LAW VS. MORAL VALUES

@DrewDad,

Whatever Drewdad. I can separate the wheat from the chaff in many things including the postive and negatives inherent in history or modern times. If you can't appreciate that then fine. Go talk with Setanta about it. The two of you will have a lot of common. Just leave me out of it.

I am more in tune with Aiden and those like her who can appreciate a good thing no matter what era it comes from and doesn't think that it can't be considered if there is also something bad in the same period. Do I think that it is unfortunate that some good things from the 50s are harder to come by now? Yes I do. Do I think that there are good things now that would have been a good thing to have in the 50s? Yes I do. So sue me.

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@Foxfyre,

Oh, I can appreciate the differences. I just don't wail and gnash my teeth that things have changed.

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@DrewDad,

Why not? I think that's the first step to changing them if they need to be changed - even if it's not back to how they were before.

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@Foxfyre,

God, talk about pig-headed. What was so damned good? That the people you remember were courteous? You claim it was safer, but the crime rate was higher. You claim that there was less fooling around by teenagers, but the teen pregnancy rate was higher. About the only thing you got right is that more children are now born out of wedlock. So? People these days, those who don't remember life 50 years ago, aren't judgmental about that. They don't care if someone was born out of wedlock, they judge them on the content of their character. They don't care what race someone is, they judge them on the content of their character. They don't care if someone is homosexual, they judge them on the content of their character.

I guess you didn't get the message Martin Luther King was trying to get across. No surprises there.

And as for history, i've never met anyone who knows less about history, while thinking she knows everything about history, than you.

1 Reply

Once again, your complaints are a chimera, a shopworn complaint that people have made for thousands of years, literally.

Hesiod, circa 700 BCE, wrote:

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.”

People have been singing your silly song for as long as we have an historical record.

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@Setanta,

Yeah.
Being young, this thread seems alien to me somewhat.
The idea that sex before marriage is somehow 'wrong' or 'improper' even when the two people 'like' or 'fancy' each other I find extremely odd. I'm culturally conditioned to find the judgement of it more offensive than the act.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

What I'm trying to say is, it's all relative.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

Quote:

I'm culturally conditioned to find the judgement of it more offensive than the act.

That's exactly the sort of thing i'm talking about. I am very optimistic about our future, because it is my experience that people under 40 these days are far less judgmental than people were when i was young.

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In my opinion, people, including young people, are every bit as judgmental now as they were in previous generations. They are just judgmental about different things and in those things that they judge, they may be even more intolerant than those of previous generations. Just look at how many universities would ban or block an ideologically 'inappropriate' speaker on their campuses now. When I was in college we embraced people of differing views, treated them with the utmost respect, and would not have considered being rude or uncivil.

Different times.

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@Foxfyre,

I find it difficult to conceive of any group more intolerant than White Anglo-Saxon Protestants from the post-war generation.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre. Name one group that we were more tolerant of in the 1950s than we are today.

((yes I would accept White Christians as a valid answer))

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Ooo Ooo . . . i can answer that . . . DWEMs . . .

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

In my opinion, people, including young people, are every bit as judgmental now as they were in previous generations. They are just judgmental about different things and in those things that they judge, they may be even more intolerant than those of previous generations. Just look at how many universities would ban or block an ideologically 'inappropriate' speaker on their campuses now. When I was in college we embraced people of differing views, treated them with the utmost respect, and would not have considered being rude or uncivil.

Hmmm.
That wasn't really directed to my post.
At my university we are very liberal/socialist. So yes, we are intolerant to conservatism in some respect, but I can't gauge my experiences in relation to yours. I doubt your university was quite as open minded as you are making it out to be. University is about widening your perspective.

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@ebrown p,

I went to a state university but it was during a time where the student population was largely white Protestant though we did have a fair number of students of other races and there was a Catholic student group--we prayed before school assemblies and football games--we said the pledge of allegiance at many assemblies, the campus was dry and no liquor was allowed, I doubt there were many if any students who did not openly profess Christianity, and we were as a student body far more conservative than I am today.

Among those I can remember that we invited to speak was a Communist from Russia, a lecturer on the virtues of Paganism, some guy lecturing on the legalization of alcohol, women's rights advocates, conscientious objectors, and some guy arguing for the emancipation of children at a younger age than 18. We attended the lectures, applauded politely as appropriate, and treated the speakers with courtesy. Later certain sponsoring classes would discuss the experience later. As a student report for the college paper, I had to attend all of them and also write up a piece for journalism class. There was never an audible 'boo' to be heard. We might be vehemently opposed to what they said, but they were treated as the invited guests they were anyway.

I can't imagine a Congressman or Senator losing his seat or position then due to saying something politically incorrect. I can't imagine anybody being fired for making an off color joke no matter how offensive.

Compare that with now. A basketball owner is forced to sell her team because of a joking racial remark; a mob demands that a radio/TV host be fired for saying something politically incorrect. A Senator is required to give up his leadership position because he says something 'offensive' in complimenting a 90-year-old colleague. There is great controversy whether President Obama should be accepted at Notre Dame. Military recruiters are ordered off the Berkeley campus and numerous speakers are either not invited, uninvited, or booed or shouted down because they profess a different perspective than that held by their listeners. A beauty queen is publically ridiculed and scorned and probably didn't win because she dared express, in a kind and non offensive way, that she believed in traditional marriage. Religious symbols or artwork is banned. Only 'correct' speech is defended and all 'incorrect' speech can be banned.

Nobody will convince me that there was more intolerance in the 50's than what we see every day now.

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

Nobody will convince me that there was more intolerance in the 50's than what we see every day now.

Truer words were never spoken, no matter what the facts are.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Don't ya just hate it when you start a thread with one point in mind, but then everyone objects to your basic premise and before you can even get started down the path you originally intended, the thread suddenly veers off in an entirely unexpected direction. I hate it when that happens.

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@Setanta,

It isn't here yet, but from what I've heard that atheist campaign sounds good. It sends a message, but is not offensive enough to be banned by religionist authorities. I'm glad to see atheists are finally banding together and speaking out... but then there is the question of whether it just turns us into another religion.

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@dyslexia,

dyslexia wrote:

Quote:
Nobody will convince me that there was more intolerance in the 50's than what we see every day now.

Truer words were never spoken, no matter what the facts are.

We can define "truth" as the REVERSE
of whatever Dys says, owing to his *condition*.

C how politically correct I can be ??

David

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I went to a state university but it was during a time where the student population was largely white Protestant though we did have a fair number of students of other races and there was a Catholic student group--we prayed before school assemblies and football games--we said the pledge of allegiance at many assemblies, the campus was dry and no liquor was allowed, I doubt there were many if any students who did not openly profess Christianity, and we were as a student body far more conservative than I am today.

Among those I can remember that we invited to speak was a Communist from Russia, a lecturer on the virtues of Paganism, some guy lecturing on the legalization of alcohol, women's rights advocates, conscientious objectors, and some guy arguing for the emancipation of children at a younger age than 18. We attended the lectures, applauded politely as appropriate, and treated the speakers with courtesy. Later certain sponsoring classes would discuss the experience later. As a student report for the college paper, I had to attend all of them and also write up a piece for journalism class. There was never an audible 'boo' to be heard. We might be vehemently opposed to what they said, but they were treated as the invited guests they were anyway.

I can't imagine a Congressman or Senator losing his seat or position then due to saying something politically incorrect. I can't imagine anybody being fired for making an off color joke no matter how offensive.

Compare that with now. A basketball owner is forced to sell her team because of a joking racial remark; a mob demands that a radio/TV host be fired for saying something politically incorrect. A Senator is required to give up his leadership position because he says something 'offensive' in complimenting a 90-year-old colleague. There is great controversy whether President Obama should be accepted at Notre Dame. Military recruiters are ordered off the Berkeley campus and numerous speakers are either not invited, uninvited, or booed or shouted down because they profess a different perspective than that held by their listeners. A beauty queen is publically ridiculed and scorned and probably didn't win because she dared express, in a kind and non offensive way, that she believed in traditional marriage. Religious symbols or artwork is banned. Only 'correct' speech is defended and all 'incorrect' speech can be banned.

Nobody will convince me that there was more intolerance in the 50's than what we see every day now.

I gotta say: I took a different filosofy of this.
When I was in college, during the Third World War,
invited commies were always fair game, by my definition.
The creative invective that I hurled at them
was confined only by the limits of my imagination.

I earnestly did my best to humiliate them.
I was of the vu that commies were lucky that we were polite enuf
that we did not burn them at the stake
(tho I had some doubts about the wisdom of that policy).

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

PQ said:

Quote:

I'm culturally conditioned to find the judgement of it more offensive than the act.

I am too. And the funny thing is that the aspect of my particular culture which had the most influence in conditioning me to do that, is the church I went to-not the generation I belong to- which is the one before yours PQ.

I'm sitting here laughing as I type that (though it's totally true) because I know that people won't believe that because it doesn't fit their prescribed notion of who and what influences people to be either tolerant or judgmental.

To be honest though, I think in the main, it's a function of personality moreso than anything else. And by that I mean that two people can be exposed to the same cultural conditioning and react totally differently, because I believe that some personalities NEED to be able to measure and compare and mete out judgment while others would rather not and in fact find it uncomfortable to do so.

Which goes back to William's treatise on discrimination. I think there's a difference in being discriminating and discriminatory.
Maybe people today are less discriminatory against groups of people, but more discrimantory against ideas.
And in terms of having sex - they seem a whole lot less discriminating...is that a good thing? I don't know...
Whether this is a function of political correctness as cultural conditioning (because that can be an indoctrination just as people believe religion to be) or the fact that young people today are just more thoughtful, intelligent, kind and accepting - I tend to believe the former.
I think people are people and tend to be the product of their times.
I think most people, outside of a few mavericks, thank god- who fight for change- tend to believe what they're brought up being told to believe.
So I think it's good that people are more accepting of people who are different now, but I don't think it necessarily means that the people who were brought up in this era, where that has been the mantra, are necessarily better people than those who weren't.

My daughter - who is a good, kind soul and 32 years younger than I am- is always telling me why I shouldn't be friends with a certain person, or why she can't be friends with someone who acts in ways she doesn't see fit.
She's not judgmental in terms of sexuality, race, etc. No,never. But she's more judgmental than I am in terms of people and their behavior- particularly around addictions.
I tell her all the time, she needs to give people a break.
But on the other hand, it's sort of a relief because I know she won't have any patience for that in a relationship, which thank god- will save her a lot of grief.

So judgment and discrimination are necessary. Everything SHOULDN'T be tolerated.

1 Reply

LAW VS. MORAL VALUES

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