I was born in 1959, that is not my recollection of the 70's.
I was born in 1960, so I should perhaps bow to your greater experience, mate (you're my compatriot if I remember correctly). On the other hand I do have double History major in one of my degrees, so maybe that makes up for the few months you have on me. ;)
Civil liberties in the west hit a speed bump with 911
More than a speed bump I would say! Nor was the damage limited to the US. But it was not the beginning to the decline. The surveilled society has existed at least as long as the cold war, but in that late 70s and 80s it really took off, partially as as a function of technology, but also a function of ideology. Incaceration rates and and increasingly vindictive (and arguably criminogenic) criminal justice system, to be contrasted with the growing humaneness of the previous decades culminating in Vinson's appointment as Head of Corrective Services in NSW, are similarly a product of the 80s.
If you were to take the time, as I have done (I read Criminology for my Law degree), to visit the archives and study the various newspapers for every state election since the late 60s, you will notice, in NSW at least, a seismic shift in 1988. Prior to this time crime stories are burried in the back pages of the papers, and as an election issue, Crime doesn't rate. In 1988 (Greiner vs Unsworth) that all changed, from the election on Law'n'Order has become a, perhaps the, major issue. We've had 22 years of "reforms" such as "truth in sentencing," ever expanding search powers not to mention police numbers etc. But does anyone in Sydney really feel safer now than they did in 1988? Paradoxically our obsession with stamping out crime has had, if anything, the opposite effect (and yes arguing from crime statistics and what they actually mean is fraught with danger). I may be a few months younger than you, but I'm old enough to remember when a mugging in Sydney was practically unheard of.
In other words "the good old days" were not that good.
Pull the other one mate. We never had it as good as we did under Messers Whitlam and Fraser! ;)
Seriously though, if the 60s and 70s weren't perfect (they weren't of course) then there was at least the hope, even the conviction, that things were getting better and better and more and more free. The refusal to fight in Vietnam was not merely a rejection of war, it was a rebellion against traditional forms of authority over the individual. The interference of the state in private matters was being rejected, the legalisation of homosexuality, decriminalisation of cannabis in SA (and look how that has been wound back), etc, speak to this. Kids today simply don't have that kind of hope, there is no basis for them to have it.
The generation of your and my parents lived in a post WWII world in which civil liberties were continously growing. Neither you, nor I, nor our kids do.
