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.

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