Topic 8.14 Notes – Society in Transition

How American Politics Shifted from Postwar Liberalism to a Conservative Climate

Since the New Deal and Great Society, liberals had argued that the federal government should fight poverty, protect civil rights, and solve national problems. That idea did not vanish in the 1970s, but people trusted it less.

Several things chipped away at that confidence:

• Stagflation meant inflation plus slow growth and unemployment, which made government economic policy look weak.
• Deindustrialization closed factories and hurt older industrial cities.
• Energy crises in 1973 and 1979 brought shortages and high gas prices. High mortgage rates came with the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation.
• Vietnam created a credibility gap. The Pentagon Papers showed officials had hidden bad news, and the fall of Saigon in 1975 made the war feel like a failure.
• Watergate, the Spiro Agnew scandal, and the Church Committee investigations made corruption and abuse of power look widespread.
• Rapid changes in race, gender, sexuality, religion, and family life created backlash from people who felt the country was changing too fast.

That backlash came from different groups that did not agree on everything:

• Economic conservatives wanted lower taxes and less regulation.
• Social conservatives pushed traditional family roles and morality.
• Religious conservatives wanted a larger public role for Christianity.
• Defense hawks wanted stronger anticommunism and a bigger military.
• Many white voters reacted against desegregation, busing, and affirmative action.
• Many taxpayers and some working- and middle-class voters thought liberal programs helped others at their expense.

The central shift was this. Politics moved from asking how should government solve problems? to asking has government become the problem?

The Conservative Coalition and the Rise of the New Right

You can see the turn before Reagan won.

• Barry Goldwater in 1964 lost badly, but he gave conservatism a clear national voice.
• Ronald Reagan won the California governorship in 1966 and showed conservatism could win big in the Sun Belt and suburbs.
• George Wallace in 1968 appealed to white backlash, anti-busing anger, law-and-order voters, and people who hated elites.
• Richard Nixon spoke to the silent majority, voters angry at protest, crime, and disorder.
• The southern strategy helped move white southern voters gradually from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

By 1980, Reagan turned those currents into a national presidential victory.

The New Right turned those feelings into organization:

• Heritage Foundation supplied conservative policy ideas.
• Political action committees raised campaign money.
• Richard Viguerie used direct-mail fundraising to mobilize supporters.
• Conservative media, business groups, anti-tax groups, and religious networks spread the message.

That message held the coalition together: lower taxes, less domestic spending and regulation, traditional values, stricter law enforcement, and a stronger military.

A great symbol was California Proposition 13 in 1978, which cut property taxes and showed anti-tax politics had mass appeal.

One common trap is treating Nixon like Reagan. Nixon used conservative language, but he still kept much of the welfare state and even enforced some affirmative-action policies.

Social and Cultural Conflicts over Rights, Race, and Morality

Many of the biggest fights were over who should enforce equality and whose values should shape public life.

Race and federal authority

• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld busing to integrate schools.
• The Boston busing crisis showed how explosive that issue became outside the South too.
• Milliken v. Bradley limited wider metro desegregation plans, making integration harder when white suburbs stayed separate.
• Affirmative action split the country. Supporters saw it as a remedy for past discrimination. Opponents called it reverse discrimination.
• Regents of the University of California v. Bakke said racial quotas were unconstitutional but race could still be one factor in admissions.

Gender and sexuality

• Roe v. Wade framed abortion around privacy and autonomy, while opponents argued government must protect unborn life.
• The Equal Rights Amendment aimed to guarantee legal equality by sex.
• Phyllis Schlafly and STOP ERA turned opposition to the amendment into a major conservative cause.
• After Stonewall, gay rights activism grew.
• Anita Bryant and Save Our Children attacked gay rights as a threat to children and family values.
• The Briggs Initiative in California tried to ban gay teachers and failed.

Religion, schools, and morality

• Engel v. Vitale barred state-sponsored school prayer.
• Abington School District v. Schempp barred school-sponsored Bible reading.
• Conservatives also fought over sex education, evolution, pornography, and textbooks.

On tests, the split is usually clear. Liberals backed federal protection of rights and equality. Conservatives stressed local control, traditional morality, and limits on courts and federal power.

Evangelicals, Distrust in Government, and the Road to Reagan

At the same time, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity grew fast, especially in the South, West, and suburbs. These churches stressed being born again, biblical authority, and evangelism. Televangelism helped them grow.

• Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network brought evangelical media into national politics.
• Jerry Falwell built a huge ministry and founded the Moral Majority in 1979.

This religious growth became political. Many white evangelicals mobilized around abortion, school prayer, the ERA, gay rights, religious schools, and family issues. Jimmy Carter attracted many evangelicals in 1976, but by 1980 many had shifted Republican.

Trust in government also kept falling:

• New York Times Co. v. United States protected publication of the Pentagon Papers.
• The War Powers Resolution tried to limit presidential war-making.
• United States v. Nixon forced Nixon to turn over tapes during Watergate.
• By 1980, trust in the federal government had fallen sharply from 1960s levels.
• The Iran hostage crisis, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Carter’s “crisis of confidence” speech deepened the sense of weakness, even though Carter helped broker the Camp David Accords.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, with John Anderson running as an independent. Reagan’s coalition included Sun Belt conservatives, white southerners, religious conservatives, anti-tax voters, defense hawks, and Reagan Democrats. His victory gave the conservative movement national power, even though New Deal, Great Society, and civil rights gains still remained.