Whenever someone says, "It's different now. That [bad thing] couldn't happen today." Immediately tune them out, write them off as a deluded idiot who believes in evolution.
Everything you read about in history books could happen *tomorrow* if the conditions were right, and they could easily be right. Human nature hasn't changed ONE IOTA since Cain and Abel. Original Sin is Original Sin. Man's fallen nature hasn't gotten any better with age.