The 1950s: “I Like Ike”

American life in the 1950s had a number of terrible features, in particular de jure racial segregation and the assumption that war was required to stop the spread of communism. Like all progressives, I don’t want to go back there either.

Yet I want to point out that, in the middle 20th Century, this country:

Wasn’t dominated by the corruptive influence of Big Money in its largest industries–oil, pharmaceuticals, weapons, etc.

Wasn’t led by a criminal sociopath.

For those of you too young to remember, “I Like Ike” was the campaign slogan of Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower, who was a Republican, but one from an era long before this hateful insanity.