Sure…but only in the sense that you could also win a thread upon my answering no to the question of whether I could be convinced that the Earth is flat or that astronauts never really landed on the moon.
(And so you see: the bull not only hasn’t been killed; he isn’t even wounded. ;))
Good night.
Starving Artist, read this revision of a statement you made:
There is also no question that the problems I just mentioned exist, and there is no question that they have become exponentially worse since the Eisenhower Administration. Yet somehow – if one is to believe what he reads around here – none of it is the fault of the war in Southeast Asia which began under that Administration.
Do you see how easy it is to change a few words without changing factual accuracy, and come to a different conclusion about what caused the problems we have now? I’m not saying that that is my own conclusion. I could put in any number of things. That was just off the top of my head. The truth is that many many factors – generations of factors – worked together toward where we find ourselves today.
And what may seem like degeneration into hell for you may seem like a glimpse of light and a breath of air for others. My life is better than my mother’s. In fact, my life is better now than it was when I was twenty-five!
Being permitted to do something is good. Why does the word permissive bother you? Being liberal with freedom is good. Be conservative with the environment and natural resources. Be conservative about future corporate welfare programs. Be conservative with wasteful defense spending and liberal with funds for protective gear for those in the military.
Be liberal with compassion and conservative with fault-finding.
Don’t forget that the 1950s was a time of great fear that someone was going to drop an atom bomb on us. Some people built bomb shelters. Some places had air raid drills. Our school had dog tags for the students. It had our names, our fathers’ names, our addresses, our blood types, and our religious affiliations. It was explained to me that that was so they would know which pile to put our bodies in. (Of course, we were all Protestants.)
We were afraid that Wicked Communists were everywhere and wanted to overthrow our government and change our wonderful American way of life. We couldn’t trust anyone – not writers, movie stars, people in government, our neighbors, our teachers. There was even a fear that Communists would get to us by putting flouride in the water. We didn’t know what it would do to our minds.
It was a cold and paranoid existence for white America. I can’t imagine the misery it must have been for minority races with the Jim Crow Laws and tensions growing as Little Rock Central integrated.
And every single wedding that I went to (with the exception of one woman who married a minister) in the 1950s and early 1960s ended in divorce.
Cite?
I feel like you are ignoring my post upthread, since your response here isn’t really 100% clear to me–if a girl gets pregnant and THEN married, are we counting this as an “unwed teen pregnancy” or not?
I personally would. I’ve had the impression from upthread that you would not. Could you clarify?