On Sep 17, 10:16*am, dave wrote:
wrote:

And how, may we ask is it "that 210 years ago people were generally a
lot smarter than they are now" ? *I was always told that most people
(worldwide) were mostly illiterate until very recently. And how can we
sample a spoken recording of *such a time???

In the 18th century Americans were more rational and focused than they
are today. Their vocabularies were much bigger and they could follow an
argument to a logical conclusion.

TV, the internet, etc., may fill up our heads with more facts, etc., but
they have done nothing but made us functionally way dumber. *I like to
think of the mass media as a voluntary electronic lobotomy.

Read "the Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine (the atheist who invented the
USA). *It is one of the most beautiful things ever written. Nothing
today compares.

Thomas Paine was not an average person. I seriously doubt that the
average 18th century American was even half as bright.