A Peek at America before 1950 and the Assault by the Left
Article by Anthony J. DeBlasi in "The American Thinker":
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.
I
think it’s revealing that dictionaries in these “retrograde” times did
not prefix definitions of words referring to high moral standards, such
as virtue, with the phrase “regarded as.” It did not have to be
stated that opinion or “point of view” is not a valid basis for
morality.
Where were we coming from? Where was I
coming from? Well it was not from vengeance against America’s “sins,”
real and imagined – the basis for any ideology that dismisses the human
flaws in every person, including saints and heroes. The journey I took –
we took – was down-to-earth and mindful of the power that gave us life,
known worldwide as God by people of every degree of intelligence.
A
childhood flashback and reflection will perhaps help bring some focus
to a past that still speaks to the present. This was before World War II
. . .
At
a street in Brooklyn that was closed to traffic for several blocks,
archways with curlicue designs were raised on wooden posts . Bunting and
lights trimmed a parade route for a feast. At twilight the ornate
arches burst into sparkling color, as the lights entwining them went on.
The smell of roasted nuts, sweets, and sundry aromas of Italian cuisine
floated through the air in eddies, as curb-side vendors turned the
street and sidewalks into a mile-long buffet of deli-grade food. People
thronged and milled along the chain of carts and tables, ate, drank,
and gabbed in block-party style.
Before long there was a boom of drums, a splash of cymbals, a blare of brass and woodwinds from the direction of the church and la processione began. Musicians in white shirts played robust marches, while men in shirtsleeves carried la Madonna di Pompei along
the route. When the preciously sculpted symbol of the Holy Mother
returned to the front steps of the church, fireworks filled the sky with
brilliant streaks of light and volleys of artificial thunder that
thrilled little Tony (me) to his core.
Festa – a
unity of faith, family, friends, food, and fun – was to these 1940s
Mediterraneans in Brooklyn as natural as breathing. And equally natural
to these “backward” folk making their home in America was a freedom of
thought and action within limits trespassed only by the mad. As a child,
when you took a turn that way, you were brought back with appropriate
corrective action. Any moppet philosopher thus checked, who asked why,
was perhaps secretly admired but it was made clear that what is right
and what is wrong was not for him or her to decide. You questioned
established wisdom like you questioned the need to eat.
It
was the job of parents to transmit time-honored wisdom and the job of
children to learn it. Later, after completing the needed study on
matters of vital importance, the child thinker could discover for
himself the ironic truth, missed by many an intellectual, that in order
to move freely in life’s journey, one must heed restraints imposed by
fundamental constants of life – regardless of who we are and where we
come from. This is the break-off point, from which so many stray, to be
gathered by activists for movements that lack genuine concern for those
they pull into their fold.
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.”
What
this composer touched on, and what has occupied the minds of
philosophers and theologians throughout human history, is the vital
importance of achieving a harmony between what is changeable and what is
not changeable, which is well expressed in the plea: “God, grant me the
grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, courage to
change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Although
the childhood experiences mentioned above prove nothing regarding the
cultural health of America in the first half of the twentieth century,
they point to a co-relation between family-with-faith-in-God – linked to
eternal constants of life – and the attendant wellbeing. As I grew into
an adult, during the war-ravished 20th century, I became more than ever
aware of the need for a harmony between what belongs to the state and
what belongs to the people or, as scripture codes it, “what is
Caesar’s” and “what is God’s”.
In
1950, as I entered a classroom before the start of a college class
session, I saw on a blackboard the words “Damn the Absolute!” Was
the student insane, I thought? Was he not cursing himself? Can you do
away with what makes you tick? In my mind this was an implicit death
wish, for if you break away from what got you here in the first place
and made it possible even for you to breathe, you are in essence
committing suicide, spiritual if not physical.
It
would not be long before radical distortions of reality, dressed in
endearing language, would be fed the public in the news, on campus, even
in church, in order "to demolish beyond hope of repair the engine of
Western metaphysics" – to use the words of J. Hillis Miller, an
outspoken academician of the political Left.
The
Absolute that was being condemned (“demolished”) is – let’s face it –
the very Absolute raised by liberals themselves who have said, “If
there were no God, one would have to be invented.” Well, there is no
need to invent God or even to “prove” the existence of God with
rationales that manage only to prove what one already believes. What is
really needed, especially among those who would govern people or improve
their lives, is to wake up.
A
sober comparison between life in America before and after mid-20th
century shows what has been lost and what has been gained at the hands
of Leftist agents of “change,” raising necessary questions not asked or
answered by most people of influence in America. How, for example, has
the “progress” pushed by Leftist activists improved life for all of us
today? Is it possible that loving, not hating, one another (a Christian
constant), in an atmosphere of freedom and independence – so despised
by the Left – is an important clue to why living in America was better
before than after the “progress” thrust on America? Is it possible that
swinging a wrecking ball against “the West,” in pursuit of a world
populated with virtual zombies instead of real human beings, was not
such a good idea, after all?
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