Conservatives Can Do Better Than ’50s Nostalgia

“Conservatism” is a notoriously slippery word. Much of the confusion comes from the question “What exactly are we conserving?” Traditionalists and libertarians have long debated whether the conservative emphasis should be on virtue or freedom, for instance.

Other conservatives seek to return America to a “golden era,” a time before a fall from grace. The Norman Rockwell aesthetics of the 1950s have become a nostalgic touchstone for a certain kind of traditionalist politics. Postwar America is often remembered as some sort of utopia, where men were men, families were strong, and everybody went to church. Increasingly, right-wing technocrats—mostly gathered in a few Washington think tanks and magazines—are looking back on the social and economic policies of that time for models to imitate today.

But the 1950s were no golden era. Racial segregation and misogyny marred America’s victory over fascism. Social alienation was widespread, despite the popular image of suburban families with white-picket fences remembered from Leave It to Beaver. And the centralization imposed by the New Deal—which contributed to the hollowing out of communities and homogenization of American life—only made things worse.

Conservatives who lived through the 1950s did not view this decade as particularly conservative. In National Review’s mission statement, written in 1955, William F. Buckley said that “There never was an age of conformity quite like this one.” The founders of that magazine and others present at the creation of the conservative movement would be horrified by their intellectual heirs’ embrace of the conformity they so vehemently disliked.

Read more in Public Discourse.