By Georg

(Views expressed in this column are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the owner of this publication.) Society has come a long way in the last 30 years. Unfortunately, it seems to have travelled in the wrong direction.There was a lot wrong with America in 1969, but have we rid ourselves of some afflictions only to have suffered new, even worse ailments?In the 1960s the father was the undisputed head of the house. His rulings on family matters were the last word. Father knew best, and that was that.The mother had ambitions – to be equal with her husband as provided for in the marriage vows. But the father was the breadwinner, leaving his family every day to slave away at the office while his wife took care of the home. That’s the way it had always been.In the learned halls of education it was decided that the mother should have equal say with her husband in the family. The mother should not be chained to the home. She should be free to pursue her own choices, whatever those choices might be.It sounded logical, we are all created equal.But what we have received from that is a household where neither parent is home for the children. A household where the kids come home from school to an empty house with no one to guide them in the choices they must make. No one to spend an hour with them before supper, to influence them into making proper decisions, to help them at a critical time. In seeking to follow our own destiny we have cheated the children.In the 1960s there was a general respect for law and order. Yes, there were some police officers that were not a credit to the force, but most officers wanted to serve the community, to keep the honest citizens safe from the lesser elements of society.There were some officers who knew particular people to be a constant problem. These officers knew how to deal with these types of people, kids as well as adults. Police officers knew how to talk with the disruptive individuals in a kind of language that was hard to misunderstand. But our streets were safe. We could take a walk at night without worry.Now we have a police force that is mired in sensitivity training, lest they offend some punk who wants to sell crack cocaine to other underprivileged people. After all, is not the punk just a misunderstood creature of society’s ills, trying to scrape a living off the streets? Why don’t the police just leave him alone? The police officer of today would not even think of having a certain talk with the criminal type, lest he end up in a lawsuit for violating the criminal’s civil rights.In trying to protect everyone’s civil rights we have cheated ourselves of our own rights. We live in fear. In the 1960s a person could leave the home unlocked; now we have a multitude of alarms and protective devices to seal the criminals out and ourselves in.In the 1960s we lived by a moral code that kept us safe. The rate of teenage pregnancies was deplorable, but not remarkable. Divorces still occurred, but were a result of an initial wrong decision.Now we have the politicians wanting the school board to give away condoms so that the teenagers can have safe sex. What kind of message is this? We adults understand your needs to have sex, so be safe? How about abstinence? We should be telling the teenage girl to give that jerk of a boyfriend the old heave-ho.We have no-fault divorce to make separating from the partner – whom we promised to love for al time – that much easier. Marriage has become nothing more than legalized sex, with divorce allowing for an easy change of partners.Television in the 1960s showed morality to an extent that today’s generation can only imagine. In the 1960s even married couples slept in different beds.Those days of television are now dismissed by enlightened individuals as unrealistic, as not portraying a real family. Today’s family is represented by the likes of Roseanna Barr and other dysfunctional television families.I don’t know about the rest of America, but I prefer to live with a family like Dick Van Dye and Mary Tyler Moore’s television family.In the 1960s the most popular television show was the Andy Griffith Show. Now look what comes across the television screen – Two and a Half Men; The New Adventures of Old Christine; How I Met Your Mother; Big Brother – and ask yourself if this is progress.Before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled religion out of the schools we had a first class educational system. Now look at what we have, a generation of kids that cannot think for themselves, cannot make decisions affecting their future, and cannot even realize they have been cheated out of an education. Universities are awash in remedial courses designed to bring these students up to a level where they can almost understand the textbook.In order to be fair to every religious belief and creed we have allowed the courts to make schools free of any religious influence. We have allowed the dark side to teach our children, to remove the moral code that keeps society on the right path. We have not only cheated our children, we have cheated ourselves.Today, we hold ourselves high for being fair and open-minded. But at what cost? Pornography existed in the 1960s but was sold in sleazy establishments that one entered through the dark shadows. Now, we are overrun by this filth, sold openly and without worry. We don’t even have to buy it, it is available online in the privacy of our own home.Drug abuse was a problem in the ‘60s, but now it is considered high class to snort some designer drug while condemning the crack dealer across the railroad tracks.We pay our sports athletes top dollar for a shallow product, while we pay our teachers and police officers a charity wage.By georg, with all its shortcomings, I still prefer the 1960s America.