If there is one thing that has always fascinated me, it's how popular culture used to be an important reflection of how we saw ourselves.

[caption id="attachment_766" align="alignright" width="199" caption="A beautiful portrait of home front America."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/thehumancomedy1943.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-766" title="thehumancomedy1943" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/thehumancomedy1943-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

It mattered to us as a people to think well of ourselves, and that was why the culture -- mostly the movies -- almost always appealed to the better angels of our nature. We didn't romanticize con men or clever criminals or attractive sociopaths, and we didn't glorify cynicism. Imagine a movie made today where everyone in a railroad car on a troop train headed off to war joins in and sings a popular hymn.

I don't know if it's possible for kids who grew up in our modern, oh-so-cynical world to look at movies like "The Human Comedy," one of those wonderful old MGM efforts during World War II, and understand that people really used to feel this way. Homer McCauley, the hero played by Mickey Rooney, would be in his 80s now. I'm not sure he would recognize the country he grew up in.

I wish we still lived in a country where we looked for the good in each other, a country where we still expected people to treat each other honorably. A country where we didn't assume that everyone was in it only for their own interest, a country where people weren't ashamed to say they were patriotic, or they believed in God, or they loved their neighbors.

Look at those old movies, the ones made during the war, and you actually see people going to church or praying. You actually see them talking about faith and ideals.

Is that world gone for good?

I don't think it has to be. I think our world can be whatever we want it to be, and I think the culture will be whatever we demand of it. Maybe the biggest problem is that we just lowered our standards