To view many of the films of the 30s, 40s, and 50s is for a later generation to question if that America portrayed ever existed? The Silver Screen did in many cases indulge in fantasy, but the very fact that so many of us were the “true believers” in love and romance especially can only be appreciated by those old enough to relate to the times represented by Hollywood. And for skeptics they should consider “It Might As Well Be Spring” won an Oscar for best song in the 1941 film “State Fair.” That together with films like “Casablanca” should speak volumes of the America I knew as a child and young man, an America filled with hope and promise for the future.

Brenda Starr is a name filled with nostalgia for me. Dale Messick, the creator of the comic strip, died a little over two years ago at age 98. “Most comics, the main characters are heroes, guys, and they don’t write for women,” Messick told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview. “I was a woman so I was writing for women and I think that’s what put her over.”

But despite my being a boy devoted to heroes like Superman and playing cowboy with cap pistols and BB gun pretending to be the Lone Ranger or Red Ryder and like any normal boy considered girls alien creatures, fascinating but suspect at best, when the strip began to appear in 1940 I was an avid fan from the very first. During WW II Brenda as with many cartoon and comic strip characters of the time was fully involved in the effort against the Axis Powers, and she proved to be as adventurous, brave and courageous as any man.

While Wonder Woman was also doing her part in like manner with her marvelous invisible airplane and magic powers making me a fan from her first appearance as well, I was entranced by Brenda’s ongoing relationship with the mysterious Basil St. John with his eye patch like that of a pirate, and his mysterious illness treated with a serum made from black orchids growing in the Amazon jungle. And Brenda Starr with her Rita Hayworth gloriously abundant, radiantly red hair and sparkling emerald green eyes was breathtakingly beautiful, something not lost on me even as a boy.

Perhaps my earliest readings as a child of Scott, Cooper, Stratton-Porter and others together with WWII and the films of the time made for the romantic in me. Whatever the reason, I was drawn to this ongoing relationship between Brenda and her mysterious lover with the black eye patch and his black orchids. I was thrilled every time Brenda would discover a black orchid left her by the mysterious St. John, and I would keep hoping for a happy outcome between Brenda and him.

It is the nostalgic longing for the mystery of love and romance Brenda Starr and Basil St. John represented I miss most of all, the nostalgia for what those black orchids represented to me as a boy that has been lost to this generation I find so tragic. Of the sources of wonder to the writer of Proverbs in the Old Testament was “… the way of a man with a maid.”

I believe the wonder of the mystery of love and romance between Brenda Starr and Basil St. John has been betrayed by an age that leaves nothing to the imagination of such things, and in this betrayal so has this generation of young people been betrayed, and lost to the young people of today the wonder of “… the way of a man with a maid.”

The best of our thinkers have not been those whose names are associated with the King of Disciplines: Philosophy. They have been the romantics who always believed humankind had greater potential for goodness than life would otherwise indicate. Philosophers don’t write about their wives and children, they don’t sing the praises of love and romance; that is left to the poets. But it is all too true that while the young are the romantics and poets, the elderly are philosophers. Life has a way of dealing harshly with romantics and poets, and it becomes increasingly easy with the passing years to give yourself over to philosophical speculation in the face of grim realities of the wicked prospering, the monumental evil prevailing even here in America evidenced by our own government rather than holding on to dreams of things you realize will never be.

My own dismal assessment is based on the fact that in order for children to be raised with hope for a future, the kind of future in which romantics and poets have a place requires a society and government that cherishes its young and makes children a national priority. And I have virtually no basis of hope for this happening; on the contrary children are being raised in the knowledge that American society and the government are indifferent to them. And when not indifferent, exploits children; as anyone viewing “children’s programming” on TV readily realizes.

But in sum; consider a society and its government in which the “rights” of those that prey on children, the “rights” of pedophiles and convicted child rapists and murderers supersede the rights of children to a protected and innocent childhood and you have a prediction for the end of such a society and government. And consider the universities that produce the leaders of a society and government that will not make children a national priority, but on the contrary encourage organizations like the ACLU and others that support giving criminals greater rights than their victims and you discover the foundation for such callous indifference toward children.

A civilized nation worthy of being called such does not allow the monsters preying on children to ever be released once caught and convicted to continue their depredations; a truly civilized nation does not take such a risk to children. As though we needed any proof of our nation sinking into barbarism, it is this betrayal of our children that stands in final judgment of America. Romantics and poets understand this; but America no longer produces romantics and poets. That America survives only in the memory of those of us old enough to recall such an America.