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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (48220)	8/1/1999 9:20:00 PM
From: jpmac	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

<big dramatic sigh> I hate to think I have brought such a mood upon you ::I can say that now that I've looked up lugubrious:: We do eventually reach that point of knowing more dead than live people, at least among those whom we've been close to. I reached it early. Sometimes the thought of knowing a whole patch of new people is overwhelming. Oh, no, I'm getting maudlin. I think I'll sign off with another sigh and watch the end of "The Simpsons". Some modern culture is good for us. Or distracting, at least. <g>

To: jbe who wrote (48220)	8/2/1999 3:07:00 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 108807

A couple more observation about the '60s: The country is still tired from the '60s in many ways. One of the things that everyone tends to forget is that in 1965 it was only 20 years from the end of the Second World War. I find cracks about the cloying domesticity of the '50s distasteful for that reason, everyone was entitled to want to get back to their families and have a little peace and quiet. But it was not that simple. We had already fought in Korea, and were getting entangled in Vietnam at an alarming rate. We had the nuclear scare in general, and tensions over Berlin and Cuba in particular. We had experienced a post- War boom that basically continued, but we had already been wracked for at least 10 years, from the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, with racial unrest, and a growing sense of being under scrutiny from the "world community" about our "social problems", like the decaying urban cores and Appalachia. We had still not entirely settled into peace, either at home or abroad. And then, in just a few years, there would be explosions: massive race riots, wave after wave of anti- war protest, a sense that things were going berserk. The more radical members of the anti- war Left handed the White House to Richard Milhous Nixon, by the complete mess that was made at the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago. All that they proved was that there was anarchy in the streets, and that the Democrats were incompetent to deal with it. Instead of feeling that we had reaped the fruits of victory and of virtue, for having come to the rescue of the Old World, we began to feel as if there were an alarming waywardness in American culture. In a fundamental way, people became more anxious and mistrustful, and it was not until the presidency of Reagan that many people began to have confidence in America again. Paradoxically, given Reagan's small government rhetoric, various polling organizations found that the trust in government increased during his time in office, because so many felt confidence in his leadership. Nevertheless, the Sixties were not so easily put behind us, and a lot of the sensitivity over the Clinton's has to do with their youth and role in some of the events of those times. If you bought the more chastened image, then maybe they could bring back some of the idealism and activism of the era and make sure that it was constructive. If you thought that it was all bull-----, then the indulgence and rashness of the era had taken up residence in the White House.....

To: jbe who wrote (48220)	8/2/1999 11:30:00 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Some supplementary observations: The modern world is characterized by a kind of traumatic blow to settled arrangements and traditional certainties, occasioned by varied processes, such as industrialization; urbanization; the revolution in science and technology; the breakdown of Christendom into competing sects and the making of civil peace through the quasi- secularization of society; and the radical questioning of the ground of knowledge and ethics into which philosophy fell. Conservatives cannot reverse these trends, but try to "ride the tiger", so to speak, affirming the continuities in our culture over the discontinuities, and taking a stand for maintaining human values. However, to do this properly it is necessary to realize how traumatic all of this has been, and in order to convey conservative insights to a larger audience it is necessary to appreciate that they inherited a bit of a mess, and that the mess is bigger than this generation, and part of something that transcends the responsibility of particular individuals, although it demands from us a response....