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You can't walk ten feet without hearing about how the American way of life is being degraded. It's always some new menace - disrespect, cell phones, gay people, chat speak, Mexican immigrants, people who talk at the theatre - the list goes on forever. Listening, you'd think that society is at the brink of destruction; that the fall of Western civilization as we know it is next Tuesday at three.
The in thing, it seems, is to harken back to the 1950s. It was a noble, idyllic time, when everyone had manners, sat up straight and always went to church on Sunday. That, they say, was America as it should be. If we could only recapture the glory of that time, everything would be perfect.
Most people who espouse this particular gospel have no ulterior motive. However, there's a significant contingent that is more sinister. The unspoken sentiment among these '50s worshippers is clear. In those Technicolor memories, the '50s are exclusively white, heterosexual, and Protestant. People in unhappy marriages stayed in them, having lots of little white babies and keeping their mouths shut. Women and non-whites spoke when spoken to, and homosexuals had the good sense to not exist.
Society in the 1950s appears so stable and peaceful to us because we forget the fear. The world had just been through a brutal conflict wherein people did the unthinkable. We came very close to losing to the German war machine. America didn't want to fight; it wanted to sit on the porch with a glass of tea and its one good leg.
But no sooner had we beaten the Nazis than the Red Menace cropped up. The fear generated was more than enough to enforce the stifling society that had begun to form. For anyone who still thinks the 1950s were a beautiful time, what about McCarthyism? There is nothing American about being terrified that you'll be ruined by your own government just because someone thought you might have been a Communist. The McCarthy hearings ruined the careers and lives of dozens of people, some only because they refused to name names. Does that sound like the land of the free to you?
Culture doesn't degrade; it only changes. This isn't the first time America has had a "marriage crisis." In fact, it isn't even the first time in the twentieth century. The influence of Mexican culture is not destroying our society any more than the influence of German or Italian culture during those immigration waves. Our language is not being destroyed by swearing. Our culture definitely has problems, but shouldn't we be worrying about things like poverty and healthcare before divorce and bad manners?
In so many ways, the '50s were the aberration, not the norm. It was a strange time in American life, one of tranquility at the cost of personal freedom. It's the kind of situation that can easily be repeated in our time, if we so choose. That's what we should really be worried about, not what amount to little annoyances. There's nothing more un-American than choosing to live in fear.
