John Boehner whined the other day that "They're snuffing out the America that I grew up in." Well, Boehner and I grew up in the 1950's and '60s. I watched "Leave it to Beaver" just like he probably did. But as Steve Benen points out this morning, in the beloved '50s, top tax rates were 90% and private sector union membership was over 30%.
This is a pet peeve of mine -- Right wing nostalgia for the '50s, when the '50s were the most economically egalitarian period in American History -- not only were taxes high and unions strong, but CEO's did not make hundreds of times the salaries of their employees. Most significantly, perhaps, the New Deal blossomed in the '50s -- the elderly were not a drain on their children's families, minimum wages protected workers and other FDR programs enabled the advent of a prosperous middle class.
But the right would have us believe that it was "values" like abstinence that made the '50s so great. They're right that it was "values" -- but values like social justice and equality. Values that Boehner and his ilk have been doing their best to eviscerate for 30 years.
Or maybe the right is just nostalgic for Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws from the '50s.
(Of course racial equality lagged behind economic equality in the '50s, but its seeks were sown in Brown v. Bd. of Ed., Montogomery, etc.)