The times are not a-changin'

Lifted this from Crystal Downing's Book Changing Signs of Truth.  Sounds very familiar.

Summarizing contemporary culture in an essay titled "Signs of the Times,"  one cultural critic put it this way:

"public principle is gone; private honesty is  going; society, in short, is fast falling in pieces; and a time of unmixed evil is  come on us."

This apt statement appeared, however, in 1829, describing the  English culture of its author, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).   With apologies  to Bob Dylan, it would seem that the times are not a-changin'.