This is a bit unusual as far as postings go but I want to share an email I recently received from a wonderful guy for whom I used to work. Back in the 80's, not long after college, he hired me and I soon realized he was the best boss I would ever have. He was unusual in many respects but most of all I was surprised that he was politically liberal among a crop of far more conservative vice-presidents at the company. He retired around 1990 but we've maintain contact, via the internet mostly, and we frequently discuss politics. He offered some thoughts on the changes he has seen in his 72 years and I thought the perspective from a different gggeneration might be nice. He approved my posting this.

Peter T.

We all have a tendency to long for the good old days, but people were better
citizens when I was young. A good number of factors have contributed to the
decline, but none more so, I think, than the ever growing preoccupation with
self. Self at the expense of the shared bonds of community. I'm old enough
(and so is your Dad) to remember the tail end of the Depression in the late
Thirties. Those were tough times, but people came to understand that
everyone was in it together and would go under or rise out of it together.
And the unmistakable catalyst in what fortunately became the recovery was
the (gasp) federal government, which provided both programs and hope. We're
beginning to run out of people who lived in those times, to the extent that
revisionist historians are raking FDR over the coals and revisionist
politicians are determined to destroy the all for one and one for all
programs like Social Security and, eventually, Medicare which grew out of
those times. As I've said, the population has changed, in both numbers
(there were only 132 million of us here in 1940, 285 million now) and
outlook. Times got better after WWII, and that's when the shift from the
links of community to self began. The murder of Kennedy in 1963 came in
laterally like an asteroid hitting us and (no matter what you think of him)
robbed us of a great deal of both confidence and hope. Only a year later
Goldwater appeared on the scene and began to preach the doctrine of self big
time. His famous comment of "Let the bears forage for themselves" meant that
you get in this life what you're strong enough to take, and once you've got
it you have a right to keep it all and not share anything with others, even
those less well equipped to compete in life's endless contests. It was just
a small step from there to begin attacking the single great instrument of
sharing, the federal government, and in time Ronald Reagan made that a
doctrine for the new age with his presidential pronouncement that
"Government is the enemy." I found it hard to believe that in my lifetime
the anti-FDR was among us, and worse, that people in increasing numbers were
buying his message. And so now we have a society top heavy with people who,
as long as they've got what the god of self demands for them, will tolerate
"the lies and deceptions" that have made us an outcast among nations and are
pushing us backward socially to the time of the Rockefellers and the
Vanderbilts.

Any statement in a nutshell such as the above is usually a sweeping over
generalization and subject to serious dispute, but I actually believe that
stuff, and can at least say that it's based upon observation of the times
I've lived through.

Bernie