🚀 go-pugleaf

srt@nospam.unt.edu wrote in message news:<a394mn$56j$1@hermes.acs.unt.edu>...
> In dfw.general apt <aptex@nospamhotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > "Family Values", are something we try to instill in our children. To succeed
> > or fail do not diminish the intent. The intent is to inject a better set of
> > morals in the world that obviously this world has lost track of. Look at the
> > values that your parents, and their parents dealt with. If you think they
> > were no different than the values of today, someone needs to pry the rock
> > off your head. This world is not a better place to live than 50 years ago.
> 
> In fact, things are not only better than they were 50 years ago, but
> things are MUCH, MUCH, *MUCH* better than they were 50 years ago.
> 
> I never have understood why people have this romanticized view of life
> in the past, and think things are so much worse now.  

I'm with you.  I think its a disease that comes with age for some
people.  People seem to remember the 50s based on I Love Lucy and
Father Knows Best, never mind that those were just TV shows and had
nothing what-so-ever to reality.  People seem to think that just
because they didn't show it on TV back then, that nobody had sex or
abused substances or beat their kids or whatever.

> What was it like 50 years ago?  Well, for one thing, if you were black you 
> had to sit in the back of the bus, and had to use separate bathrooms and water
> fountains.  Remember that?  Oh the nostalgia...  For another, if you
> were female, you had very few options in life --- if you had any
> career ambitions you were often seen as a freak and shunned.  Oh yeah,
> let's go back to that.
> 

And lets not forget child and spouse abuse.  50 years ago you just
didn't talk about it.  Pretended it didn't happen.  Then when the kid
died, it was just an accident.  How about rape?  50 years ago, it was
the woman's fault.  She should have dressed that way or been where she
was.  Date rape?  What's that?  You can't be raped by someone you
know, you must have really wanted it.  Boy, things sure were better 50
years ago...NOT.

50 years ago, if you had kids and your husband was beating you, you
could just get a job and a divorce.  Mostly because your chances of
getting a job were slim to none if you were a woman, and you probably
didn't have an education.  Besides, who would watch the kids while you
went to work, daycare centers were few and far between.  Gee, can we
go back that?

How about abortion and birth control 50 years ago?  Many states didn't
have legal birth control and abortion was illegal all over.  Since
birth control was so hard to get, abortion rates were actually
_higher_ than they are now, but they were illegal, so lots of women
died at the hands of butchers.  Yeh, that was better.

It wasn't better 50 years ago.  It was just talked about less.  People
just pretended that the problems didn't exist.  Rape, abuse, and
assault went largely unreported because more often than not, the
victim got the blame.

Oh yeh, things were better back in the 50s.  If you were a anglo
protestant male between the ages of 20 and 50, otherwise you were SOL.


> For the most part, the country is heading in the right direction.
> Sure, there are some problems, but that doesn't counter the general
> good trend.

You are so right, Steve.