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 (N