Change is fine; change for the worse not so much

To the Editor:

We are a changed people, folks. So, I guess politicians got what they wanted … change.

But politicians never told us they wanted us to change for the worse. Backsliding is what it takes to give politicians more power.

Here are three things about speech rights that have changed. For maybe 350 years out of our ancestors’ 400 years on this continent, there were three kinds of speech that were prosecuted, not protected: false speech, obscene speech and seditious speech. Today, all good. The more lies, obscenity and sedition the better.

Average Americans today know how to find friends quickly, get their kids up and off to school, call an uber or a door dash, boot up a computer and cruise the net, make a video and post it online, drive off in a car to a workplace where they do what they are told all day long. Kudos to us.

Our average ancestors kept great books in their homes, read them and used them to teach. They apprenticed children in skilled trades. They learned the law and acted as their own lawyers. They farmed the land, started businesses, gave blood by volunteering as police watchmen and militiamen, took a turn running for office, built their own homes and made their own furnishings. They started towns and cities in their spare time.

You tell me if we have changed for the better.

— Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah