A Peek at America before 1950 and the Assault by the Left, by Anthony DeBlasi.
Picture a neighborhood composed of low and middle income families, each with two parents, no homeless people, no street drugs, safe to walk the streets at night. Is this the figment of an overactive imagination? Well, it is in fact a peek at a neighborhood in New York City where the son of immigrant parents read The New York Times every morning in high school, before orchestra rehearsal. Me. The principal, strongly authoritarian and well loved, opened a weekly assembly of highly diverse youngsters by reading a psalm from the Bible. Tough-as-nails, yet tenderhearted teachers passed on a tradition of excellence in thought, expression, and civility while preparing us for a wide range of careers in a free and independent America.
This typical school of 1940s New York City had higher standards and grade profile than any counterpart today and operated on a budget far smaller in equivalent dollars than any current public school budget. In these “backward” times, the schools were free of substance abuse problems, sexual promiscuity, and identity problems. There was an abiding respect for the authority of teachers and parents and for the dignity of every person regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. There were clubs in my school for religion, for foreign languages (including Latin). A Reporters’ Club recorded significant events for the school paper. There were toy drives for a local hospital . . . The list of extracurricular engagements was long. …
Mid-20th century saw a rapid loss of understanding regarding timeless constants relating to the fundamentals of life. “We are living at a time when the status of man is undergoing profound upheavals,” observed Igor Stravinsky in 1947. “Modern man is progressively losing his understanding of values and his sense of proportions. This failure to understand essential realities is extremely serious. It leads us infallibly to the violation of the fundamental laws of human equilibrium.”
So much “progress” by white upper middle class leftists. They are better off. Imagine if they had to get real jobs where they were paid by the market, on a voluntary basis, instead of living off tax dollars collected by threat of force. This includes the hordes of vocal lefties who are government consultants or work for an NGO, or some other product of big government by the left. No wonder they are always on about moral differences and how bad other people are — a combination of projection and guilty conscience.
