For the undecided or confused, the young, or anyone with scant knowledge of the past, it is important, I think, before voting, to see an A:B comparison between America before and after it changed during the past century.  The following "thumbnail review" includes firsthand experience.

Before the social revolution of the 1960s, it was typical and normal for men to respect women.  It was typical and normal not "to go all the way" until marriage.  It was typical and normal for married couples to stick together "for worse," too.  It was typical and normal for children to grow up in two-parent families with a tradition of honesty and morality, fathers providing support, mothers providing childcare and guidance.  Deliberate abortion, recognized as an act of killing innocent human life, was illegal.  Killing for thrill, kids gunning one another down or murdering their parents, was unheard of.  The list is long of the things that changed after the "liberation politics" of the second half of the 20th century.

Whatever the reader's take on the "sea change" in America, it is hard to argue that the "liberation politics" of Progressives and "liberals" – AKA the left – has nothing to do with the current mindless violence, vulgarity, and discord in American society.  The difference between before and after is great, by any measure.

Yet our "liberal" leaders continue to insist that we must never go back to the "oppressive" 1940s and 1950s, adding the digressive cliché that "you can't turn back the clock," while ignoring the evidence that Americans were freer and better off then than they are today.

As a teenager of the 1940s, I can report firsthand that these were years of respect for women, sexual restraint, optimism (in spite of war), and – for a  Brooklyn kid, me – such other "oppressive" things as a pipe organ in the high school auditorium and a well loved strict principal who began assembly by reading a psalm.  Our music teacher played the organ and conducted the school orchestra and chorus in challenging music.  Our baseball coach hired Ebbets Field from the Brooklyn Dodgers for the school's important games.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art sent artworks to the school for temporary exhibit.  The mayor of New York occasionally presented a scholarship award at City Hall to an outstanding high school student.  The student population of 1940s Bushwick High School consisted of ethnically diverse low- to middle-income boys and girls.  Attendance and graduation exceeded 90%.  It was acknowledged by everyone that sin, not skin, was the cause of racial injustice, to which religious leaders were dedicated, and it was understood that self-improvement was the key to success to which public education was committed.

Rev forward.  In 2004, attendance at Bushwick High School was 56% and the graduation rate 23%.  Some graduates complained of teachers who didn't care and that there was no discipline.  Praise for some teachers and programs was offset by expressions of disgust for the physical and social conditions that prevailed.  One graduate said she considered Bushwick High School unsuitable for any member of her family.  The vibrant school I attended in the 1940s was a shambles before the turn of the century, and it was permanently shut down in 2006.

Now, is all the foregoing just interesting (amusing?) anecdotal history – or is it a peek at a healthier America?

It is clear to me that American society was not "liberated from oppression," but debased by progressives to a level unprecedented in history.  The "new social order" we see around us today is in fact the accomplishment of anti-American change agents who aggressively continue to abuse this country's freedoms and opportunities in order to wreck it.

I have to believe that most Americans are still able to think and apply common sense to what they see and hear before they vote.  

Here are some questions for America's bashers.  What would happen if, as once common, people could manage with fewer lawyers, advocates, drugs, and therapists?  Could they live with safe schools and neighborhoods, entertainment free of sex and "politically correct" warp?  What would happen if more people worked at useful jobs?  Could there be a problem with schools, churches, and media not pushing Marxist propaganda?  What would Americans do with an America-loving president?  Could they bear up to all such oppression?

The connection between today's rampant disorder and leftist machinations against American society should be plain to all who really care about America.  Unfortunately, it's hard for many to see what has been going on without their knowledge; brainwash is difficult to detect.  You could read the papers, watch the news, listen to lectures, sermons, speeches, and not know that you were being brainwashed.  Being "reformed" while being "informed" or "entertained" is, for most, harder to detect than the smell of gas leaking into a room.  It is why so many in the mainstream are clueless about what has happened to them and to our country.  It is why so many continually cast votes that incrementally dismantle their own society while honestly believing they are doing the right thing.

Resistance by principled academics, professionals, and observant laymen has been unequal to the force mounted by moneyed cultural barbarians and the hordes they have won to their side.  The courageous few fighting the bashers of reason, common sense, and decency have been forced to fight an uphill battle, with no support from government or mainstream media.  Opponents of the leftist obsession to erase America as an independent nation continue to be smeared, demonized, intimidated, threatened with violence.  Bludgeoned with "political correctness" – the left's sacred scripture – stalwarts of true justice continue to lose jobs, careers, and worse.  The entrenched army of "liberators" did their job so well that they were poised to launch their global dystopia, better known as "the new world order"...

...until the truth finally caught up with Hillary, and Trump won the 2016 presidential election.  The rage of the left over this unexpected obstruction to their progress was enough to blow their masks off.  For the first time in everyone's memory, and for the whole world to see, the enemies of America exposed themselves in public!

By any measure, it is a big mistake to vote a single one of these betrayers of America into office.  Their current reprehensible solidarity forces the voter who cares for America to leave blank every congressional ballot name marked Democrat.

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a war veteran and lifelong defender of Western culture.