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On November 22, 1963, the regular teacher for our sixth-grade class was off in Columbus for some sort of state-wide teachers’ meeting, so it was the school’s principal who took us out to the school playground for phys. ed. We played a disorganized style of soccer that consisted mostly of running, running, running, and occasionally flailing at the ball if it came near. Then we came back inside, and a substitute teacher had us open our science books to an illustration of piano strings, with special emphasis on their different lengths and thicknesses.

In a few minutes, the principal came to the door to ask the teacher to turn on the classroom intercom, which was carrying a radio news report. President Kennedy had been shot. I still remember looking at that drawing of piano strings and listening to the voices on the radio.

On April 4, 1968, I was in the living room at home. The television was on, but I don’t think I was paying much attention until the bulletin flashed on the screen: Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed. We had never heard the famous civil rights leader called Jr. — could this be his son?

At breakfast on the morning of June 6, 1968, the kitchen radio carried the news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot late the night before. He had just won the Democratic presidential primary in California. He was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died the next day.

On Monday I saw the new Emilio Estevez movie, Bobby. The movie was disappointing — Grand Hotel, but set at the Ambassador on the day RFK was shot.

The movie invites comparisons to the present day, but what really struck me was how antiquated and quaint the politics of 1968 seem when seen from today. Can you imagine any modern politician of either party standing up for migrant farm workers? Not just talking to poor people, but listening to them? Caring more about a coal miner than a coal company?

It wasn’t just Bobby Kennedy. The whole country has changed, and the ideals of 1968 have been sacrificed for stock options and 401Ks.

It’s the big shocks we remember — the assassinations, the terrorist attacks — but societies change mostly by millions of erosive increments, each one so small we don’t even notice it; all together, transforming us beyond recognition. The Party of Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the party of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. The Party of Lincoln becomes the party of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush. The Bill of Rights becomes a mere inconvenience:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

…

Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech.

We lost this country by millions and millions of bad decisions over many years.

Can America be saved? It’s going to take years, and millions upon millions of better choices.