What was America like before the country was $16.4 trillion in debt and 47 million people were on food stamps? Before there were more divorces than marriages, back when babies were “gifts from God” to be cherished, not “punishments” to be aborted? When deranged misfits never walked into schools and started randomly killing kids???
For those of us who can remember, as well as those who want to know what they missed, here are a few of the things Edward L. Daley (at Family Security Matters) fondly recalls about the United States from a much different time – When I Was A Kid: Reflections Of A 50-Year-Old American ~
• Boosting a kid’s self-esteem was maybe the last thing any teacher cared about. Forcing their students to study and get good grades was the top priority, and accomplishing that goal naturally led to kids feeling better about themselves.
• A rich person was somebody you aspired to be like, not somebody you sought to punish.
• Men were builders, risk-takers, hunters, warriors, protectors and heads of their households. Women were refiners, nesters, nurturers, teachers and disciplinarians who were usually willing to let their male counterparts delude themselves into thinking that men were the heads of their households.
• Able-bodied people who received public assistance were pitied by other folks, and most of them felt shame for allowing themselves to become dependent on the government for their sustenance.
• Books were more popular than food stamps.
• Marriage was an institution that a man and a woman entered into when they wanted to exhibit their commitment to one another, their willingness to accept adult responsibilities, and their desire to legitimize their offspring. It had nothing to do with making a political point.
• There wasn’t a single kid in my school who couldn’t read, write, do basic math or recite the Pledge of Allegiance by the time they were eight years old… not one.
• Abortion wasn’t a privacy issue, it was a moral issue, and people who committed abortions weren’t “pro-choice”, they were baby killers.
• The application of oil and its byproducts to run machinery and generate electricity was widely understood to be as important to the advancement of human civilization as the discovery and utilization of fire, the practices of cultivating crops and breeding livestock, and the development of a written language.
In short, the America of the 50’s, 60’s and to some extent the 70’s, was far and away a better place to be than where we are now.
Oh, it wasn’t perfect. Human nature being what it is, no society ever has been or will be perfect. But we were a much more decent, prosperous, amiable, life-affirming, generous and united country back then. It was a time where moral relativity hadn’t yet taken hold and before political correctness had all but destroyed common sense.
• The United States of America was the greatest nation in the history of the world, bar none, and just about every American school kid knew why. Our brilliantly conceived Constitution, Judeo-Christian ethic, free market economic system, adherence to the rule of law and willingness to embrace people from every culture on Earth made us great, and we were conspicuously proud of that fact.
Our progressive friends are ostensibly seeking utopia. Yet in their blind allegiance to a misguided ideology, they’ve all but destroyed the one civilization that’s even come close.
Check out Daley’s whole list at Family Security Matters.
