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When Ronald Reagan Saved Us from the Metric System

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Dean Dad:

Anyway, the metric system at that time came off as a sort of effete, Euro-Modernist import, shoved down the throats of Real Americans by the same smug coastal elites who got all self-righteous about banning smoking and conserving energy. To my memory, the song “Take This Job and Shove It” pretty much captured the spirit of the age. At that point, to suggest posting highway signs in kilometers was tantamount to announcing that you like to traipse through daisies and dress up like a pretty little girl.

Readers of a certain age – do you remember just what, exactly, was behind the anti-metric movement? I think this represents the dilemmas of American liberalism in microcosm.

Great question. I remember just the very tail end of this, but I recall pretty clearly that the grandparents (good, solid Republicans who viewed Ronald Reagan as a secular deity) viewed the defeat of the metric system as a victory in the battle to turn back the barbarians at the gates. I didn’t really understand, but, good American that I was, I tried until junior high to convert ideologically problematic metric measures back into the good “American” English system…

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