John,

>I don't think Doug was intimating that we go back to slavery or any other unseemly time. He was advocating a turn back to common decency, which I agree with.

I am not a conservative, and I don't have this idea in my head that "back" is a direction in which I want to move. Being a progressive, I think if decency is to become common, it will come by moving forward to it. My personal opinion is that decency hasn't ever been a common value. We just saw some people that had it for real, others that faked it by covering over problems, and still others that saw it as a joke. How about making it more common than it ever was in the past?

Our eyes are in front of our heads, and that's why hindsight isn't very clear. It can tend to seem that way sometimes, but that's because our minds work on it until we "remember" something that wasn't the way we remember it.

Can we identify what kinds of politeness and decency we're looking for, and shape the world the way we would like to see it? Rolling back the clock isn't even possible, and with each of us having different recollections and different backgrounds, I don't see how we can even agree on which decade we want back.

To me, the 50's were a nightmare. To Newt, they were a fond memory. How about we think about the next decade and try to shape it into something worth remembering?