How We Got to Nowhere

A Review of Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned into a National Nightmare & How We Can Revive the American Dream, by Timothy S. Goeglein

It seems that more and more people are waking up to the reality that “we’re not in Kansas anymore.” On issues ranging from morality and civility to family and politics, the ground seems to have shifted beneath our feet over the past several decades. The shift may have been gradual for a while—until all of a sudden it wasn’t. The long march through the institutions—the phrase is taken from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s strategy for inducing political change in the West—is now manifesting in ways that only five years ago would have been unthinkable. All of this has left many of us asking how we got here and what we can do about it.

Tim Goeglein sets out to answer these questions in Stumbling Toward Utopia. The book is filled with facts and figures that document the significant changes we’ve seen on moral questions, family formation, educational outcomes, and more. The compilation of data and research is helpfully relayed through a clear narrative telling the story of key players and events in what the author calls “a failed experiment.” As he puts it, “the latest attempt to create utopia has failed: the 1960s.”

A Disastrous Decade

Goeglein makes a case that the ’60s were a clear turning point in American life. That decade, he writes, “may have come and gone in the annals of history, but its legacy continues to this day—and in fact, much of what we are experiencing now can be traced back to its poisonous roots.” There are two introductory chapters. The first is written using the format of letters from a pen pal from the past, which is an effective technique to show vividly the cultural changes experienced by an average American. The second lays out how some of the foundations for 1960s ideologies can be found in the Progressive era of the early 1900s. Each of the remaining chapters tells the story of a different facet of life that has been, and continues to be, impacted by the shockwaves of the ’60s.

With statistics and stories in tow, he looks at religion, family, morality, education, entertainment, government spending, and civil society. The book concludes with a note of hope in the form of a call for personal action: devoting oneself to family and local community, reclaiming an education rooted in virtue and truth, and rediscovering America’s founding principles. For those wanting to dig deeper, the book includes all sorts of footnotes to additional books and resources that can be tracked down for additional studies.

Charting History to Chart Recovery

While much more could be said on each of the topics he tackles, Goeglein provides a helpful overall narrative of not just what was happening but why it was happening. This is one of the best qualities of the book: its compact summary, in one manageable and accessible resource, of all these cultural changes and how they’ve unfolded. For Goeglein, knowing this type of history is essential if we are going to avoid repeating its mistakes. It is necessary reconnaissance for charting a successful recovery plan.