Having been born in the 1950's, I was already in school when JFK became president. It makes for an interesting study to look at all the horrible things we kids were required to put up with back then (pollution, second-hand smoke, hardly any safety regulations, and let's not forget the strange ideas we were taught in school), and compare it all to the way things are different since liberalism starting making life better.

First off, who could disagree with the idea our kids are safer now? They have to wear helmets and pads when they are engaging in low-risk activities such as riding bikes and roller skating, they have mandatory seatbelts and child safety seats in cars (some of which are so complicated people can't use them properly), they rarely if ever do any of the alarming things we kids in the 60's did at recess, and most kids today no longer walk by themselves to the bus stop. Instead, their parents now give them personal escorts. If it is raining, or just threatening to possibly rain, the parents actually drive the kids to the stop, and then they sit in the car waiting till the bus arrives. No mom would have done any of those bus stop things when I was going to school, and back then, if ever a parent was required to provide any school related support at all, it was always the mom. Nowadays the dad, if there is one, is just as likely as the mom to be doing this stuff.

Not to drift too far from the subject at hand, but I have to ask, now that I have a hard time driving through my neighborhood because so many cars are blocking the road on both sides while the parents are waiting for the bus, if you are one of those parents so worried about your twelve year old's safety he or she can't even go to the bus stop unaccompanied, why then do you let your child just a few years later go off alone at night to hang around with kids you don't even know? Having been a teenager myself at a time when drug use and "Free love" were a part of the culture, I can tell you the dangers teens face from a lack of adult supervision at night while hanging out with other teenagers are a lot more serious than any dangers they might face at the bus stop.

As far as the protection of our kids is concerned, I should like to point out there are some enormous counter-dangers to over protecting them as well. To better illustrate the counter-dangers, let us examine what happens when we provide protected areas for wildlife. Where I currently live we have parks with lakes and ponds in them, and there are signs all over the place warning us these are protected wetlands. Deer, ducks and geese are so comfortable having people around they don't run or fly away from humans. Cars even stop for these critters when they cross roads close to the parks. The ducks and geese especially have learned how to do this. They go to the edge of the road, bob their head and necks a couple times to tell cars to stop, and then they confidently step out.

Cars wait patiently for entire broods to move safely from one side of the road to the other, and since nobody ever honks a horn, no matter how long the line of cars may grow, you get a sense everybody feels they are joyously experiencing a spiritual moment with nature. Aside from the fact the people who want to start singing Kumbayah at such moments are exceedingly annoying, what other stupid things have these folks done here? Just stop and think about it seriously for a moment. Does it honestly make life safer for these creatures when humans behave this way?

For those who haven't figured it out yet, the answer is no. All these folks have done is instill a false sense of security in these poor animals. Since our wildlife tends to migrate to other areas, the animals themselves end up totally unprepared for the real dangers the rest of the world presents. My own dog, on a leash no less, has almost gotten a duck a couple times because the duck felt safe enough to get that close. Now, I love ducks. I think they are among the most beautiful creatures God ever made, but Roxie does not share that attitude. Roxie can't read all the pretty signs - she's more likely to do her business around one than to wonder why it's there - and the only law she follows is the law of nature. Thanks to me Roxie is no real threat to the animal world, but I can't help thinking it might be better just to let Roxie chase after the ducks as a way to introduce some sense of self-preservation into these misguided beings.

Worse, becoming easy prey when these animals later move into unprotected areas isn't their only danger. There's still the problem of having too much trust for cars on roads. I have seen ducks and geese on more than one occasion try to lead their young across freeways, just a few miles from the parks, and the outcome has not been good. My wife and I even had a mother duck and all her ducklings do this to us one time, and they were so close when they jumped out we couldn't possibly stop. There was a car beside us when this happened, and the only reason we didn't all end up in a flaming mass of mangled cars and bodies is because I grabbed the wheel when my wife tried to swerve. She was crying so hard I had to keep holding the wheel until she could settle down enough to pull over, and I have to admit it was a terrible choice to be forced to make, but I just wasn't willing to die for some sadly imprudent ducks. I still feel awful about it, but I would have felt much worse if we had caused the death of the human family in the other vehicle. I got a good look at them as I grabbed the wheel, so I know there were kids in that car.

The way things are now I'd be willing to bet the kids in the other car are so completely unaware they almost got killed they actually hate us for what they saw happen. I also wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn they tried to report our license number to PETA or some other agency. That's pretty much my point. Nowadays kids are far more likely to complain about something they see than they ever are to feel grateful for anything other people might do for them, and they have been so brain-washed their first inclination when seeing one of these new-age "crimes" being committed is to immediately turn in a report to the proper authority.

Who might that proper authority be, you ask? Religious leadership? The police? How about the traditional font of wisdom families relied upon for over a hundred generations - the parent known as dad? Oh, no. None of the old-fashioned, tried and true ideas are acceptable anymore. It doesn't matter how effective such ideas may once have been; all that is important is how old those silly notions are. Using religious guidance, police, and/or parents as true authorities today is simply ridiculous because the ideas behind their usage are far too ancient to be of any real value.

The modern day know-it-alls trying to create a world of peace and beauty are too smart to use anything so outdated. Indeed, all those former authority figures are now the enemies in the contemporary, leftist vision. Under their vision the true authority figures are government agencies or activist groups having titles containing such lofty words as environment, rights, justice, protection, equality, etc. Kids today just have to tell their teacher, and then they can decide whether or not the incident should be reported to whichever organization has the best title. Ain't it great?

Yeah, probably not. Simply teaching kids to respond to a few buzz words instead of taking the time to explain the important lessons mankind has learned over the centuries is a process far more lazy than it is practical. Unfortunately, laziness appears to be the preferred modus operandi. Our children today are practically being taught by sound-bite. With all the skill of a parrot the kids can repeat a few short slogans, (and they can't even bother to hide how incredibly intelligent they think they are after displaying their "proficiency" in remembering those slogans), but just ask them to use their own words to explain what any of the slogans mean, and the whole thing falls apart. All you will receive in answer is blank stares. They may know what words to say, but they don't actually know any meanings behind the words. Some education, huh? When you think about it, all we have actually done is teach our kids stupidity is the highest form of education.

It's amazing how quickly the methods for teaching children the pathway to productive citizenship fell apart. In the space of a single generation (My own useless "Baby-Boomer" generation, by the way), the knowledge acquired from a few thousand years of people learning how to live together has been completely rejected. Unlike the lessons our forefathers learned over the centuries, simply by studying all the causes and effects of human interactions ever discovered, the new knowledge currently being thrown around concerning acceptable social behavior is completely experimental. In fact, it's so experimental there are no actual results at all to which they can point as proof of their convictions. The philosophies they have developed are completely theoretical, and the results they expect from implementation of these concepts can only be described as fiction.

Using the words of a somewhat well-known president you may have actually heard, "Let me be clear", this is the crux in a single sentence: Everything these people expect to happen is a friggin' fantasy!

There is absolutely no rational reason for anybody to expect a genuine "Utopia" to ever develop from the strange policies our social panic-meisters are trying to impose, and the unpleasant truth is only people with the minds of children could ever believe this stuff. The worst part is our kids are actually placing all their trust upon these people having the minds of children. This odd inclination of our ever-so-whiny young generation of whiners to report so-called "crimes" to hysterical agencies is only made more bizarre when you realize the very people they are turning to for help are intellectually hollow. Your average first-grader has more common sense than these folks. Well, at least until that child has been in school long enough to get re-educated. Moreover, the offenses the kids get upset about are directly attributable to the same people who are teaching the kids these things are wrong.

The untainted truth is it's the PETA type boneheads who are really responsible for the sad waterfowl incidents. Before the ducks and geese found themselves being protected, they simply didn't lunge out into traffic. Sure, they may have occasionally crossed roads, but they were at least more cautious about it. Allowing for the possibility stupidity exists even in the animal world, I can't say for certain waterfowl never got run over in the past, but I can say such events were exceedingly rare. I never saw it happen before in my life, and to see it happening so often now is highly disturbing.

I need to stress I never saw any such behavior from ducks and geese anywhere at all before I moved here a few years ago, and that includes when I lived out here thirty years earlier. I've also driven in every state. I've driven from Maine to California, California to Florida, and Florida to Washington, back and forth, several times, and the closest thing I've ever experienced to this encounter with critters was one trip through South Dakota where the prairie dogs were outright suicidal. Thousands of them were running across the road in both directions in such a frenzy the road for several miles was completely covered with their bodies. I don't know what was causing them to behave this way, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't because they felt safe around cars and humans. They just didn't seem to care.

How is over protecting our kids any different from over protecting wildlife? Well, let's look at bicycles. Do those flimsy plastic things called helmets with only a little Styrofoam inside seriously protect our kids? If all you are worried about is keeping your child safe from bumping his or head when falling down in the driveway then I guess the answer might be yes. However, there ain't no way these insignificant pieces of junk will keep a kid's skull from being crushed when getting run over by a car, and getting run over by cars is happening more often now.

Why? The answer is no more complicated than sheer, arrogant, human stupidity has taken control over rationality. Thanks to other groups of bonehead activists, the emphasis has shifted to what bicycle riders should be wearing instead of keeping it on what they should be doing. Children today may feel safer wearing helmets, but they are in much more danger now than the kids of the past who didn't wear helmets ever were.

Nowadays kids and adults are routinely riding bikes without stopping through intersections having stop signs or red lights, and they are not only frequently riding on the opposite side of the road to which they are required, they are also riding their bikes right in the middle of the road. The only reason they do these things is because they live under some weird notion bicycles have the right of way over cars, and they further believe this applies no matter where they are or what they do. Please understand, there are no new laws actually giving bicyclists the right of way over cars - the fact is the law still states bicycles must obey the same laws as all other moving vehicles - but the seeming unwillingness of society to enforce the bicycle laws already on the books has created a belief such behavior is legal now. As far as the kids go, they are merely following the example being set by adults.

Maybe we can blame this on environmentalists, with all their earth-friendly ideas of riding bikes to cut down on pollution, or maybe it's the fault of the health-nuts who encourage folks to change their habits to become more fit, but whatever the reason behind it, and no matter who started it, it can't be denied bicycle activists are trying to change all the rules in an effort to make cities more tolerant of bicyclist behavior. Not by changing any laws through the legal process, mind you, but by simply ignoring the laws they don't like, and also by running campaigns to basically tell people cars need to let bicyclists do whatever they want. Somewhere along the line the word also filtered through to the police. If you are a bicyclist, the odds are much higher a cop will stop you because you aren't wearing a helmet than if you don't follow a rule of traffic, and everybody knows it.

The city of Tucson, AZ is the perfect example. I lived there for eighteen years, and this town is so proud to be bicycle friendly they built special lanes for bikes all over the place (Some lanes in intersections are so idiotic people have a hard time figuring out where the cars are supposed to drive). They even made a law saying motorists have to give a bicyclist at least three feet of space between the bike and the car. The bike lanes are wide enough to easily give bike riders this space, but guess what? The bicyclists don't use the space they are given. They ride right on the line as close to traffic as they can get, and this makes it impossible for any cars to give them even the minimum three feet of clearance without dangerously crossing over into the other car lane.

Now, there is a subsection in the law stating the driver can't be charged if the bicyclist was able to use the bike lane to obtain the three feet, but that part of the law isn't being advertised. People in cars are constantly swerving to avoid idiot bikers, especially when the biker is so focused upon his cell phone, IPOD or whatever he or she carelessly drifts over the line, and whenever a car to car accident does happen as a result, the bike rider just keeps on going. On the few occasions when a car couldn't avoid hitting a cyclist, and the police weren't able to cite the driver because of the unadvertised part of the law, you would not believe the outrage activists express.

Bicycle activists are some of the worst screechers on earth. They are constantly claiming they have rights they don't have, and they actually get killed trying to prove their point. One activist in Tucson got killed a week or so after he was quoted in the paper saying most motorists don't know the bicycle rider has the right of way. He was mistaken. All wheeled vehicles, even the pedal-powered ones, must follow the same traffic laws created for cars. There even is a little-known special law for mountain roads requiring the slower vehicle to pull over to let faster ones pass. I reference this only because the bicycle activist I just mentioned actually got killed on a winding mountain road where cars couldn't see him until it was too late. He was a total numbskull for not leaving enough room on the road for cars to go around him.

This guy died thinking he was exercising his right, but even if he had actually been in the right, he still died! Ooh, some victory. Hope they don't deduct points in heaven for dying needlessly.

I remember another guy who used to suddenly launch his bike directly into traffic, as fast as he could pedal, straight from a park close to my house. The speed limit was forty, but he could only do around twenty. Cars would be forced to brake hard, and all he ever did was turn in his seat and stick out one hand to tell traffic to stop. He'd go all the way to the far left lane and hold up traffic for over a mile. I was a few cars behind him a couple times and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was shocking how brazenly he forced himself into heavy traffic, charging across the lanes right in front of faster moving cars, but he really didn't seem to care how much his stupid behavior was disrupting the free flow of traffic. All he cared about was getting to his destination at his own pace. He never even waited for a break between cars before changing lanes; he just threw himself wherever he wanted to go. I don't know why he was so militant about it, but if he seriously thought he was merely exercising his rights as a bicyclist then he was incredibly delusional. He too ended up getting killed. I didn't see it, but I saw the news story one night, and at the very end the reporter quietly mentioned the police were saying it was "possibly" the fault of the bicyclist. Possibly, hell! From what I saw he was daring somebody to kill him.

Yeah, same as they do with all issues liberals love, the reporters in Tucson have a bias in favor of cyclists. There was a young lady reporter once who did an outraged story because a girl on a bicycle got run over at an intersection. The girl rode her bike in front of a car making a proper turn on a green arrow, but that didn't seem to matter. The reporter was upset the driver of the car didn't get charged. The lady reporter apparently didn't know the law requires people on bikes to A) get off the bike and push it across the street and B) only move through the intersection when they have the pedestrian signal. When I was in school this was common knowledge, thanks to the police visiting our school every year to teach these things to us, but the lady reporter seems to have never been similarly educated. She actually called it a "Loophole in the law" as she gave her extremely biased accounting of the event.

That's another change. Once upon a time students taking journalism courses were taught to stick strictly to the facts and to avoid including opinions. Knowing reporters try to inject biased opinions anyway, the editor's main job requirement originally was to review each story for prejudice and make sure it got removed before any news reports were released. However, in this day and age the editors are more likely to decide there isn't enough bias in the story than to actually remove any. This is because the news isn't the news anymore. What it really is now is propaganda. Almost every story they choose to pass on is done as a way to sell a "social" issue they support, and any true events displaying the faults in their belief system are simply ignored. The most despicable part is the people giving us the "news" have evolved beyond merely expressing defective opinions to creating outright lies as a way to back up those opinions.

It's the lies that upset me the most, especially since I am old enough to remember a great many events in the past, and I know the history I actually witnessed is a far cry from the history people who weren't even alive back then are teaching now.

I also know this blog is getting too long for most people to read, so this concludes part one. For the few of you who managed to get this far, and still haven't lost interest, part two will show the huge dissimilarities in American life before and after "The Great Society". You may not know it, but the changes are so stark you'd think the descriptions were about two different countries.

PS. Life to America!