For my Grandchildren

There Was a Time When

‘In those days there was no King in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes’

***

School Principals and teachers didn’t turn up in the morning fearing for their safety.

Nurses weren’t assaulted by patients in emergency departments.

Police Officers were treated with respect and not spat on, pushed about and even injured by riotous mobs.

When the ‘F’ word wasn’t common currency in the street, in the school yard and liberally sprinkled in TV and Movie dialogues.

Security guards were not stationed outside Jewish schools, and students were not fearful of displaying their Jewish identity on their way to school.

Paramedics weren’t attacked by those they were trying to help.

Politicians didn’t struggle to define a Woman.

Marriage was between a man and a woman.

Banks didn’t have security guards at their entrance.

Teachers were respected

Disciplining badly behaved school children didn’t result in their parents rushing to the school to abuse the teacher.

‘Rights’ were not prioritized over ‘Responsibilities’.

‘Courtesy’ was not just the name for the bus that drove you home from the pub when you were too drunk to drive.

Holding the door open for a woman didn’t elicit a (expletive deleted) ‘sexist’ response.

Most children attended religious education classes.

Men-only and women-only clubs and groups were not criticized as being sexist.

Biological men were not allowed to use women’s spaces and allowed to compete in women’s sports.

Merit was always the primary criterion for appointments to job positions, not skin colour, ethnicity or religious background.

XX could not become XY

Children went to school to be educated and to learn how to think, not to be indoctrinated with what to think.

Society was not divided into the ‘Oppressed’ who are always right and good, and the ‘Oppressors’ who are always wrong and bad.

Gangs of machete-marauding youths didn’t terrify the streets.

There was such a thing as absolute Truth not ‘truths’

Multiculturalism didn’t exist but social harmony largely did.

Wearisome security checks weren’t required before getting on a plane.

Insisting getting the right answer to a Maths question was not called White Supremacy.

Society had a common set of values (fundamentally biblical ones) that for the most part

controlled people’s behaviour.

Alas there indeed was a time, yes a gentler time, when – all of the above was accepted as normal.

And the King, God had not yet ‘left the building’.