From a conservative point of view, the 1950s were a high point in American history. The nuclear family was still intact. Church participation was at an all-time high. Every town offered numerous social institutions to strengthen fraternity and community. Housing was affordable for almost anyone that had a career, and jobs were abundant. Rapid technological innovations and national pride created an American optimism that hasn’t been seen since. The solution to today’s ills is to mimic the 1950s. There’s only one problem with this – the 1950s were artificial. They were an aberration in American history. 

The 1950s do possess many traits that should be admired. I am not criticizing nuclear families, community, work ethic or religion. These are timeless, transcendent qualities. But to understand why these qualities flourished in the 1950s, you have to understand the conditions of the playing field at the time.

The rest of the civilized world was in shambles after World War II. Great Britain had lost its empire, and, in many ways, America inherited it. We were already a major industrial power prior to 1945, but when Britain lost its hegemony, America took first place by a measure of light years. Because the rest of the world was under reconstruction, Americans could live “in-house.” Remember the PSAs of the 1950s?

“Little Billy is skipping home from school in his American-made trousers and loafers! Over there is his sister Suzie, admiring her dress-up doll, made right here in Rhode Island! And here comes father, after a long day’s work, making sure our streets are flooded with light after the sun sets. They’re ready for mother’s pot roast, made from the finest Oklahoma beef! Mmm-mmm! Sunshine Farms Oklahoma Beef tm!”   

You could go through an entire day and never encounter a product that wasn’t American. This was not necessarily due to protectionist measures. The destruction of the rest of the world’s infrastructure post-WWII put America in this position. These conditions existed because of a massive global catastrophe, and we cannot expect the social and cultural aspects of the 1950s to return without understanding root causes. An unfortunate legacy of the 1950s is that it produced a conservative worldview that persists, unchanged, to this day. An artificial environment created an artificial worldview. Let’s look at some of the hallmarks of this worldview and examine why they are no longer relevant:

Small-Town America is Real America!

False. Unfortunately, small-town America is suffering from the same problems as urban America. The suburbs have not been hit as hard, but rural America is in rough shape. This article is not an exercise in examining every cause of America’s woes. We probably all agree that sending jobs overseas and social disintegration has created massive cultural and economic issues. There are “idle hands” problems everywhere. But pretending that leaving cities for small-town America is a solution is foolish. Small-town America now mimics urban ghetto culture. It’s getting harder and harder to find beauty in the future of small towns. A single mom covered in tattoos is casually swearing in front of children at the grocery store. Every parking lot is blasting rap music and smells like weed. Some guy passed out in the pizzeria bathroom from a meth overdose. “Get out of cities! Move to the country!” is often a solution that conservatives give. But this solution relies on the artificial 1950s worldview. Which leads me to:

You Need to Start a Family!

False. I agree with the premise. The family is the strongest cultural unit, and we need more of them. But the small-town solution is going to drastically decrease your chances of finding a quality mate. You can become a tradesman in the small towns and find happiness doing that. But decades and decades of social conditioning have painted the “tradesman option” as beneath most women. And most of the women that remain in the small towns are the type that I outlined in worldview category #1. And even if the stars do line up and you find someone, almost half of today’s marriages end in divorce. Staying in your small town and marrying your high school sweetheart is rooted in the artificial 1950s worldview. It’s not impossible, but you’re facing an uphill battle. You’re going to have to venture out to find quality networks, careers, and mates. Which leads to:

Any Degree is a Good Degree!

False. Although, I will add the caveat that this was true in the 1950s, before the massive expansion of liberal arts and humanities studies. But this also ties into the “tradesman option.” Don’t get me wrong, college today will be hell for conservatives. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon the fight. Staying in the small towns should not be an option for young conservatives that are intellectually gifted. An 18-year-old with a high IQ and a gift for public speaking should not be an electrician. A one-size-fits-all approach to the tradesmen option would kill off generations of future leaders. We cannot abandon the colleges, but we also cannot pretend they offer the same outcomes that they did in the 1950s. Which brings me to:   

Trust in America and her Institutions!

False. The 1950s worldview is still riding high off of WWII patriotism. America won, America were always the good guys, and America can do no wrong. The post-WWII generation doesn’t always recognize this, but they were the beta test for the modern education system. This was a product of the Cold War, and the 1950s worldview. The American government needed to mass-produce obedient soldiers to outperform the Soviets in every area. We can complain that today’s youth are getting indoctrinated by public education, but that was always the point! If you grew up in the 1950s, you were too. But the 1950s worldview thinks this is a modern occurrence. 

So, in some ways, this is one aspect of the 1950s worldview that has not changed. We are still on a Cold War footing and view the world in terms of good vs. evil. It wasn’t always this way. If you were classically educated in the ways of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic), you did not view things in black and white. For example, In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare makes a humanizing argument for the Jewish merchant. If you’re familiar with 16th century England, you would concede that Shakespeare would not have been on the side of the Jew. But a classical education would require that you be able to see things through the opposition’s eyes and articulate their point of view untouched by rhetorical revisionism. The classical trivium ways were passed over in favor of mass-produced Cold War education that still exists today. Imagine the average liberal college student today making convincing arguments on behalf of Ted Cruz. It would never happen. 

While the 1950s worldview is correct in that today’s education system is appalling, they are wrong in assuming that a return to theirs is a solution. Because the 1950s is where the Hallmark Card version of American history really takes center stage. And viewing everything in simplistic black and white solutions only creates more division and confusion. As the great Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs.” The world is a complicated place.

Wishing for a return to the 1950s, or any point in the past, cannot solve today’s problems. Conservatives have always had difficulty developing new ideas. And in some ways, that is good. That’s why they’re conservative. Constantly reinventing the wheel with utopian visions is a progressive trademark. But we can’t just draw a line from today to the past and expect to get the results of the past. We need to have ideas. We need a roadmap, not a time machine.

We can blame Gen X, the Millennials and Zoomers all we want. They’re certainly deserving of blame for many things. But they also did not have the privilege of growing up in the artificial environment of the 1950s. The social, economic, cultural and career environments are different. The 1950s environment gave Americans of that time an exponential advantage over today in almost every category. Expecting subsequent generations to live up to the same 1950s worldview is unrealistic.