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The 50s were the peak years of our republic. The USA 2012 is a very different country.... This is very true. I often feel that I no longer live in the same county I grew up in. Things have changed so much that certainly my parents and grandparent's wouldn't recognize this place as their country. But we never stand still, and the odd thing is that the '50s culture, while it was so different than today, carried the seeds of its own undoing. It was the dreams and aspirations of the '50s that gave us the '60s, and so on. I think the same is true for every age, including the present. The contradictions of a time work themselves out in a way that give rise to yet more contradictions and unforeseen results, and that's the preverse way by which history unfolds.
But we never stand still, and the odd thing is that the '50s culture, while it was so different than today, carried the seeds of its own undoing. One must remember that during the 1950's, the culture was coarsening and welfare staters were busily hatching their collectivist schemes, as illustrated in the following books:
- Crowd Culture--An Examination of the American Way of life by Bernard Iddings Bell (New York: Harper, 1952). Bell's Crisis in Education: A Challenge to American Complcency (New York: Whittlesey, 1949) is also worth reading.
- The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It by John T. Flynn (New York: Devin Adair, 1955)
- The Age of Conformity by John C. Valentine (Chicago: Regnery, 1954)
- (Experts Warn: Our Schools, Colleges, Laboratories are Turning Out) Second-Rate Brains edited by Kermit Lansner (sine loco, Newsweek, 1958)
- Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools by Arthur E. Bestor (Urbana, Ill.: University of illinois Press, 1953)
- Collectivism in the Churches: A Documented Account of the Political Activities of the Federal, National and World Council of Churches by Edgar C. Bundy (Wheaton, Ill.: Church League of America, 1958)
- The Quiet Betrayal by Sidney de Love (Chicago: Normandie, 1960)