To those DU'ers who lived through the "Golden Age of Capitalism" (1940s to 1970s)-some questions...

[JDPriestly]

82. Yes. We who were born in the 40s and 50s had parents who grew up during

the Great Depression. Frugality was the key. We had gardens. Mom cooked and baked and didn't dare think about self-fulfillment or career until after her children were grown.

A lot has been said here about the good side of the 1950s through the 1970s.

I agree with much of it. Neighborhoods were safe because mothers were home taking care of all the children, not just their own. There was a sense of community. We walked to and from school.

Our dads had jobs they expected to keep until they retired. Usually they did, or if they didn't they found another one pretty easily. We could live, frugally, on what our dads earned, and they were proud of that.

The traditional family and community were wonderful, but a lot of women felt trapped. In particular, very intelligent women were stifled. So were African-Americans and members of other minorities.

Nothing has been said about the McCarthy era and all the anti-Communist hysteria that went along with the Cold War. In reality, there weren't hardly any Communists, but we heard a lot about them as if they were all over the place. Gradually over time, liberals who were simply good, loving people became fearful about expressing their belief that the government should regulate business and help the poor and that unions should be strong.

Most were not affected much by the Korean War, but my family was. My father as a spiritual leader in the community was faced with comforting the families of those who had fought in WWII and the Korean War and had come back injured either in body or in soul as well as those families whose sons and daughters never returned. The Korean War was very real to me for that reason. I remember how my father would look at the back page of the Sunday newspaper where the pictures of the fallen soldiers were printed. That was a dark reminder of the pain of the families of the fallen

The beginning of the end of unions was passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in the late 1940s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947

Viet Nam changed the economy, as did the gas crisis in 1973-74 and then the second gas crisis during the Carter administration. Too much money and too many lives were wasted in that war. When the war was over, we had to pay for it. Our money declined in terms of buying power. The countries that sold us oil became frustrated and wanted changes that would protect their wealth. Nixon was an insult to the nation, not the least because he extended that futile waste of lives and wealth for no apparent reason at all other than his personal desire to stay in office.

At the time, many Americans did not realize just how detrimental the Viet Nam War was to our society and economy. In fact, we have never fully admitted it.

The important question is what can we learn from the good and the bad that happened during those years. I would say that the most important lesson is that wars are money pits that don't really solve anything.

The Korean War never ended. It is still going on, a disease on the planet lying dormant for the moment but ready to explode in hatred any moment.

Look at Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese Communists won. They were brutal to the people of their country who had been our friends. But -- today many products we buy in our stores are made in Viet Nam. We trade with them. We don't interfere in their country. They don't interfere in ours. Was it worth the killing, the deaths, the injuries, the damage to our economy?

Finally, I lived in the North during my childhood and in the deep South during my teen years. Although I am white, I experienced humiliation and pain from living in a society in which there was so much segregation and racial hatred.

We had an African-American cleaning woman in my high school. I liked to sing and stayed after school to listen to her sing as she did her work. I was careful not to do it in any way that people would notice. I learned so much about music and singing from watching and hearing her. She should have been teaching us instead of cleaning up after us. The apartheid in the South was pointless and disgraceful.

If I seem fanatical or angry at times on DU, I hope you will all understand. I owe some of my impatience with injustice to my parents' strong social and moral values and the lessons of WWII, but I also much of it to that cleaning lady whose talent and kindness were never recognized by the world and whose voice changed my life, to the sight of the little shotgun houses in which African-Americans crammed their families and to the Jim Crow signs that limited not just the lives of African-Americans but also those of us white folks.

The 40s through the 70s were a time of social change. The earlier years were simpler and easier, but, as a society, we had to grow up, and those were the years in which we did it.

Many in our society reacted to the social changes by rejecting change and turning to conservatism. More and more people are realizing that conservatism doesn't work, that we can't go back to what we remember as the good times in the past. The conservative movement has imposed a false memory on many of us. It has caused us to focus only on the good in the past and forget the bad things that moved us to change.

Obama's slogan about moving forward is a good one. We do need to keep moving forward.

I would like to see more of a sense of community, more economic fairness and more trust in democracy. Those were the good aspects of that time. But I would not want to return to Jim Crow or any of the stereotypes and limitations on groups in our society like women, gays and lesbians, and people of color.