Talkin' Politics: My answer to 'Why can't America return to the good old days of the Fifties?'

How can we return American society to the 1950s, when people were more politically incorrect?

You can’t. Time, societies, and history only go forward in time, not backward.

The idealized 1950s

Extreme conservatives who also happen to be white, religious (often Evangelical Protestants but, really, from any denomination) that miss the “good ol’ days” seem to be asking this, not just on Quora, but in other social media and in “real life” conversations.

On the surface, asking “How can we return American society to the ‘50s, when people were more politically incorrect?” seems rather innocent enough, evoking nostalgia for an era where life seemed idyllic.

Idyllic, that is, if you were a white person, especially a white male person, with strong religious beliefs and staunchly conservative political views.

What the questioner is really asking, though, is this:

Why can’t we return American society to a period of history when it was:

• Okay to discriminate against blacks (Negroes, in the parlance of the day)
• Okay to segregate blacks from the rest of the community (especially in the Deep South)
• Okay to deny blacks the right to vote in local, state, or national elections
• Okay to discriminate (openly and subtly) against Jews
• Okay to keep women submissive and to only allow them to seek jobs in professions that were traditionally geared for the “fairer sex,” i.e. teachers, secretaries, health care (mostly as nurses), or simply stay home and be housewives
• Okay to discriminate against homosexuals
• Okay to tell malicious jokes about minorities
• Okay to discriminate against foreigners
• Okay to label non-comformists, liberals, progressives, and civil rights advocates as “Communist”
• Okay to express white supremacist views without being censured by one’s peers

• Okay to create an atmosphere of paranoia and fear

The uglier side of the 1950s