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I think the way we think about crime is the problem. There seems to be no sympathy for the victim and everybody is bending over backwards to make sure the criminal is not wronged in any way. I see that trend as to when our society started into the lawless society. I think that is changing now though. We are getting more laws to protect the victim from being wrongly treated by the criminal, but some things are still crazy with the way some people think. I saw on The Five today where a little girl that has come to the aid of a special needs child that was being bullied, she ended up in trouble for bullying. She should have been rewarded for being a hero. When children are taught wrong, they get confused and don't know how they should act.
When I hear statements about it being wrong to shoot an unarmed person that is breaking into your home, I wonder at the sanity of the person speaking. An unarmed person who is bigger than I am could do me a lot of harm. I don't want to wait until that person starts throwing blows to point my gun.
I once heard a person say that the lowering of test scores in our schools started when prayer was taken out. It is a little hard for a teacher to teach when one has to spend most of the day trying to keep order in the classroom. I memorized the 23rd Psalm in the third grade as an assignment. When children are not taught right values they grow up in a valueless society. They have no sense of direction or value. Those shouting a separation of churh and state are also bringing about a lack of respect for law and order. The Bible teaches order and there are actually verses addressing the order on earth. Many in our society have lost their sense of order and have all gone their separate ways. If it feels right, do it; is not an orderly life.
Cool that mid-sixties came to my mind, and then I read 1965 from some, here. When the rock got harder than the Beatles, it did seem to grow exponentially, so that by the early seventies our high schools were full of pot smokers, some cheap acid around campuses, the real Acid, LSD on college campuses and sex was an extra-curricular activity.
I think it was a reference to the good old days when cops were allowed to gun down anyone they pleased anytime they wished. If it turned out that the deceased had been a criminal, swell. If it was innocent citizen, well, that was a shame but it was the price paid for greater security. (Gunning down minorities didn't count, if they weren't actually criminals, then they would have gone on to become criminals had they not been fortunately killed by law enforcement officials.)
Huckleberry probably yearns for some new Omnibus Federal Crime law which would juice up the power of our police officers to SS levels. Perhaps a "Stop and Spit Law" which allows police to expectorate on passers by to test them for potentially hostile reactions. Then there would be the "Go Fish Law" which expands warrantless search and seizure to include all domiciles where the residents "just seem a little suspicious." And we could finally put the arm once and for all on those traitors at the ballpark who aren't standing for "God Bless America"...the "Insufficient Patriotism Law" will allow the cops to wade in under such circumstances and give the disloyal spectator the full Rodney King treatment.
Huckleberry knows his history and is aware that the more a nation is a police state, the happier the citizens always seem to be.
I think I read somewhere that 1965 was the start of America's crime wave. That was the start of the hippie movement and crime started to go up with the breakdown in society connected with drugs, rock music and a lack of respect for authority. It has been downhill since then.
My parents said that before that year life was more peaceful, the crime rate was very low, families were stronger, illegal drug use was limited and kids behaved in school.
Historians: was 1965 the start of the downward spiral in American society?
I don't know I'm not a professional historian (more of an armchair type) but I remember reading an excerpt from a history book (a preface) that berated the loss of morals, the high crime, the frequent use of drugs. The subject of the book was on the happenings in a small town called salem) and the date of the book was (if remember correctly) 1815. the drugs were alcohol (many different types the writer was really hooked on cider) and tobacco. Maybe its all relative to the date and what is proscribed in that time. what do you think?
Part of the problem is "What is a crime?" That definition has changed since the 60's. There are way more crimes today, and thus way more reasons to lock people up. Things that were a slap on the wrist in the 60's are now 30 years to life. Our prisons are filled 50% with drug offenders that never would have been locked up in the 60's.
I don't know I'm not a professional historian (more of an armchair type) but I remember reading an excerpt from a history book (a preface) that berated the loss of morals, the high crime, the frequent use of drugs. The subject of the book was on the happenings in a small town called salem) and the date of the book was (if remember correctly) 1815. the drugs were alcohol (many different types the writer was really hooked on cider) and tobacco. Maybe its all relative to the date and what is proscribed in that time. what do you think?
People lived hard, mean lives and they used alchol, frequently homebrew, to make it tolerable long before that. And while ladies didn't publically drink, some drowned their hard labor in secret bottles. More used the popular 'remedies' which were often alchol mixed with things like laudinum, which is a narcotic based in opium. A practiced and taught method of quieting a crying baby was a few drops of laudinum. Women and well as men became addicts to things some didn't even know were alchol and as drugs they did not think bad of them. If they helped you get through the day, what harm?
The whole prohibition movement started because use of alchol was out of control and hurting the wives and children of addicts. The idea of banning it was considered proper because it was considered a thing of the devil. We know how that worked out. Eventually those who want to wipe out a long history of drug use in our society, since it began, will give up and see that the war on drugs is a failure as far as drugs is concerned. Other things, not so much, but that's not this thread.
There was probably less violence and crime, aside from clashes with natives, not because people were more peaceful, but because there were a whole lot less of them. The more population you cram into a space, the more opportunities. That punishments were draconian didn't detur those who were criminals. They just tried not to get caught. In smaller, more isolated areas, however, the society itself was more shaprly defined and exerted more control. It was not necessarily because it was a better one, but because it was a smaller one. If you generally didn't want to be part of it you usually left.
Our exploding population, the crowding of bodies and the social concequences of that, and the morphing of society as so many elements mixed changed that controlling society to one where those who don't belong do not have to leave. A plus for those on the 'outside'. It also splintered it into many societies within one, sharing the same space, and the social controls relaxed. Those who things its wonderful can glorify it. Those who think its disastorus can villify it. But anytime you crowd too many together, people will splinter and begin to identify with their local social 'village'.
And if you consider crime, do you apply today's standards or a past time's standards? If today's then the early past was full of abusers and drug users. If you apply their own, it was how people generally accepted it to be. Come another hundred years, I'm sure they'll find some awful sins we commit which we don't see since its NOT to us. Always define where your coming from first because the answer changes based on that.
Weren't people doing drugs 100 years ago before they were all illegal?
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