History 156 15: The End of Liberalism and the Conservative Asendancy

1. History 156 15: The End of Liberalism and the Conservative Asendancy “For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield (1967)

2. Wouldn’t you really rather be a history major? • What do with a history degree? • Secondary education • Post-graduate education • Law, business, public administration, history, etc. • Historical consulting, archival management, museums, historic preservation • Business careers that demand research, analytical, and writing skills • Market research, advertising, creative development, international business • State and federal government: • Policy analyst, foreign service officer, intelligence analyst • For all of these, good grades, letters, internships, etc., are critical—will you get better grades in a major you enjoy?

3. MSU history programs • History Major • Science Environment Technology and Society (SETS) Option • Designed for students with some interest and skill in science and technology, but who loves history • Japan Studies Option • Museum Studies Minor

4. The High Point of Modern Progressive Liberalism • Ironically, at its peak it has already begun its decline: • Growing conservative opposition stemming from LBJ’s massive 1964 defeat of Republican Barry Goldwater • White backlash against racial reforms • Traditional conservative backlash against big government, growing taxes, intrusive regulations • New social conservative backlash against women’s movement, black power, hippies • Vietnam

5. LBJ and Vietnam • Always claimed his Great Society was his true love and Vietnam a distraction • Had little interest or experience in foreign affairs • Yet also anti-communist, unwilling to allow the nation Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had sworn to defend to collapse • Moves from bombing to the 1965 commitment of troops, the “Americanization” of the war • Failure to quickly and decisively win the war garners increasing criticism and distrust • As LBJ had feared, conservative critics of the New Deal/Great Society big government approach could increasingly attack him through the Vietnam War

6. American B-52 bomber releases its weapons in Operation Rolling Thunder; by 1968 US will drop more bombs than used in all wars in human history

7. Map of the major battles of the Tet Offensive, beginning January 31st, 1968

8. American embassy building in the heart of Saigon

9. Fighting in the American Embassy, Saigon

10. U.S. ambassador Ellsworth Bunker views dead VC commandos in the embassy courtyard

11. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executes a captured Viet Cong leader on the streets of Saigon

12. Charlie Company of Task Force Baker lands near My Lai and begins the assault, March 16, 1968

13. American soldier on the “Zippo Squad” sets fire to a My Lai village home

14. Terrified My Lai villagers moments before they were murdered by American soldiers—Ron Haeberle, the official Army photographer on the mission later said: "Guys were about to shoot these people. I yelled, 'hold it', and shot my picture. As I walked away, I heard M16s open up. From the corner of my eye I saw bodies falling, but I didn't turn to look."

15. Some of the victims of the My Lai Massacre

19. Liberalism Under Siege • LBJ’s decline symbolic of the growing power of conservative and largely Republican forces to the right of moderate liberals • Believe political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of American society changing too quickly • Moderate liberals also being attacked by radicals to the left who view them as sell outs and too conservative • Believe political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of American society changing too slowly • The post-war liberal consensus thus begins to dissolve

20. Sixties Radicalism and the Counter Culture • Radicalism and the Counter Culture are distantly linked, but not at all identical • Radical left began in support of the Civil Rights movement • Students for a Democratic Society increasingly focused on anti-war movement, resistance to liberal capitalism • Counter Culture rooted in Beat movement of 1950s, rejection of post-war materialism, consumerism, corporatism, etc.

21. The mainstream Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King speaks to a quarter million people at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28th, 1963

22. Button worn by supporters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

23. SNCC workers talking to poor rural Mississippi blacks about their rights to votes

24. Stokely Carmichael (who later took the name Kwame Ture) the newly elected head of SNCC, recruiting members in 1965

25. Carmichael calls for “Black Power” during a 1966 rally in Mississippi: • "The only way we are going to stop them from whuppin' us is to take over. We've been saying freedom for six years and we ain't got nothing. The time for running has come to an end. Black power. It's time we stand up and take over. Move on over Whitey or we'll move on over you."

26. Black Panthers Malcolm X

27. Rioting in the predominately black Watts neighborhood of L.A., August 1965

28. An SDS recruiter (left) and the SDS leader, Tom Hayden, in Berkeley (1969)

29. Vietnam war protestors in Washington, DC, 1969

30. Protestors and a “teach-in” at the University of Michigan, 1965

31. War protestors burning their draft cards, a federal offense

32. Marquette University students demonstrating for an end to the on-campus ROTC program

33. Mayor Daly’s police deliberately attack Vietnam War protestors, Chicago, 1968

34. "I tried to make it possible for every child of every color to grow up in a nice house, eat a solid breakfast, to attend a decent school, and to get a good and lasting job. I asked so little in return. Just a little thanks. Just a little appreciation. That's all. But look what I got instead. Riots in 175 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting . . . . Young people by the thousands leaving the university, marching in the streets, chanting that horrible song about how many kids I had killed that day. . . . It ruined everything.” --Lyndon Johnson

35. The future founders of the Beat movement in New York City, 1944

36. The Beats, predecessors to the Sixties Counter Culture

38. Marijuana, previously demonized as a dangerously addictive drug used only by criminals (“dope fiends”), becomes widely popular and available in the late 1960s

39. Timothy Leary, the young Harvard professor of psychology who suggested Americans might take Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

40. Ken Kesey some 30 years after the Merry Prankster’s 1964 psychedelic and physical “trip”; the famous magic bus behind him, slowly being reclaimed by the Oregon woods

41. The musicians of the counter culture, The Grateful Dead, at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco

42. The Pill so famous it needs no other name makes the cover of Time, 1967 • Did not cause the sexual revolution, but certainly facilitated it • For the first time, women could express their sexuality with little fear of unwanted pregnancy, rather like men had done for millennia

43. The Backlash • Since the 1964 defeat of conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, conservatives had been building their base • Fringe John Birch Society • Rabidly anti-communist, alarmed by growth of government, emphasized “traditional” moral values • Politically marginalized by its nutty conspiratorial bent: Lyndon Johnson, Earl Warren, the United Nations, and fluoridated water are all communist plots • Growing displeasure with radical and counter culture movements attracts less extreme Americans into the conservative fold • Though both radicals and the counter culture actually attacked mainstream moderate liberalism, conservatives associate these movements with liberalism

44. The Backlash • Emerging conservative coalition has two distinct sides: • Traditional political economy conservatives: • Big government and economic management is a threat to individual liberty, property rights, free markets • Should limit government, taxation, regulation, and interference in American lives (libertarianism) • New social conservatives: • Not entirely new, as roots can be found in earlier reactions against alcohol, racial and women’s rights, religious tolerance, jazz music, etc. • KKK in the 1920s • Government must take steps to uphold traditional moral values, or at least not undermine them with legislative and judicial measures supporting blacks, women, no prayer in schools, etc. • Two sides are an uneasy fit: • Political economy conservatives want minimal government interference in American lives • Social conservatives increasingly want to use government to propagate or enforce their moral, cultural, and social values

45. The Sixties Conservative Coalition: • Social Conservatives • Although most are not overtly racist, alarmed by rapidity of racial change and radicals like Carmichael and Malcolm X • Growing working class resentment, “fear of falling” and belief that blacks had unfair advantages • Believe black riots demand not greater social change but reassertion of “law and order” • See SDS and radical students as lazy, spoiled, unpatriotic • Despise non-conformity, drug use, sexual expression of the Counter Culture • Political Economy Conservatives • Despise LBJ’s Great Society: Big government social engineering (Civil Rights, Head Start, etc.), corporate regulations (Auto Safety, Environmental laws, etc.) • Alarmed by growing tax burdens caused by Vietnam and expensive Great Society programs • Believe regulations will drag down economy and correctly note that regulatory system had become unwieldy +

46. The entrepreneurial and fiercely anti-communist Revered Robert Schuller built the first ever walk-in/drive-in church in southern California, 1961

47. Emergence of the Religious Right • Fundamentalist and evangelical movements, previously dominated primarily by the poor in the American South, begin to attract large numbers of suburban middle class in California and Texas • A conservative flip side to the Counter Culture—both looking for deeper meaning than materialism, affluence, middle-class pragmatism, and liberal rationalism • Emphasized return to patriarchical families and viewed complex domestic and international issues in moral terms • Belief in coming apocalypse suggested Soviet Union was not just another totalitarian nation but the instrument of Satan • Satan would use such “centralized government” to create an evil World Government • United Nations a step in this direction • The U.S., while imperiled from within, still the best Christian hope • Sexual liberation, drug use, Hippies all signs of “the end of days” • Need for “law and order” thus becomes a struggle against the spread of “evil” • Ultimate issue will emerge with the Supreme Court 1973 in Roe v. Wade legalizing women’s access to abortion • Provided a religious ideological foundation for the conservative movement

48. Soon-to-be Governor of California, Ronald Reagan speaks to admirers in Garden Grove, Southern California On the cover of Newsweek, 1966

49. 1968 presidential race campaign posters

50. Questions?