Some readers have commented on my Heinleiniana post to the general effect that reading Heinlein's little credo, the 1950s seem like an awfully long time ago.

 

It had that effect on me, too.  I am in broad sympathy with the many people who have observed that the 1950s were, with numerous obvious qualifications, a sort of Golden Age of American civilization.  What on earth happened to us?

 

Well, the Great Disruption happened.  An old order, with its many unsatisfactory features, ended, and a new one—also with many unsatisfactory features, but different ones mostly milder in their unsatisfactoriness—came up.  

 

The main reason the 1950s looks so good to so many of us is that in moving from the old order to the new, we lost much of our civilizational confidence.  You may say that that confidence was misplaced, or an illusion;  you may even say that it was obnoxious, and good riddance to it;  and you may be right on all points.  There is something awfully attractive about civilizational confidence though.  Like innocence, once gone, it can't be recaptured.  Those of us who recall it shouldn't be blamed for missing it.