I can recall when I was a teenager – more than sixty years ago – my mother telling me that men should not go downtown [in Denver] without wearing a coat and tie, preferably a suit and tie, and that women should always wear gloves and a hat. Jeans were not allowed in public schools, and most private schools required either uniforms or had strict dress codes.

There were written invitations for dinners and parties, and those invitations required written replies either accepting or declining the invitation.

Police officers, teachers, doctors, and even lawyers were respected, as was age. And back then almost 70% of Americans could afford to buy a house (unlike the 43% today).

Then, during and after the end of the Vietnam War (and it was a war) matters changed swiftly, especially for social mores.

When I first went to Washington as a legislative assistant to a newly elected Congressman in 1973, I was twenty-nine, and almost all the Congressional staff directors were men (and a very few women) in their forties and fifties, if not even older. Ten years later, at thirty-nine, I was one of those staff directors, and most of the staff directors were my age, if not younger.

All of that is a form of nostalgia and ignores some very basic ills in American society at the time. Women and minorities effectively had far, far fewer rights than white males, and in parts of the South blacks had almost no rights at all (and we still haven’t gotten where we should be). The air was close to unbreathable at times in most major cities, and the water in most lakes and rivers undrinkable and unswimmable. In the 1960s, cars were still deathtraps in accidents.

But back then, people talked to each other and knew their neighbors. And they could talk to people who had different politics and religion. Now, it seems that far too many Americans live in self-selected internet bubbles with increasing intolerance of those who believe differently. Too many also ignore invitations without declining or show up without accepting.

We also have increasing amounts of violence by people who act as though the world should bend to their whims or desires. Road rage was essentially unheard of in the 1950s or 1960s. Shooting someone for “dissing” has also become more and more common.

What’s also been forgotten is that the way people dress reflects a certain amount of respect – or lack of it – for others. Wearing pajamas and flipflops on an airplane or sweaty gym clothes to a restaurant isn’t only poor taste and possibly unsafe, but it’s disrespectful to others, an arrogation of narcissism, if you will.

No, the past wasn’t wonderful, by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like we’ve shed the good along with the bad, and that’s not the way to build a future.