If youre pining for the good old days amid todays turmoil, youre fooling yourself

Oct. 1, 2014 5:15 p.m.

When President Obama recently said the world is safer and less violent than its ever been, the usual knee-jerk antagonists mocked him.

But Fox News pundit John Stossel, whose uber-libertarianism often rubs me the wrong way, SAYS Obama got it right:

Americans now face beheadings, gang warfare, Ebola, ISIS and a new war in Syria. Its natural to assume that the world has gotten more dangerous. But it hasnt.

People believe that crime has gotten worse. But over the past two decades, murder and robbery in the U.S. are down by more than half, and rape by a third, even as complaints about rape culture grow louder.

Terrorism is a threat. But deaths from war are a fraction of what they were half a century ago, when we fought World War II and the Korean War, and Chairman Mao murdered millions. Despite todays wars in Iraq, Syria, etc., last decade saw the fewest deaths from war since record keeping began.

(Snip)

We wax nostalgic about the past, but the past was much nastier than today. Fifty years ago, most Americans my age were already dead.

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If youre pining for the good old days amid todays turmoil, youre fooling yourself