When did we become a country in which everyone felt they had the right to tell everyone else how they should or shouldn't live?

My guess is that it was right about the same time when our politicians slipped from simply smarmy down to viciously venal.

It actually all fits together. We evolved from people who read books and had intelligent discussions into people who vegetated in front of their television sets and only believed what the loudest voices told us to believe.  This may be difficult to fathom, but until first radio and then television came along, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in small-town America was going to an auditorium and listening to lectures.

[caption id="attachment_1655" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chautauqua"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/oldmen.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1655" title="oldmen" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/oldmen-300x189.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="189" /></a>[/caption]

The <a title="Chautauqua" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua">Chautauqua</a> movement would be almost impossible to comprehend these days. The very idea that most of the folks in a small town would go to an auditorium and spend two or three hours listening to a presentation designed to make them more informed about some aspect of the world is so far beyond modern reality that it might as well be science fiction.

Benjamin Franklin was the one who said the Founding Fathers had given us a republic -- if we could keep it -- and H.L. Mencken was the one who said in the 1920s that the republican would fall within a hundred years. Mencken gave two reasons -- stupidity and greed -- and both appear to be in full flight in 2012.

It would be easy -- and probably wrong -- to say the average member of the public is stupid because he'd rather watch "Jersey Shore" than PBS or listen to Justin Bieber instead of grand opera. The average person is a lot more stressed by life than folks were a hundred years ago.

My late father often told us that our generation had a lot more stressful choices to make than his had. He had health insurance through his job for his entire career, and he had a pension when he retired. He didn't have to buy insurance or make decisions about 401(k) accounts or individual retirement accounts. His generation -- the one that survived the Depression and won World War II -- had far more stability in their careers. My dad worked for one employer for his entire career. By contrast, my closest friend hasn't had a full-time job with full benefits for more than two or three years of the last 25 years.

The fact is, more and more people feel like control over their lives is slipping away from them. Whether it's conservatives telling them they can't have an abortion or liberals telling them they shouldn't be smoking or eating meat, everybody seems to be in somebody's face these days. And as worried as so many people are about their finances, many certainly resent being told how they have to spend that money.

One of the biggest problems is that while once we were a country where people sincerely believed we were all in it together, today working people have as much in common with Donald Trump or Bill Gates as they do with an extraterrestrial. In fact, just about the only thing we all have in common anymore is that we all are born and we all die.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/on_the_beach.large_.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1657" title="on_the_beach.large" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/on_the_beach.large_-195x300.jpg" alt="" width="195" height="300" /></a>I just finished reading a book I first read nearly 50 years ago -- Nevil Shute's "On the Beach." The Gregory Peck-Ava Gardner film made from the book is a classic, but there really aren't many movies made from books that surpass the printed word.

The book is far more poignant in dealing with its subjects as the end of the world approaches, a world destroyed by politicians and military men. Parents worry about dying before their infant children, an old woman wonders what will happen to her little dog when she isn't around to feed him.

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