At age eight I walked every morning the perhaps six blocks to Robert E. Lee Elementary School, alone. Why not? There was nothing to be afraid of. My friends and I rode to Westover, the shopping center on Washington Boulevard, and left our bikes on the sidewalk for hours while we read comic books in the drug store. Why not? Nobody stole bikes. My family never locked the doors of the house. Why should we? There weren´t any burglars.The only thing that comes to mind that could possibly improve this is the thought that the Intellectual Elites - now firmly in control of the levers of power - never liked this America he writes of. And so if that group were to come to power, the rest is overdetermined, isn't it?
And in summer evenings thirty kids, girls and boys, played hide-and-seek across several blocks, and parents didn´t give it a thought. Why should they? It was safe. We were the dominant culture, the only culture, and we didn´t do pederasty, engage in gang attacks, or muggings, or drive fast on kid-littered streets. It wasn´t our way. If we had suffered a natural disaster, no one would have looted. It wasn´t what we did.
I´m not sure what would have happened if a gang of high-schoolers had robbed a candy store. It was impossible, because we didn´t do such things. A child molester? I don´t know. It would have one way or another been a case of God help him and he never would have been seen again. The culture didn´t tolerate child molesters.
RTWT. Best description of the decline of the Res Publica I've seen.
Fred Reed's columns are always entertaining, usually interesting, occasionally infuriating, and generally well thought out. I really want to party with him sometime.
ReplyDeleteThat's the way it really was; even in the poorer neighborhoods. It's all gone downhill since Johnson's "Great Society". That's when the freebies started and many adopted the entitlement mindset. Unfortunately, no one knows how to stop and correct it without massive riots.
ReplyDeleteYep, posted that link a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteSad to see the decline in society.
But are we really powerless to stop it? Or just too lazy to do so.
Used to be people of similar feelings moved in nearby to each other. Which is why we had "the wrong side of the racks" and the rest of the community.
But not anymore.
Perhaps it is time for good people to move into enclaves and leave the rest to rot.
Yes.
ReplyDeleteI remember those days.
In my white bread college town growing up.
The worst kids did was TP someone's house.
I moved back a year ago. Door's always locked, I always carry.
What happened?
gfa
It used to be if you killed someone they hung you or used the electric chair. If you were a robber you would spend a good amount of one breaking large rocks into small ones in an uncomfortable environment.
ReplyDeleteNow we are all about rehabilitation. You can take college classes in prison, you get cable TV and three squares a day. That's where we went wrong - crime now does pay.
This is mostly perception. Crime is down nationwide, and I've no doubt that includes significant crimes against children. There have always been perverts--when I was growing up, when my parents were growing up. They were whispered about--the difference is that now we can separate the dangerous perverts from the merely different, and back then victims were also whispered about instead of being encouraged to come forward. Evidence that porn is responsible for crime is shaky at best--Several orders of magnitude increase in availability and consumption in under a generation, but sexual assault is down. There is some evidence that for some marginal predators, porn is enough to satisfy them without harming others.
ReplyDeleteChildren are almost certainly safer now overall (despite some inner-city hellholes which may be worse) than they have ever been--but what little does happen has much wider reporting.