Our friend's brother

[Sam A. Robrin]

I wish I could say I was alive back then in order to be able to compare the difference. The vast majority of the things you listed were things I've been raised with....whats a free world like?

It was no free world then, either (you didn't spend your teenaged years worrying about the draft, for example), but there was an absence of restrictions unnoticeable except in hindsight.  People like me who pointed out certain historical indications of a decaying infrastructure were told that since things could be worse, then of course, they couldn't be better; or we were dismissed as hysterical lunatics, much like the "alarmists" in 1913 who warned that the income tax could one day climb to ten percent . . .

I suppose I was rather unclear. I didn't mean to imply I thought it was free then, just freer than it is now. Though I suppose there might be some things that have improved and some that have worsened. I just wish I was able to say I experienced both for comparative reasons.

I took your meaning.  In a huge variety of ways, life then was less unfree--not the same as more free!--then than now, in ways few could have predicted . . . though we science-fiction fans had bit of a drop on the rest of the populace!  The metastasis is so gradual, it's no wonder the less educated haven't noticed.

[Ogre]

I see one of the stark differences when some things happen. Like today, when I read a friend's Facebook post. He was happy because he had been searched by the police. Well, they searched his car because they saw a large hunting knife in the back seat, so he figured he deserved to be searched. But he was proud because he complied and he didn't get a ticket "or anything."

I tried to explain how its not normal to get searched, but he was just so happy that since he complied with the search, he didn't get a ticket.

[Sam A. Robrin]

I recall a Quaker meeting in 1969 during which a (presumed) college student stood up and made an impassioned plea to all to "fuck the draft."  Several old women stood and hobbled out . . .

[specter34]

uhg.... I have Trained, cared for, ridden many a horse in my day and can tell you being wasted saddled is no place you want to be, dumb shit got what he deserved.  bye bye DL roflmao