Anybody that was conscious during the 1970s will recall the theme song of "All In the Family," Norman Lear’s socio-commentary on everything from bigotry to hippies to communism.

Yes, this is a rant. Brace yourself, or go read "Dear Abby," but here it comes.

Seems like day after day, something comes along that makes me think even Archie’s day was better than these.

The state feels it necessary to regulate whether or not businesses can allow smoking; the banks want your thumbprints; you can’t call a hospital and check on the condition of your auntie without HIPAA regulations getting in the way.

But they’ll let telemarketers invade the privacy of your own home, and credit card offers stack up in your mailbox.

Just this week, St. Charles, Missouri considered a bill to ban swearing in bars. Granted, that’s one provision among others – the rest being table dancing, drinking contests and profane music – but c’mon! It’s a bar. It’s self-regulating. If you don’t like the atmosphere, you don’t go in, find another one or give up bars completely. It’s not government’s business to regulate bars!

Also this week, the wire ran a report that folks born after Dec. 1, 1964 will have to get "more secure driver’s licenses" in the next six years. It’s supposedly a Homeland Security measure to protect against terrorism, but the details are very sketchy. I can about imagine what they mean by "more secure:" Less privacy, more control.

Bob Seger was wrong, it seems. We don’t "Feel Like A Number," we’ve become a whole plethora of numbers. You’re a social security number, a driver’s license number, an account number, a routing number, a member number and an invoice number. Parents are not going to name their kids anymore, just issue ‘em a social security card and say things like, "Hey! 333-71-4762, go clean your room!"

Makes me ill. You can’t call your local post office. You can’t get someone to speak English half the time when you need help operating your microwave.

Kids can call social services if you take a belt to their backsides for skipping school, but the police can arrest them for smoking cigarettes. Does that make one lick of sense?

Our police reports are full of kids fighting at school and getting sent to juvenile court. How, do you imagine, is this better than letting them duke it out and solving their problems the old-fashioned way?

Go ahead, call me barbaric. But nobody had to go to court in tenth grade in my day unless they burned down the gym or something. If somebody shoved you at the water fountain, you made a decision to either turn the other cheek or try to whup their behind. You might get your behind whupped instead. Whatever the outcome, it was settled, and for the love of Pete it didn’t require a judge, a psychologist, a juvenile officer and a dadblamed docket number.

Now, listen, I’m not talking about gangs and true criminal violence. I’m not talking about the over-the-top kids we seem to be breeding nowadays through our Dr. Spock sensibilities (read: stupidities).

But sending a couple of kids to juvie court over a hall incident is plumb silly. It seems like we don’t know whether to protect our kids or throw them to the wolves, so we do both simultaneously and wash our hands of them.

Meanwhile, our old people are missing their medications because they can’t afford the astronomical prices of them, but we’re sending $30 billion dollars in support to Israel.

Somebody’s going to get on me for the whole "welfare state" lyrics above, but I don’t give a jolly rip. Everybody needs to pull their weight like they used to. There were clear lines then. You was either a bum or not a bum. Wasn’t much gray in there. That’s the way it should be again. We’re bending over backwards to validate unemployment and dependency, while the rest of us are paying for social security and Medicare we probably won’t ever see, and if we do, it won’t be worth a plug nickel.

A woman was killed by a deranged murderer while hiking in Georgia. Perhaps she would have stood a better chance if she had been armed, but handguns aren’t allowed in most national forests, parks or certain state wildlife and recreation areas. However, hunting rifles and shotguns in season are. Go figure.

Yeah, I could go on and on. Where did we go wrong? Oh, somebody’s going to blame "the dang Liberals" and somebody else is going to point the finger at "the blasted Conservatives" because that’s what we’ve degenerated into in this day and age: Name-calling and dehumanizing those we disagree with, when in fact we’re all responsible for this craziness by our apathy.

And you know what scares me the most and makes me the angriest?

That when my generation is old, we’ll actually sit there and look back on now and say, "Those were the days."