The lead up to our Bicentennial summer was more than a year in the making, with almost everyone participating. My main present for Christmas 1975 was a Tyco train set.  “The Spirit of ‘76” engine was in a beautiful red white and blue scheme. 

Mrs. Darden had our first grade class anxiously expecting a huge July 4^th party. Stores seemed to be competing on who could have the most bunting in a stars and stripes motif. Patriotism wasn’t questioned, and it didn’t need to be encouraged. It just was who we were, and we were proud to show it.

Nostalgia has a way of converting past struggles into “the good old days”.  When this period of history is studied, it was on merit a less than happy chapter. 

In the years immediately prior to our Bicentennial, we had our President resign in disgrace. We had just withdrawn from Vietnam in what was the first real loss of an American military campaign. We wouldn’t for another decade or more even begin to recognize and honor those who served appropriately. 

We had just suffered our first oil embargo. Inflation was out of control. We discovered that we could import goods much cheaper from overseas and had begun to hollow out our manufacturing base of the Northeast and Midwest.

The patriotism was real. So was the anxiety.

We were entertained by sitcoms like Happy Days.  A generation later we skipped forward in time to focus on this period with That ‘70’s Show. 

The plots in both focused on the teenagers. The historical tethers were demonstrated by the concerns of the parents.

Red Forman, to the viewers focused on the kids just wanting to be kids, was the out of touch scold too rooted in the past. To those who remember the concerns of the 1970’s, he was a haunting reminder of what was then very much the present.

Every parent worries about the changes happening and how their kids will adapt and survive in a world they struggle to understand.  In Red’s world of the 1970’s, factories were closing. Jobs were becoming more and more scarce. The skills he and his peers had were not easily transferrable to the newer jobs being created – with many being geographically distant.  Paychecks were getting smaller as groceries and gas cost more and more. 

Despite all of the well-earned stress and angst over the prospects of where America was and what our future as Americans would be, we celebrated. We were genuinely happy.

What changed?

Some of the easy answers start with the problems already mentioned. To be able to buy goods cheaper, we outsourced a lot of our jobs. Economists will tell you we’re better off doing this. Trade only happens when both sides are better off.  But there are tradeoffs.

It’s difficult to move directly from high school into a job that can support a family. We’ve gutted most technical programs in our public schools and at the same time gutted standards for the basics. Even our best colleges are now offering remedial classes. 

The outsourcing didn’t stop there. We collectively outsource almost everything now, but have quit participating and inspecting what we’re consuming.

In the ‘70’s, civic participation was still somewhat of an expectation. In the area where I grew up, parents were almost always a member of a Kiwanis, Rotary, or Optimist Club. Church attendance and participation on boards and committees was real. The overwhelming majority of my friends’ parents were involved in the PTA. At one point we had five local newspapers in a county of 100,000 people to inform us of the things we didn’t have time to attend to in person.

These things, too, we have outsourced. We are worse off for it.

We tell ourselves we’re just too busy. We often tell ourselves lots of things to justify doing what is easiest. 

With our decline in civic involvement has come an alarming decrease in civic literacy. Too many of us and our peers don’t know anything about our local elected officials, what our city, county, and school budgets look like, nor how the funding that comes from local, state, or federal dollars originate nor are spent. 

We no longer wear red white and blue, but red or blue. Our civic involvement was outsourced with a white flag of surrender.

There’s a movement underway to onshore critical industries. The Covid shutdowns and increased global turmoil have demonstrated the weak links in international supply chains.

That will take some risk out of our economic cycles. It won’t fix many of our deeper, more pressing problems.

We need more focus on the very basics of American civics. This means we need to return to personal involvement with our time and efforts, and encourage our friends and neighbors to do the same.