Craig, I respectfully continue to dissent. I wanted to respond quickly, but I can’t read your posts until tomorrow.

You gave away the game in two paragraphs:

“My point is that people were more cohesive: in income, in values, in actions…

Everyone knew their civics because we talked about government and had similar views.”

. You grew up in a neighborhood. The families had probably been there for at least one generation-maybe more. Socioeconomically, your neighborhood was probably relatively cohesive. It probably was cohesive in terms of race and religion. There were many smart people, but nowhere near the number of college graduates there are now. There were gays-but no one knew that. People of color were invisible. Everyone thought women wanted to be Donna Reed.

. Then modernity happened. We were both born at one particular moment of time-as unique and unstable as a ride on a unicycle.

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