Hakea, sounds like the mindless forces of political correctness strike again... the specious assumption that generation A was short-sighted, stupid, irresponsible, or whatever, and generation B is wise and just and clever... but when generation C comes along, history repeats itself. Nevermind that each generation does the best it can in the temper of its times...
Mind you, I also think that the most vocal of the nasties are very much in the minority. And I certainly hope I'm right!!
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Kris, that Marquis quote was from a longer piece in which he pointed out:
"We have always been compelled, and we shall be compelled for many years to come, to be prudent, cautious, staid, sober, conservative, industrious, respectful of established institutions, a model citizen. We have not liked it, but we have been unable to escape it... But the people whom we really prefer as associates, though we do not approve their ideas, are the rebels, the radicals, the wastrels, the vicious, the poets, the Bolshevists, the idealists, the nuts, the Lucifers, the agreeable good-for-nothings, the sentimentalists, the prophets, the freaks. We have never dared to know any of them, far less become intimate with them."
... and then went on to describe his ideal of old age, when he's paid his dues and can finally "look forward to an old age of dissipation and indolence and unreverend disrepute."
Wild streak? You bet! During Prohibition, he also created the character of "The Old Soak", from which: "I see that some persons think there is still hope for a liberal interpretation of the law so that beer and light wines may be sold," said we. "Hope," said he, moodily, "is a fine thing, but it don't gurgle none when you pour it out of a bottle. Hope is all right, and so is Faith . . . but what I would like to see is a little Charity. As far as Hope is concerned, I'd rather have Despair combined with a case of Bourbon liquor than all the Hope in the world by itself."
Sez I, Charity is definitely what we need more of in this world, but in the sense of kindness and tolerance, not the arrogant, self-righteous doling out of "assistance" we nowadays so often associate with the term!! << Rincewind's Grump of the Day >>
