I can't help but laugh at the arrogance of the "hippie" generation I see here, conveniently ignoring the many problems the next generations have inherited from them. Take a look a the children of today, the "norms" they embrace,
Yah.. it was better back when women, blacks, gays, etc. sat at the back of the bus. In the sixties interracial marriage was illegal, and if the country club found out you were a Jew, you'd get kicked out. Good times!
the grasshopper attitude so many people have (rather than the ant, putting away for a rainy day) and the negative savings rate the nation has,
Brought on by capitalist lenders chasing double-digit short-term profits. In the horrible seventies (which IIRC came after the sixties), I remember teachers going through exercises with us about "rent-to-own" schemes and predatory lenders.
the way many corporations now operate,
The way corporations operate is the fault of hippies 'n' liberals? I thought I'd heard EVERYthing!
the life is cheap attitude (abortion)
The current Supreme Court thinks a woman's life is pretty damn cheap.. no abortion for you even if your kid is ancephalic and you're at death's door. These things used to occur 'behind closed doors' by complicit doctors and nurses without the Federal government threatening to clap them in the pokey.
The Catholic Church for hundreds and hundreds of years taught that a fetus was not a person until quickening (also variously codified as 40 days for a male fetus and 90 days for a female one!) and so abortions and abortifacients were relatively common and accepted for early pregnancies. The distinction between the "animate" and the "inanimate" ("anima" = soul) was maintained up until 1917. The bulk of world history has actually given very little value even to newborns.. ill or deformed ones were often left to die, and it was common not to even give them names until a certain period had passed. I think the practices of many hospitals were probably not entirely different in the last century and mothers of kids with serious defects were probably told they were "stillborn" on occasion.
To read about the "good old days" in 1960s FL obstetrics go here (not for the squeamish):
http://www.collegeofmidwives.org/Faith_Manuscripts_2005/Autobio_Ch_2_Nov05.htm
OTOH, in the past it also seemed to be easier to give up a kid for adoption.. leaving a baby anonymously at a church. You can't do that today for some reason. Many common last names in Italy are those historically linked to those routinely given abandoned babies (Esposito=exposed; Innocenti=innocents, foundlings; De Angelis = from the angels).
The pendulum seems to have swung to the "every sperm is sacred" extreme. There are millions of kids and pregnant moms with no health insurance due to the "life begins at conception and ends at birth" policies of the right. Blastocysts are getting looked after better than some kids are. (The Snowflake babies! Jon Stewart: "so named because no two are alike, and they're all white."
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common politeness not so common, chivalry considered sexist and the castration of many things considered masculine.
Castrating "things feminine" would make no sense. Hey.. we got a big ol' honkin' war on.. can't get much more macho than that! "Bomb, bomb, bomb.. Bomb bomb Iran.."
The disregard for individual freedoms in the name of political correctness, thought crimes (rating a crime's punishment based on "hate" as if white on white or black on black crime is any less hateful than a white/black crime)
Guess the McCarthy hearings had nothing to do with thought crimes...
Guess the FBI currently has nothing better to do than spy on anti-war demonstrators (some things never change).
and the left's attitude of win power no matter what the cost in Iraq (remember the recent comments about "this will win us seats"?).
Power at all costs? Two words for ya: Karl Rove.
The "let government take care of us so long as someone else pays for it" attitude of so many entitlement programs (Bush is no better in this regard with the prescription drug program).
What you call "entitlement programs" are just social insurance that we pay for to receive benefits.. There's no mystery to it. Unless you think FDR was a hippie and had a doobie in that "cigarette" holder of his.
Gun control without regard to statistics which show how many crimes are prevented due to guns and the fact that criminals will have guns with or without gun control.
Today the NRA is so powerful, it can tell the FBI to go take a flying leap if they want to look in the nationally-maintained and mandated gun sales database & track criminals & (gasp) terrorists. Read your e-mail & tap your phone w/o a warrant => OK. Find out if someone unhinged has a small arsenal => noooo! that's going too far! Witness the calls for LESS gun control and arming students in the wake of VA Tech.. I don't see that the gun control folks have anywhere near as much voice as the gun nuts.
The "if it feels good do it" attitude without regard to your fellow man.
Better "if it feels good it must be bad, so don't do it"? Or better still, the "do as I say, not as I do" crowd, like the current crop of Republican presidential candidates who have two or three wives apiece on average? Like the "I'm not gay even though I sleep with gay hookers"
family values types?
The thought that a Prius is environmentally and/or economically a good choice when the non-hybrid version of this car actually costs less over the long haul and has less environmental impact.
I think that has been debunked. In a related note, though, the hippie, socialist Europeans manage to get regular diesel cars out of Ford that get 55 mpg.
The price over quality attitude.
?? Isn't that the "free market"?
This has been pretty much debunked as well.
Civil rights "leaders" turning into opportunistic race-pimps.
You got somewhat of a point. Not too different, however, from the religious right "leaders" who are opportunistic pimps (or in some cases, clients).
This kinda makes me laugh.. Sherlock Holmes was a coke head (and Doyle did his own "autoexperimentation"). Many of the great English poets were opium fiends. The proper Victorians dosed themselves regularly with laudanum (i.e., morphine), esp. the ladies.. probably as a reaction to the crappy lives they were forced to lead. Coca-Cola had substantial levels of cocaine in it up 'til 1904.. now they use "spent" coca leaves according to wikipedia, and there's supposedly a plant licensed by the gov't. in NJ that grows and/or handles these. From the same source, Coca-Cola's inventor, John Pemberton, advertised the drink as a cure for morphine addiction (he himself was a junkie). Moonshine runners gave birth to NASCAR.
It's true that many street drugs today are more toxic.. but again, that's the product of the market and the "war on drugs" at work. With laws established using weight.. well that serves to drive the concentration of the intoxicating substance up. It's also then easier to conceal and transport. If someone told you that having more than a gallon of alcoholic beverages in your home was illegal.. what would you go for? Rolling Rock or Bacardi 150? Can't grow marijuana or poppies without someone turning you in? The E-Z-Bake meth lab is for you!
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Progressive "Western" society moves forwards in fits and starts.. the pendulum swings back and forth. I'm not entirely comfortable with everything that's PC today but I acknowledge it's just a reaction to horrible cruelties and prejudices that to a large extent still exist. Will we ERADICATE racism (or sexism, tribalism, whatever-ism), adultery, teen sex, self-medication.. no.. that's just not possible either with draconian methods or without. The change in attitude has to come from within. An authoritarian with a big stick can't make a society 100% free of the bad aspects of human nature. People have been trying for thousands of years; witness the Inquisition, the Puritans, the Taliban. What America has gotten right to a little bit better extent than other places is exactly the freedom and tolerance that other places may not enjoy. So I'll trade a few F-words for that.. thank you very much! [p.s. the Italians use very bad words on the Tv all the time, but the society is nowhere near as nasty and violent as in the US.. also very little violent crime due in part to the relative lack of guns].
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Edit to add P.S. as follows. I don't want to bash missionfinder. His/her (oops PC-ness snuck in) post reflects a lot of pretty commonly-held prejudices and FEARS. I deal with this all the time with right-wing sis. Whoever can be manipulated into thinking they have something to lose is going to be reactionary.. doesn't matter whether we are talking about the 1950s, the '60s, the '70s or now. The funny part is when the people whose insecurities are being played don't even have anything at stake.. sis went on no end to defend the Walmart heirs having no inheritance tax. Some RELATIONS of a dead guy will profit to the tune of $30-something billion more than before.. for something they had nothing to do with.. while the middle-class will pay for the military that protects Wal*Mart. Beautiful! The right has managed to get people on board even against their own interests; I find that fascinating.
Anyway I kind of lost where I was going with this, which was.. people who feel INsecure will always have fears that something is somehow being 'taken away from them', even when objectively that's not entirely true. People who feel more secure in themselves don't need to find enemies under every rock, whether said enemies are in Iraq, on the local school board, the people selling hybrid cars, or in the gay couple lliving next door. The right plays on people's fears to elicit just that negative and corrosive response, which suits their authoritarian purposes.
Edit 2: (which should go without saying but obviously needs to be re-stated here).. As far as the "life is cheap" aspect goes.. maybe you also wanna ask some families of Iraq vets who have to buy their own armor.. and let's not forget to ask the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.. [We are very efficient, though.. it took Saddam 30 years to kill as many people as we did in one-tenth the time. And we're just getting started!] .. ask the people facing grave illnesses w/o insurance whether life is cheap or very, very expensive. American society will pay for weapons and mercenaries but not for free pre-natal care or giving even just all kids health insurance.. for fear of somebody's "getting something for nothing". Ask the Katrina and tornado victims. When it comes to annoying poor people's lives, the right is very stingy indeed.. when it comes to pre-meditated death on a massive scale, they pull out our checkbook.
Coming from a Catholic background, I never did get the "pro-life"+pro-gun+pro-war+pro-death-penalty thing either.. someone wanna give that a go? I mean, I'm open to arguments as long as they are consistent... just haven't heard any yet.
