Sarah Palin represents “old-fashioned” values. You may see that as a good thing (if you’re conservative) or a bad thing (if you’re liberal). But whatever side you’re on, we pretty much all agree that she’s peddling a return to a hazy golden era of American history before the big-government welfare state arrived on the scene and ruined (conservative) or fixed (liberal) everything.

What’s confusing is that she’s using ultra-modern media techniques to promulgate her retro message. She’s the queen of Twitter, Facebook, reality TV, soundbites and blogbursts.

It may feel appropriate when progressive groups use outrageous postmodern propaganda to promote a postmodern ideology — but the disconnect of Palin (and the movement she represents) using 21st-century technology to summon a bygone America has always left me a little unsettled.

Shouldn’t we be using retro propaganda techniques to promote a retro ideology?

My answer: Yes!

The medium is the message, people, and if you want to bring back the values of the past, you necessarily must do so by utilizing the media techniques of that same past.

In order to rectify this glaring omission in the conservative messaging arsenal, I have taken it upon myself to create the kind of propaganda that the Palin campaign (and she is running for president, no doubt about it) ought to be making:

(Click on the illustration [or here] to view a full-size version of the poster, suitable for framing or detailed admiration.)

This drawing is based on those classic “stairway to a better life” illustrations often found in early/mid-20th-century self-help books and magazine articles.

Print, link, distribute — backward to a better future!