CARRY FORWARD THE BEST PARTS OF AMERICA!
There are Americans that want to retreat to the past because the past can feel safer, simpler, and more understandable than the present—even when the version of the past they remember never actually existed quite the way they imagine. Nostalgia can deceive us.
Several forces are at work:
- Nostalgia for a perceived golden age.
People often remember the good parts of earlier decades while forgetting the problems. “America was better then!” can mean a desire for economic security, stronger communities, stable institutions, or a clearer sense of national identity—not necessarily a literal desire to recreate every aspect of the past. - Fear of rapid social change.
Technology, demographic change, immigration, changing gender roles, racial equality, and shifting cultural norms can make people feel that the country they knew is disappearing. When change happens faster than people can adapt, looking backward becomes psychologically attractive. - Economic insecurity.
For some Americans, nostalgia isn’t primarily cultural. It is economic. They remember a time when one income could support a family, manufacturing jobs were more plentiful in some communities, housing was cheaper, and college seemed attainable without enormous debt. The longing for the past can really be a longing for economic security. - Loss of community.
Churches, unions, civic organizations, neighborhood associations, local businesses, and other institutions once provided many people with a stronger sense of belonging. Their decline has left a vacuum. People sometimes respond by idealizing the era when those institutions seemed stronger. - Political entrepreneurs exploit nostalgia.
“Take America back” is an enormously powerful political message because it doesn’t require defining exactly what is being restored. It allows different people to project their own lost America onto the slogan. Politicians can then turn nostalgia into anger: Someone took your country away from you, and I will give it back. - The past provides certainty.
The future is frightening because it is unknowable. The past, by contrast, is familiar. During periods of political polarization, technological disruption, war, demographic change, or economic uncertainty, people can become more attracted to movements promising restoration rather than adaptation. - Selective memory matters.
This is perhaps the most important point. Every generation can construct a romantic version of its past. But the United States has always been conflicted and imperfect. The same periods remembered nostalgically by some Americans also contained segregation, discrimination, political violence, economic inequality, limited opportunities for women, and exclusion of entire groups from full participation in American life.
Also there is also a deeper question underneath all of this:
Do people actually want to return to the past—or do they want the benefits they associate with the past?
This is an important distinction.
Someone who says, “I want America to be like it was when I was young,” may really be saying:
I want to feel secure again. I want my community to feel connected again. I want to believe that hard work will lead somewhere. I want to understand where my country is going.
These are legitimate desires.
But the danger comes when nostalgia becomes political restorationism—the belief that America can solve contemporary problems by turning the clock backward and restoring an imagined social order. A democratic society cannot actually go backward. The world changes, technology changes, demographics change, and institutions evolve. (Reuters.org)
The better question is: What was genuinely worth preserving from the past, and how can we bring those strengths into the future without bringing back the injustices that accompanied them?
That distinction is particularly important in today’s political climate. A movement built around “Make America great again” can appeal to genuine anxieties about economic and cultural change. But nostalgia can also become a weapon when politicians define the “real America” as belonging primarily to a particular race, religion, class, or cultural tradition. Christian Nationalism is a threat to you and me.
America’s challenge isn’t to choose between the past and the future.
It is to remember the past honestly enough to learn from it—and then build something better. (The Guardian)
We can do it. The mistake is assuming that if something from the past was valuable, we must also accept the injustices that existed alongside it. America can recover certain social and economic strengths without resurrecting the inequalities of the era that produced them.
1. Stronger communities without social exclusion.
Earlier America often had tighter-knit neighborhoods, civic organizations, volunteer groups, churches, fraternal organizations, and local clubs.
Bring back: community involvement, volunteering, neighborhood organizations, and civic responsibility.
Leave behind: segregation, exclusion, and the idea that some people don’t belong in the community.
2. Economic security without discrimination.
Many Americans remember a period when a person with a high-school education could find a stable job, buy a house, support a family, and retire with some security.
Bring back: good-paying jobs, apprenticeships, unions, pensions, affordable housing, and a realistic path into the middle class.
Leave behind: racial and gender discrimination that kept many Americans from those opportunities.
The goal shouldn’t be to recreate the 1950s economy. It should be to recreate the economic security people associate with it—this time available to everyone.
3. Manufacturing without isolationism.
American manufacturing once provided millions of relatively stable jobs and helped build communities.
Bring back: investment in American manufacturing, infrastructure, skilled trades, research, and domestic supply chains.
Leave behind: the assumption that America must isolate itself from the world to protect American workers.
A modern manufacturing renaissance can coexist with international trade.
4. Civic pride without nationalism.
There was once a stronger emphasis on citizenship, public service, and pride in contributing to the country.
Bring back: national service, community service, respect for public institutions, and a sense that citizenship carries responsibilities as well as rights.
Leave behind: the idea that criticizing America is unpatriotic—or that some Americans are more authentically American than others.
Patriotism should mean wanting your country to live up to its ideals, not pretending it has always done so.
5. Respect for institutions without blind obedience.
Previous generations often placed greater faith in institutions such as schools, courts, libraries, local government, and public agencies.
Bring back: respect for expertise, competence, public service, and the rule of law.
Leave behind: unquestioning obedience to authority.
Institutions deserve respect when they earn it, and democratic citizens must retain the right to challenge them.
6. A stronger work ethic without glorifying exploitation.
There is something valuable in the older emphasis on responsibility, craftsmanship, perseverance, and taking pride in one’s work.
Bring back: dignity of work and personal responsibility.
Leave behind: the notion that working hard automatically guarantees success or that people who struggle simply aren’t working hard enough.
A society can value individual responsibility while recognizing that wages, housing, education, healthcare, and economic opportunity also matter.
7. Better civic education.
Americans once had a stronger expectation that citizens should understand their government.
Bring back: serious civics education—Constitutional principles, history, media literacy, how Congress works, how courts work, and how citizens can participate.
Leave behind: sanitized history and the notion that America needs to be”dumbed” down.
Students should learn both America’s achievements and its failures. Understanding slavery, segregation, women’s exclusion from political life, Native American dispossession, and other injustices doesn’t weaken patriotism. It makes citizenship more informed.
8. Family stability without prescribing one family model.
There was value in emphasizing stable families and responsibility toward children.
Bring back: policies that make family life economically sustainable—paid leave, affordable childcare, decent wages, housing, and time with children.
Leave behind: the assumption that there is only one legitimate family structure or that government should dictate people’s private lives.
9. Public investment without abandoning individual responsibility
America once undertook enormous public projects: highways, schools, scientific research, public utilities, infrastructure, and institutions of higher education.
Bring back: the willingness to make long-term investments in the country’s future.
Leave behind: the idea that government must solve everything.
The strongest version is neither unlimited government nor government paralysis. It is a capable government working alongside capable citizens and businesses.
10. A belief in the future
Perhaps the greatest strength worth recovering is optimism.
Previous generations often believed America could build something better: landing people on the Moon, defeating fascism, constructing an interstate highway system, expanding educational opportunity, and creating new technologies.
Today, nostalgia sometimes tells Americans:
“The best days are behind us.”
America needs the opposite message:
“The best parts of our past are raw material for building something better.”
That means preserving community without segregation, patriotism without nationalism, economic security without exclusion, tradition without oppression, and individual responsibility without abandoning people who need help.
The real choice isn’t “old America versus new America.”
It is “Which parts of America’s past deserve to be carried forward—and which parts should finally stay in the past?”
And that distinction could make for a particularly powerful argument about why “Make America Great Again” is an incomplete political vision: America doesn’t need to go backward to recover what was good about itself.
T. Michael Smith
wwwtmichaelsmith.com