A poll conducted in March by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) asked 1,019 adults their opinions on various issues, and the results, as compared to replies given in 1998, leave me longing for the idyllic days of yesteryear.

It’s usually tricky to reflect on the past without recalling any of the unpleasantness. Much like thinking back to a Greek vacation last summer and remembering only the incredible food, beaches, and blue skies – not the mosquito bites and taxi shortages. Nonetheless, my rose-colored time machine notwithstanding, I’m inclined to believe that 1998 was a better time; and the NORC poll results confirm it.

The respondents were 44 percent Democrats, 38 percent Republicans, and 18 percent independents. Less tellingly, 47 percent identified as moderate, 28 percent conservative, and 23 percent liberal. As I’ve heard President Biden described as any of the three by varying groups, ideological labels don’t mean a great deal.

In 1998, 70 percent deemed patriotism to be very important, compared to just 38 percent today. Granted, ‘patriotism’ means different things to different people. For instance, some might define it as an ostentatious love of country – foregoing wearing U.S. flags on jacket lapels but still feeling patriotic on the inside. Regardless, it’s a steep drop from 70 to 38.

On a more clear-cut question, whether it’s very important to have children, 60 percent answered yes in 1998 compared to half that number today.

Is it important to be involved in one’s community? Half the respondents thought so 25 years ago but only a quarter do today.

Tellingly, only 58 percent thought tolerance of others was important, as compared to a whopping 80 percent just four years ago. Had that high percentage been marked in 2014 or 2015, one could plausibly blame Donald Trump for the current toxic divisiveness. But 2019 was four years since Trump rode down that escalator, and yet tolerance was admirably high. I blame it on wokeness.

Speaking of which, only 15 percent of Democrat respondents think society’s gone too far in terms of accepting transgenders, as compared to 47 percent of independents and 75 percent of Republicans. Well over half of Republicans and a third of independents believe that businesses and educational institutions have gone too far in promoting racial and ethnic diversity, whereas only about 7 percent of Democrats do.

As many as 17 percent of all respondents think athletes should be allowed to compete in sports based on their gender of choice rather than their biological gender at birth and another 25 percent are unsure. Only slightly more than half – 56 percent – were adamant that they should not.

Although I wasn’t able to access the raw 1998 poll, I can’t imagine that question was even asked, but had it been, I can’t fathom that more than 2 or 3 percent would have answered yes.

Ahh, 1998. President Clinton was basking in the glory of a strong reelection victory, enjoying peace (for the most part) and prosperity, while declaring that “the era of big government is over.” His Republican counterpart, Newt Gingrich, was Speaker of the House and had ushered in the Contract with America.

Clinton and Gingrich fought it out but hammered out deal after deal. Rush Limbaugh took daily potshots at Clinton, while the rest of the media, academia, and Hollywood went after Gingrich. Not exactly a fair fight, but both leaders made their indelible marks.

I voted for the Bob Dole-Jack Kemp ticket in 1996 – mostly because Kemp is one of my all-time favorites – but exited the booth knowing the odds were strongly in Clinton’s favor, and yet not minding terribly.

Rudy Giuliani, now vilified by the left and reduced to an image of a straw-grasping conspiracy theorist with dark beads of hair-dye sweat streaming down his cheeks, was riding high as the face of crimefighting in America. He became America’s Mayor long before 9/11, and in 1998 was the frontrunner for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination.

During the Clinton years I had opened a law office in Manhattan and by 1998 was also a divisional dean at college in Midtown. And for the first time in my life, I felt safe walking the streets of my native New York City not only in broad daylight but also late at night.

On Thanksgiving Day 1998, families and friends sat together and ate turkey, with divergent views on the midterm election a few weeks earlier (the Republicans retained control of both houses though the Democrats made up some ground in the House) and on the looming Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to the unfounded impeachment of the president. But they didn’t cancel one another. They didn’t unfriend. In fact, antisocial media, as I call it, had yet to become a thing.

Pagers were all the rage, and people were spotted talking on flip-phones, but the thousand-dollar mini-computers we all walk around with and spend hours staring at incessantly didn’t exist at the time.

Seattle grunge rock dominated the music industry, and while I thought it was a poor substitute for the much-superior music of the 1970s (and the 1950s and 60s, for that matter), I can’t even describe the sounds people listen to nowadays, or make a case about how they are musical even in the slightest of ways.

If a filmmaker had made a movie in 1998 titled ‘25 Years from Now’ featuring scenes such as a federal judge being booed at a prestigious law school while a dean of something called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) encourages their hateful epithets, the response to that filmmaker would be: “wow, you’ve got some wild imagination!”