The Cold War at Home US Domestic Policy: 1945-1980

Postwar America Highest standard of living in history! GI Bill of Rights Baby Boom Suburbia Levittown Sunbelt

Truman 1945-1953

Truman “Fair Deal” Taft Hartley Act, 1947 Desegregated the Military, 1948 22nd Amendment, 1950

A 2nd Red Scare Smith Act, 1940 Loyalty Review Boards, 1947 McCarran Internal Security Act, 1950 HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) Alger Hiss Trial Rosenberg Case Joseph McCarthy Army-McCarthy Hearings

Eisenhower 1953-1961

Eisenhower Fiscal Conservative, Moderate on Issues “Dynamic Conservatism” Expanded Social Security Interstate Highway Act, 1956 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 1958 National Defense Education Act, 1958

Culture of the 1950s Television Rock N Roll Conformity Advertising Corporate America Women Cult of Domesticity Dr. Benjamin Spock: Commonsense Book of Baby & Childcare Beat Movement (Beatniks) Literature

Kennedy 1961-1963

Kennedy “New Frontier” Economy aid to education, urban renewal, civil rights, health care Economy increased spending on defense and space exploration

Johnson 1963-1969

Johnson Devoted follower of FDR’s New Deal The War on Poverty “Great Society” Medicare/Medicaid Elementary and Secondary Education Act Clean air and water laws Automobile regulation Civil Rights Civil Rights Act of 1964 Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Warren Court Brown v. Board of Education. 1954 Yates v. US, 1957 Mapp v. Ohio, 1961 Engel v. Vitale, 1962 Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963 Escobedo v. Illinois, 1964 Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965 Miranda v. Arizona, 1966

Turmoil of the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society, 1962 Port Huron Statement “New Left” Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, 1964 Vietnam War Protests Counterculture Woodstock Haight Ashbury Sexual Revolution

Excerpt from Port Huron Statement We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world: the only one with the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people -- these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency. As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.

1968 Tet Offensive My Lai Massacre Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr Assassination of Robert Kennedy Democratic National Convention, Chicago

Vital Center 1948-1968 Political consensus Anti-communism and containment Belief that economic growth could solve all of society’s problems Political pluralism: a variety of ideas could compete in America Shattered in 1968 election: Vietnam War shows generation gap Conservative backlash against liberalism

Nixon 1969-1974

Nixon New Federalism Stagflation Southern Strategy Silent Majority Environmental Legislation Clean Air Act, 1970 Clean Water Act, 1972 Pentagon Papers, 1971 Watergate Resignation

Ford 1974-1977

Ford Pardoning Nixon Bicentennial Celebration Energy Crisis - Caused by 1973 OPEC Embargo WIN - Whip Inflation Now

Carter 1977-1981

Carter Troubled Economy Malaise/“Crisis of Confidence” Speech CA Proposition 13 - 1978 Department of Energy Energy Policy lower U.S. energy demand reduce gasoline consumption cut the portion of oil imported into the U.S. ncrease domestic coal production increase the use of solar energy installs solar panels on the White House