¶ … 1962, Americans didn't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore. Nixon, disillusioned at having lost California to the Democrats after having battled for the White House two years earlier, was on the retreat alongside most of the old-guard conservatives in America. This trend is one that had favored only moderate Republicans like Eisenhower after the anti-communists of the early 50's had squandered the Grand Old Party's last congressional majority. Kennedy was a centrist that wished to modify his party's "New Deal" legacy for a more middle-class electorate while continuing to champion the traditions of America as an alternative to Bolshevism. By 1980, the conservative movement came to dominate the governments of the United States and United Kingdom as it employed rhetoric that appealed to traditional Christians and to libertarians who wished to curtail government spending. An analysis of what took place between these two events reveals an electorate disillusioned with the sweeping social changes of the 1960's and ready to embrace the stability promised by what was at the time an opposition party.
The 1960's and 1970's in America saw an urban transition still unknown in most of the major cities of Europe. The Federal Housing Administration had precipitated the explosion in suburban development by offering 4% interest loans following the Second World War. Unfortunately, the FHA actively discriminated against blacks in the procurement of new home loans, polarizing cities into two camps, the predominantly white and middle class suburbs, and predominantly poor and black inner cities. At the same time, federal highway initiatives instituted under Eisenhower in the mid-1950's made cities more accessible to suburban communities by providing them with a fast, easy commute. Faced...
In doing so, they condemned neighborhoods that were usually home to urban poor populations. Displaced, these residents moved to areas that had been conventionally seen as middle class, adding to preconceptions about urban blight. These residents were often also relocated in housing projects, which were built with federal money solicited for the purpose of
poverty eradication. Instead, many residents often subsisted on general assistance stipends and their poverty became institutionalized. "White flight" was hastened by the large-scale urban black riots of the mid-60's in cities such as
Los Angeles and Newark. At the same time, increased competition with Asia had lead to a cyclical downswing in
manufacturing.
The young people of the 1960's were alienated from the Democratic Party by its insistence upon introducing a draft for the military campaign in
Vietnam. These young people were more individualistic than their parents' generation, and were influenced by large-scale exposure to LSD and
marijuana. This attitude of permissiveness towards
drugs, coupled with easily traveled supply-roads to
Southeast Asia, lead to a heroin epidemic. The older
generation was quick to demonize all drug use, which they associated with an increase in
crime and the protest-culture that lead to the riots that accompanied the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968.
At the same time, many conservatives quietly resented attempts at desegregation and came to associate this open process with urban blight. These opinions couldn't be easily articulated in a way that wouldn't be…
