Are Things Better Than 50 Years Ago?

Note: I began this note on Saturday 6 May. On Sunday morning, I went to work out at my hotel for a bit, and I loaded up the always great Commentary Daily Podcast. There, I saw that the Friday 5 May offering was on this very subject. I commend it to you for additional discussion of this topic.

I’ve seen a few references in media lately to opinion providers providing opinions that things were “actually” better fifty years ago than they are today. I think this is utter poppycock, and those who hold this opinion are not to be taken seriously. I was drawing breath on this Earth in 1973, and while I was just a child, I have memories of what life was like. Putting aside externalities like war (Vietnam) and the economy (oil shortages)—things that can happen in any era—comparing what general life was like for the average American yields an overwhelming and obvious choice that things are demonstrably better today than they were then. I don’t think this is debatable, and so I will not debate it.

Men’s Fashion, 1973

I was in the company of friends of long standing this weekend (a fraternity brother was getting married in Atlanta), and when this conversation came up, we pretty instantaneously arrived at unanimity on this subject. What did turn out to be interesting was a discussion of what DISCRETE parts of life were better then, given that we agreed that overall, things were better now. Here are some of the things that came up, or that I have come up with on my own.

• Movies. While there is no question that the pure density of visual entertainment is better today, what with streaming and cable and whatnot, we seemed to agree that movie-making, dare I say “film-making” was better then. Personally, the way I measure this is the wholly unscientific approach I bring that derives from the occasional glance at what is playing at my local theater. I rarely want to “go to the movies” these days, and it seems like 90% of what is available is derivative comic book crap.

• Childhood independence and play. The group I was with were not only breathing 50 years ago, but there were plenty of children produced by the group. Everyone agreed that we had it better as children; that we had a much longer leash and we had greater recourse to unsupervised play/activity.

• Boxing and horse racing. Let’s face it—both of these sports/spectacles are a bit down on their luck these days. Boxing has been replaced by the brutality and ugliness of MMA, and horse racing enters our consciousness once a year around this time. Honestly—is there anyone in your life who has gone to the racetrack in the past year?

• The perception of a national identity. This one is fraught, but I raise it because as someone who felt it (obviously more so as I aged), and it is worth mentioning. We have become an atomized nation of identities, and a diminished sense of a national identity is the result.

• Politics, generally. When I think about the conduct of Congress as a legislative body, there is no question but that it functioned better in the 70’s. All sorts of “reforms” have led to the sclerotic state of the legislative branch, but term limiting committee chairs, neutering committee chairs, getting rid of ear-marks, and campaign finance laws—all have created a performative, theater of the absurd legislature rather than a deliberative body. Alongside the decline of Congress has been the decline of the political parties. The democratizing impulse of primaries and the impact of campaign finance on party activities has led to a two-party system where neither party can effectively discipline its members (or on the other hand, promote good behavior), and where the parties often live in fear of external organizations that are able to raise money that the parties cannot.

• Muscle cars. 1973 represented the high water mark of the muscle car. There is no question but that the muscle cars of that day were head and shoulders above the ridiculous attempts to recapture that glory masquerading as muscle cars today. That said, who the hell would want a bulky, loud, uncomfortable tank to drive today? Cars in general are HEAD AND SHOULDERS better than cars were then.

Christine Rosen makes a great point in the podcast mentioned above about the double-edge sword that is the ubiquity of information. Yes—having the universe at one’s fingertips can be wonderful. The bad side of it is the buffeting we receive on a daily basis from the overload of information that same device delivers.

Another Shooting or Two

I woke this morning (Sunday) to news of another couple of mass shootings (Texas and Chicago), and I wonder if I am alone in thinking that at some point, we might get tired of this. I’m not the biggest Second Amendment fan, but I am a HUGE fan of the Constitution, and so I look at the Second Amendment as no less worthy of protection than the rest of the Bill of Rights. It seems to me though, that there is a growing inconsistency with the protections afforded by the amendment and the social development of our society. To wit, we long ago walked away from anything resembling a responsible set of policies for dealing with the mentally ill, and so we mainstream them, we leave them to their medication, and we fetishize their maladies in our media and entertainment (but, I repeat myself) worlds. At the same time, we have embraced our differences, choosing to identify with whatever smallest tribe that one can choose in order to protect our oh-so-important individuality and highlight our uniqueness. Getting back to the “what was better 50 years ago?” discussion, I think this is related to the loss of a perception of a national identity—nay, the purposeful undermining thereof.

In other words, a society that treated mental illness with seriousness AND which had a shared sense of community and values pertaining to right and wrong—was a society that could be responsibly relied upon to co-exist with a protected right to keep and bear arms. It occurs to me that THIS society—one that defaults to privacy rights of the mentally ill and that appears to harbor neither the desire to pay for nor the desire to implement—re-institutionalization of the mentally ill—will always uneasily co-exist with a protected right to arms. A society where one pulls the curtain aside to see who is at the front door because one rationally believes the person on the other side is unlikely to be a murderer or burglar, is far more consistent with broad gun ownership rights than a society in which tribal differences lead to the perception that shooting the person standing there is the wisest alternative available. We are a wounded, divided society—and it seems that maybe, just maybe—half a billion guns in the mix might not be the greatest idea.

I don’t know how to fix this, but the SAME document that lends unassailable support for the right to keep and bear arms contains methods for legitimately assailing it. Renegade judges making law on their own is not the answer. Aggressive legislatures impinging on the existing right—are not the answer. The answer—to the extent that one exists at all—is for the general society to come together and consider amending the Second Amendment. This is a long and arduous process. By design. We cannot willy-nilly abrogate the Bill of Rights. But the genius of the framers and the document they gave us, is that we can think about how the keeping and bearing of arms can better exist with the society that we have evolved into. Because this is a right protected SPECIFICALLY in the Constitution, very little of what passes for policy ideas to make things better (at least those focusing on guns) will have any impact because they won’t pass Constitutional muster. You want change? Get moving on an amendment.