Libby- you are fortunate to have missed the original "law and order" era spanned by that Prince of Patriotism himself, Spiro Agnew. He not only knew the difference between the two but leveraged that difference into a great divide between generations: His famous “effete snobs” speech called out not only leftist protesters, but a whole group of pseudo-intellectuals who Agnew believed were brainwashing young students:

"Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated, and a contemporary antagonism known as “The Generation Gap.” A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

That was the scariest time in my seventy-something years!