I think what took place in America from the 50's until 2020 was absolutely amazing. NASA, Heart Transplants, Conquering Polio, Reducing deaths from cancer, just too name a few little items.

For many it was the best of times.

Seems, from our perspective, that the 50s was the last time we actually had some freedoms in the original sense...it sure as hell has been a downhill ride ever since.

Post WWII American industrialism worked out pretty well while it lasted.

"Could I imagine a sequel to Atlas, imagining in detail the utopia the strikers create from the wreckage of America? If someone has written it, I have not come across it." There is a book titled "Atlas Snubbed: An Unsanctioned Pastiche Parody" by Ken V. Krawchuk, which is an interesting read. I liked it for what it is, but think Ayn Rand would not be amused.

I agree with all of your points of how America has been moving from a mixed economy to a socialist dominated economy. These is a terrible shift and will have devastating effects down the road for these millennials who are unwittingly planning their own destruction. But I think you are mistaken in believing that Ayn Rand moral compass aligned with the 50s. While it was the start of the civil rights movement, I do not think change came nearly quick enough for a true Objectivist. Also you reference a traditional Christian way of life that Ayn Rand did not endorse. Not that it is a horrible thing but your article seems written by a conservative and not an Objectivist.

After reading your brilliant article I pondered.
I was born in 1950 and through the eyes of a child, the 50's and 60's were utopia to my eyes - but then what does a child really know?

I suspect I was starting to realize that utopia didn't exist when I started college in the late 60's and was experiencing reality in the world outside of the bubble of "home". From that point on I realized that life was a struggle, and often thought of the struggles of man throughout the centuries just to survive, to eat, to keep warm, and to raise a new generation who would one day be forced to leave their protective bubble and join the reality of struggling.

Looking backwards to the times in the 50's and 60's and concentrating on the struggles of my parents and the parents of my friends, I now see their struggles as society was quickly changing for the parents, but not to the realization of their offspring.

Therefore, I define utopia as that short period of time when all one could experience was one's own innocence. Its short lived and then the ugly reality that is greed and fear comes crashing down upon ones self as one quickly matures.

I suspect that this is the way it has been throughout the ages, since the dawn of man, and will be the same till the end of man.