No rose-tint here

I can see why you would say that I was romanticizing, Martin. However, let it be noted that I have no qualms about criticizing the past and examining its nature, good and bad. My description that you quote was perhaps a poor phrasing of what I intended to convey. I intended those descriptors of "farmer," "craftsman," and the like to indicate an era when such professions were the dominant form of work. I'm not saying that farming was idyllic and without hardship; indeed, it involved privation and trial unlike most could tolerate today. And such times often lacked liberties or comforts that we consider essential and basic tody.

But the issue is not whether such times were a Golden Age, which they were not, but rather how such a civilization compares to our own. If we want to claim that certain parts of our modern age are better than the past, then we must also be willing to grant that parts of the past are better than the present. Do the ills of the present outweigh the ills of the past? That is the issue I am posing. I merely contend that I would rather deal with hardships of the past over the hardships of the present.

It is as much a personal choice as it is a moral distinction. But you're a good post-modernist, Martin, so I'm sure you'll settle for the former.