Talleyrand, apostate Bishop and Napoleon’s foreign minister, used to say that those born after the French Revolution would never know how sweet life could be. I was born in 1957, but I have a similar feeling for the late fifties and the early sixties. It wasn’t utopia as history would show, but it was a time of optimism, relative innocence and hope, something we in the West have clearly lost. In this Vale of Tears God provides us many of the elements to build near paradises and we too often instead busy ourselves in building images of Hell on Earth. As Walpole noted long ago, History is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.
How Sweet Life Once Was
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
My twenties were spent in the 50’s in college, grad school, and just beginning teaching. I didn’t know how good I had it then.
I look back on my youth [born November 1950] and conclude I was undoubtedly one of the richest kids in America.
We did not have money. I had loving parents and a huge extended family that was often together. They let us be children as long as possible.
We had Faith, hope, love, and innocence.
Now their forcing school children to experience drag queen shows affirm their emotional/psychological pathologies, and if you say you don’t want it for your child, you’re a domestic terrorist and more hateful than the Nazi SA.
[…] PopeWatch: Would It Surprise You? – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic How Sweet Life Once Was – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic Lent With Saint Teresa of Avila – […]
I was born at the end of the Baby Boom. I will be 60 this year.
My own worthless opinion is that there was a kind of Golden Age from about 1947 or so until Kennedy’s assassination. No, things were not perfect and never are, but some longstanding problems began to be solvecd, such as Jim Crow and polio.
Television might have been at its best until the mid to late 60s. Suburbia began, because one could afford a home without being crammed into small and aging rowhouses/tenements.
Every so often, there are YouTube videos just showing pictures of everyday life of ordinary Americans all over the country during this time period.
It is gone and not returning.
Unlike too many Baby Boomers, who all get lumped into one glob and treated as a monolithic bunch, I always had an interest in history because one cannot understand why things are the way they are without it.