How many babies die now, from abortion, is that somehow better than sickness of years past! No one said using the progression of science to stay healthy was bad, but overusing it to suit drug companies might be.
    ADHD is the trend of the century, and our daughter was almost caught in that Rx trap, when the school wanted her on Ritalin. Her doctor came to the rescue when he found numerous allergies were the cause of the restless inattention, not ADHD. One has to proceed with caution with the drug establishment. Child molestation did exist, but it still does, likely worse. Somehow, teaching the kids to be afraid of all things grownup seems not to have stopped it. We were free, free to make decisions based on reason. We also were free to live with the consequences of our actions. Today, schools teach kids they are entitled and have freedoms, with no strings. When they find out years later that is not true, they then have no self esteem. They were not told that self respect comes with trying and accepting responsibility. I had a bike and a horse, no helmet, no "be careful", risk was part of life. I only almost died from pneumonia which was almost sealed with penicillin allergy! So much for modern meds.We were taught in church to help the poor, but the poor then were actually not on welfare. We were taught to offer help while not stealing their dignity. The one school propaganda of those days was to love the UN, and we grew up to reason how bad an idea that was. Now, the kids are discouraged from even thinking for themselves, without checking it with equally uneducated peers! Teachers were educated in subjects not the theory of education. The IQ in this country has dropped, making it even harder for them to reason. I still agree, we had the best movies (40s-60s) without all the tech advances. We had music with real musicians from Glen Miller, to Ella Fitzgerald, to Elvis and the Beatles. Now we have street thugs making millions and pushing gangsta rap on white suburban youth, Call that an improvement? We read J.F. Cooper and Alcott at 9 and Orwell and Pasternak in high school. We read Rand in college. How many kids today have the attention span and the understanding to make it through those books? Yet that is one way we learned about the world of thought. I enjoy my computer very much, but the distilled communication of texting is not relating. Back in the day, kids learned to converse in person. We were never blind to the illegal acts of politicians seeking power, but now they are in your face entitled to that power. In college we studied the science of weather, not the politics of so-called climate change. We knew the climate changed, always had, even before industry. I just am seeing too many young disillusioned adults failing to leave home, turning to alcohol or drugs, to mask the discouragement and fear they feel when what they have been taught to expect does not fit reality to which .politicians have led them to think they are entitled. At 16, my dad informed me as a female, I would have to be better than a man applying for a job - okay, I could do that. I am 68, and glad I had the parents and teachers who made me see life could be hard, but we always have choices.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 2 months ago
    Let me connect some dots for you.

    "But once upon a time, when we were young, we were free. We didn’t take any shots, and when we got sick we recovered. We were stronger than kids are now. ........There were no childhood “conditions” like ADHD or Bipolar, and we certainly didn’t take any brain drugs. The idea of a kid going to a psychiatrist would have been absurd."

    Anybody want to meet me in person and buy me a beer, I'll fill you in on this.
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    • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
      You gotta be closer to my age.
      My routine: Get home by 3:30. Disappear until 6:00. What happens in the neighborhood, stays in the neighborhood unless it bleeds and needs a bandage.
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      • Posted by Flootus5 8 years, 2 months ago
        Haha! So familiar. Those magic hours!

        And the moms were there to apply the bandages. And the mercurochrome!

        Except I remember one instance that didn't need bandages, but not just anyone's mom would do. We were playing in the backyard of my home and one kid got tackled to the ground. The right side of his face got smeared into some fresh dogshit and it was perilously close to his mouth. He was so horrified and hyperventilating, he bolted all the way home to his Mom 5 blocks away instead of just having my Mom clean him up sooner.
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        • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
          In certain circumstances, no hands but your very own mom's hands will do.
          Special curative powers. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I am reminded that socks placed on the radiator can warm the feet when slipped on after a day playing in the snow. Too bad you can't find radiators anymore.
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          • Posted by Flootus5 8 years, 2 months ago
            The old house that I grew up in in suburbia Massachusetts only had radiators. Man, that clanging of the pipes with trying to get that hot water up through 3 stories of living space was something memorable. The house was at least as old as 1890, but that is a minimum age because that was the known date it was hooked into the city water system.

            When my parents bought the place and moved in in 1960, the hot water was driven by an oil burner. But the old coal burning furnace replete with muscovite windows was still there in the basement as well as a pile of coal.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
      that was almost poetic. May I?
      Once Upon A Time
      When we were young and free
      We didn't take shots
      And went out back to.....

      Ah hell you finish it.

      First time I got really sick was my first trip to a city.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
        OK, I get that. My grandmother had five children, three in the country and two in the city. The oldest three were fine. The youngest two had all of the childhood diseases; and among those, my uncle had polio. I believe that breast-feeding to age three had a lot to do with the health of my eldest aunts and uncle. Just being in the country is only the general environment, necessary but not sufficient.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
    All very open to discussion and much of it questionable. Let me suggest that when we were kids we did not sigh sadly for the good old days.

    Just one point for now: "Kids never acted like little adults. They didn’t dress like adults. They didn’t want to be fake adults."

    In point of fact, "youth culture" is a recent invention of the Baby Boomer generation. Historically, there was little differentiation between children and adults, though every society does have some rites of passage, including those for the transition to adulthood. (Bar Mitzvah is a common example.) If you read the "Horatio Alger" stories from the late 19th century, you find children of 12 holding jobs, living on their own.

    It is not so much that children act like adults, but that adults are still children. And it can be a good thing. NEOTENY is the retention into adulthood of immature characteristics and it is a survival trait. In The Ascent of Man Jacob Bronowski has a chapter on "The Long Childhood." Of course, not everything about grown-ups acting like kids is good.
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    • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 2 months ago
      You are correct again, MikeMarotta. In historical costuming, until about the Victorian era, there was no differentiation between 'children's clothes' and 'adults' clothes'; likewise there was no such thing as a 'children's game' - there were just 'games', and everyone played them.

      We have invented the idea of a 'protected childhood' for children in much the same way that wealthy Victorians invented the 'perpetual childhood' for the woman. (Even in relatively modern times, farm and shopowner families would put their children to work in the family business as soon as they were able to do so.)

      So, the distinction of 'kids as kids' is both modern and contextual.

      Jan
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
      Boxcar Kids is one I remember. I mostly remember wanting to grow up so I leave. Once I left I had to learn to act like an adult. After a two years in college I figured out that was not the place. Watching the veterans and talking with them and having the draft to face anyway I took a short summer job checked out the possibilities and joined the Army primarily because I wanted to shake some left over adolescent fears. Height was one of them snakes were another. Secondary because the Marine Recruiter was out for lunch or some other perfectly valid reason. Stuck my head in the door and said, "I want be a paratrooper." The guy looked at me smiled and said, "come here fish" and made a hooked finger in the mouth gesture. We both understood each other perfectly.

      A few days later I was on the way to Basic Training, Infantry Training and Jump School....It was a love hate relationship. I loved the job and the training, forgot about heights and snakes (for a while) turned down OCS and asked for an infantry assignment with 11 Air Assault Test...later they became First Cavalry and were not taking many new people as they knew they were going to war. One infantry tour later I was back for the snakes....and actually ate one.

      My parents never accepted my career path....and blamed it on everyone but themselves. See I learned early to despise hypocrites. Although there are plenty everywhere one goes. I often how things would have turned out had I accepted OCS earlier on as a basically raw recruit trainee OR had the Marine Recruiter been in his office. 24 years with a break in service later but with reserve status I retired. And continued to go my own way. I place a lot of the credit on an imperfect understanding of some dude named John Galt and a book that was always in my luggage.

      So.....three retirements later.....I'm shrugging from FNA. I still don't eat snakes nor creamed corn.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 2 months ago
        Snakes are underrated as food.
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        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 2 months ago
          I noted you didn't comment on creamed corn.
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          • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 2 months ago
            Haha!...I actually like it. Ate it a lot when I was a kid. It's not underrated, though. Haha...

            I like big, fat rattler when I can get it. Like chicken meat on a 3' long trout frame.
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            • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 2 months ago
              A handyman was present when I killed a rattler in front of Steph’s front door. (I had to step in front of him to do so.) I used a shovel; Steph finished the critter off with garden clippers. As we wandered around the property, looking for a gopher hole to deposit the head in (snakes can bite after death) to keep it away from the dogs and feral cats, we discussed the cooking of the rest of the snake. I was working on a new (coyote proof) chicken run, so Steph said that she would cook it.

              The handyman thought we were just spoofing, until Steph brought a coil of spice-rubbed and lightly barbequed snake down to the Barn. He gamely ate a piece; Steph and I finished off the rest.

              The problem is finding a nice FAT rattler...most of the successful big snakes do not come around the property, but stay out in the wilderness. I don’t hunt them – they are fine as long as they don’t bother me or my dogs – but if they come on the property or endanger any of us, they are food.

              Jan
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    • Posted by Lucky 8 years, 2 months ago
      MM says: 'It is not so much that children act like adults, but that adults are still children.'

      Yes, and as Bronowski observes immaturity assists learning.
      There is a problem tho' as in uni students wanting safe spaces, and mid-twenties living off parents or welfare rather than moving to another town to get a job. Now this is fine if they are children, which as they demonstrate they are. But they want the vote and they tell us we are destroying the planet. So, I advocate raising the voting age to 25, or 45.
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  • Posted by RJSchimenz 8 years, 2 months ago
    While some criticize the article, it does have a lot of truth. The nanny state has grown and people are fitting in, behaving like children who crave the parental nature of modern government.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 2 months ago
    There never was a golden age. That is the Eden Myth, retold even in Hesiod's "Days" and echoed in Plato's Dialogs. It is the narrative of the True Believer: Once there was a golden age, but the Evil One(s) stole it from us, but if we all work together, we can build a new world, not for ourselves, but for our children."
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 2 months ago
    You know? I don't use this word but I feel it's appropriate after reading that...amen!

    And I'll say it another way...to you And the author...Thank you.
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  • Posted by gcarl615 8 years, 2 months ago
    Despite some of the comments below, I pretty much agree with the article. It may be good old days thinking and totally irrelevant in todays screwed up world, but that world was much better.
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    • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
      They tore down my high school. So, I get a letter extolling the wonders of the past and urging me to attend a class reunion to all surviving graduates. My high school was better than most for a lot of reasons in that it was one of the first magnet schools specializing in kids with certain talents in arts and science. Why should I delude myself into believing how wonderful it was? It was hell on a number of levels. Did I want to re-experience it? I curtly refused. I'll bet that if most of the alumni were honest they wouldn't see a rosy past, but a prevue of of purgatory.
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