A FEW THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR

View From The Left

I finished last week's column (a listing of negative events in America
during my lifetime) with the suggestion that some day I might write a
similar column about positive events.

As a matter of fact, many wonderful things have happened here since I was
born. So, by popular demand, I'll list a few of them. And, just offhand,
I'm guessing my "positive" list won't be the same as yours.

* Prohibition repealed.

* Social Security enacted.

* United States enters World War II.

* Reconstruction of Japan and Germany.

* A Roman Catholic is elected president.

* The U.S. Supreme Court applies the Constitution -- in particular the Bill
of Rights -- to all American citizens.

* Rosa Parks starts the civil rights movement.

* The women's movement begins and takes hold.

* Baby boomers start a movement of their own; many become hippies and
flower children.

Prohibition, which began in 1919, ended on Dec. 5, 1933, shortly after my
second birthday. I was too young to have a personal interest in it.
However, my uncle's family rejoiced because now they could go back to
taking baths in their bathtub.

(Note to the young: Some men made money during Prohibition by making and
selling "bathtub gin.")

What I find wonderful about the repeal of Prohibition is that Americans had
enough sense to recognize a horrible mistake, and the courage to correct
it. Prohibition brought organized crime to America for the first time, and
made criminals of ordinary citizens. Like my uncle.

Prohibition was the granddaddy of the law of unintended consequences. It
was to the 1920s what our draconian and dreadfully stupid drug laws are to
our era. I wish we had the courage now to do what our ancestors did in 1933.

The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt on Aug. 14, 1935. Its passage guaranteed nearly all Americans a
modest pension when they reached old age. Before that, and for many years
afterward, many old Americans were virtually imprisoned in county poor
farms or state mental hospitals.

Unfortunately, the greedy rich (which is not to say all the rich) so
greatly resisted helping their elderly fellow citizens that Congress has
allowed them to contribute a smaller share of their incomes to Social
Security than poor and middle-income Americans pay.

World War II was swirling around Europe and Asia long before the Japanese
overplayed their hand and dragged us into it. But when Pearl Harbor brought
us into the middle of the worldwide conflagration, everything changed. As
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said at the time, "I fear we have
awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."

He was right. Thanks in part to the cushion provided by the world's two
largest oceans, and in part to our development of atomic energy, the United
States emerged four years later as the world's most powerful nation.
Nothing since the Civil War so shaped America as did World War II.

One of my proudest moments as an American came after the war, when we put
our tremendous resources to work to rehabilitate our former enemies,
Germany and Japan. Our efforts were not entirely altruistic -- it was in
our best interests to make friends with those two powerful nations -- yet
what we did was as decent and charitable as it was practical.

I'm not a fan of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, I don't much care for
the organization. But it was downright un-American for the majority of us
(Protestants) to reject individual Catholics for public office until the
handsome young John F. Kennedy came along.

Electing a Catholic as president helped us overcame a major hurdle in a
land so steeped in prejudice as America. Now I look forward to the day we
join the world's more progressive nations and elect a woman and/or a person
with dark skin as president.

When the founders of the United States wrote our Constitution, they
inserted a lot of wonderful rights that, in reality, were seldom upheld.

However, for about two decades, starting with Brown v. Board of Education
in 1954, our Supreme Court started the process of making the promise of our
Constitution a reality.

Thus, dark-skinned kids were given certain educational rights previously
denied, the police were forced to abide by the law to conduct searches and
seizures, everyone accused of a crime was guaranteed the right to a lawyer
(though not necessarily a good one), people detained as suspects had to be
informed of their rights and women were allowed to determine for themselves
whether an abortion was the right thing for them.

So many great court decisions came down in that era that I'm sure I'm
missing a few. One of my favorites, the one abolishing the barbaric custom
of capital punishment, didn't last long -- a later court overturned it. But
in general it was a wonderful time for Americans who believe in the
concepts of individual freedom.

In December 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat for a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. It's hard to
imagine today, but in those days, in the Deep South, the rule was that
blacks had to sit in the back of the bus and give up their seats to white
passengers if the bus got crowded.

Parks' simple act of defiance against an unfair system was the fuse that
set off the civil rights movement, which continues today. Today it's mostly
in the courts and legislative bodies, but back then it was in the streets.
And it got messy. People died. Cities were burned. It was an amazing time.

I believe that most Americans at the time did not approve of the extreme
measures taken on either side of the civil rights issue, and yet most of us
believed that the goal of equality for all was a just one. Those Americans
who still believe in equality owe a debt to Rosa Parks.

The women's movement seems to be an adjunct of the civil rights movement,
and, like civil rights, it's had some remarkable results.

It's hard to remember this, but there was a time in America when women
couldn't run or throw a ball without looking silly. They didn't know how to
do these things because the culture wouldn't let them try. Running, or
throwing a ball, was "unladylike."

It's true there were a few outstanding women then who succeeded in "men's
fields," but the best most ambitious women could hope for was a job as a
teacher or nurse or flight attendant (then called "stewardess").

Nowadays, I'm told, about half the students in many law and medical schools
are women. And those who graduate and go into practice no longer dress like
little men, as their earlier counterparts did.

Finally, we have the baby boomers. Not many kids were born during World War
II, with most of our young men off fighting it, so there was a lot of
making up for lost time when they returned. Hence, the boomers.

They changed the culture. Thanks to them, I can get by letting my hair fly
in all directions, and nobody much notices. Before the boomers, I would
have had to keep my hair short and neat. And, more important, I can express
my feelings of love for someone, male or female, without the fear of being
called weird.

Now you can wear blue jeans to the opera, if you like, and not be frowned upon.

The boomers (and the temporary death of payola) brought us the greatest era
of popular music the world has ever seen, the so-called '60s. ("So called,"
because that era extended into the '70s. And "payola," for those who don't
know, was the practice of music companies bribing disc jockeys to play
their tunes on the radio.)

The boomers, because they were taught by the returning World War II vets
who had grown to appreciate what we have, were, by and large, great civil
libertarians. One of their mottoes was "Do your own thing." It was a
live-and-let-live philosophy, as American as apple pie.

The boomers were just great. Many weren't afraid to experiment with drugs;
they saw through the hypocrisy of our drug laws.

But they weren't all free spirits who believed in the promise of American
democracy. George W. Bush was a boomer. So, when I write of the boomers,
I'm referring to those who possessed a wonderful spirit of fair play and
justice, and not those who think the primary opportunities in the Land of
Opportunity are the opportunity to make money and the opportunity to
control the less fortunate.

A lot of good things have happened to my country during my lifetime, but,
as the man said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Some of the
gains we've made have been taken away from us, and even as I speak our
attorney general is campaigning to repress us even more.

Those of us, both liberal and conservative, who believe in the principles
laid down in 1776 have to keep fighting the good fight. There are people
afoot who would cheerfully turn the U.S. of A. into a police state.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and liberal iconoclast. His column
appears Mondays.