The U.S. News and World Report Cover from August 7:<\/p>\n
Here’s the bonus question:\u00a0 What year?\u00a0 If you guessed 2010 or 2009, you’d be wrong.\u00a0 The year was 1967.<\/p>\n
On the annual trek to Hershey, PA, for the antique car swap meet, I happened upon a couple of bound editions of U.S. News and World Report.\u00a0 I don’t normally pay much attention to these, but I idly wondered what the headlines were for the year I turned seven.\u00a0 One of the volumes contained that issue, and when I flipped to the right page and scanned the headlines, I had to pick up my jaw and pop my eyes back into my head.\u00a0 Then I felt a huge sense of relief.<\/p>\n
Could it be that what we’re experiencing today in the world is just more of the same?\u00a0 Maybe everything isn’t at unprecedented levels of awfulness leaving us doomed to a loss of all life as we ever knew it.\u00a0 We could be.\u00a0 But maybe it isn’t inevitable.<\/p>\n
Similarly, I looked at LIFE magazines from the same period.\u00a0 LIFE’s cover for August 4, 1967 read:\u00a0 “Negro Revolt:\u00a0 The Flames Spread” with a subheading of “Troops patrol a burning Detroit street”.\u00a0 I remember this mostly in terms of visiting my grandparents who lived just outside Madison, WI, and hearing family members talk about the riots in the University area.\u00a0 My grandmother worked in university administration, but I was at an age where the riots I saw on the news and heard adults talking about carried no realism or observable impact on my life, so it was only something I remembered in passing.<\/p>\n
The impact of these headlines, specific to Detroit, are of interest today, because of Detroit’s current economic troubles and the decay in city.\u00a0 Will Detroit find a way to revitalize?\u00a0 Do they want to?\u00a0 Frankly, I hope so.<\/p>\n
These snippets of information have fed the fire of my growing interest in studying history.\u00a0 My primary interest has always been American History.\u00a0 Initially, I was fascinated with Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 That interest expanded to looking into Civil War matters.\u00a0 Which lead to what were the factors which led up to the Civil War.\u00a0 Then I wanted to understand our current economic and political situation, and I learned it was a movement spawned during the Gilded Age — post-Civil War when Industrialization was booming.\u00a0 Naturally, that led to abuses (yes, I was taught all this in 8th grade history by a great teacher, but I didn’t REALLY realize why I cared until recently).\u00a0 Those abuses by industry led to the rise of labor unions, which fulfilled a very necessary purpose to advocate for workers.\u00a0 The unions were very necessary then.\u00a0 I’m not so sure how necessary they are now, but, to some extent, workers do need someone who will ensure a safe working environment, reasonable benefits, and the things unions have traditionally fought for.\u00a0 It may not be a union that needs to do that today, but checks and balances keep business on an even keel, and supply and demand aren’t the only way.\u00a0 On the other hand, when unions get greedy, business can’t survive.\u00a0 When that happens, everyone loses.<\/p>\n
At the end of the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era embarked.\u00a0 This was big around the turn of the century (20th), and, when progressives failed to achieve their goals in their initial efforts, they retrenched and began a more subtle effort.\u00a0 Our schools have embraced Progressive teachings.<\/p>\n
I am largely a product of an early Progressive education system — looking back, I can see signs of it.\u00a0 I think it’s become even more entrenched in the thirty years since I’ve been in the public education system.\u00a0 If that’s the case, I can see why the acceptance rate for a Socialist form of government has been increasing in our country.<\/p>\n
The more I learn, the wider my sphere of curiosity grows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. News and World Report Cover from August 7: Anarchy Growing Threat to Big Cities? Business at Bottom — An Upturn Next? New Defense Line in the Pacific More War or Real Progress in the Mideast Not All This Country is Tense, Troubled Here’s the bonus question:\u00a0 What year?\u00a0 …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-progress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}