1 gen 1982 anni - Summary

Descrizione:

“I Want Out”

Protest movements of all kinds shook the foundations of American society and national politics in the 1960s. No issue was more controversial and divisive than the war in Vietnam.


The civil rights movement pushed American liberals to launch new government initiatives to advance racial equality. That progressive spirit grew in scope to inspire an expansive reform agenda that included women’s rights, new social programs for the poor and the aged, job training, environmental laws, and other educational and social benefits for the middle class. All told, Congress passed more liberal legislation between 1964 and 1972 than in any period since the 1930s. The 1965–1966 legislative session, one of the most active ever, marked liberalism’s high tide as the dominant ideology of American political life in the twentieth century.

But liberalism soon found itself under fire from two directions. Within liberalism itself, young activists grew frustrated with slow progress on civil rights and the Cold War logic driving America’s presence in Vietnam. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police teargassed and clubbed antiwar demonstrators, who chanted (as the TV cameras rolled), “The whole world is watching!” The chaos in Chicago — in the streets and inside the convention hall — became a symbol of liberalism’s fracture.

The second assault came from the right, regaining momentum after two decades on the margins. Conservatives opposed the dramatic expansion of the federal government under President Lyndon B. Johnson and disdained liberalism for encouraging what they deemed a “permissive society.” Embracing law and order, scorning welfare, and resisting key civil rights reforms, conservatives found new political life in the sixties. Their champion was Barry Goldwater, a Republican senator from Arizona, who warned that “a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”

The years from President John Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 to President Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection in 1972 proved one of the most complicated, and combustible, eras in American history. From left to center to right, the entire political spectrum hummed with action and conflict. There were thousands of marches and demonstrations; massive new federal programs aimed at achieving civil rights, ending poverty, and extending the welfare state; new voices demanding to be heard; and heated rhetoric on all sides. Political assassinations and violence, both overseas and at home, heightened the volatile mood. The liberal triumphs of the mid-1960s soon gave way to a profound crisis and the resurgence of conservatism.

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

Data: