Now I'm an Unbeliever

The unbeliever is a misleading name, but it is perfect since their mission is unbelievable. Their mission is to show their love of country through protest backed with misinformation. The dispensing of this lack-of-knowledge encourages near-terrorist-like actions at simple town hall meetings. It is fine to disagree and not want to want what the majority voted for in November, but the behavior is not an example of an educated democracy. The United States is just a democracy.

People at these town hall meetings scream and holler fictitious claims with as much passion as a Trekker dressed up as a Klingon warrior at a "Star Trek" convention roaming around spouting Klingonese. These people are believing the misinformation spread and without checking the validity of such outlandish, no medieval-like, claims like the "death panel" spread it further unleashing them on their representative or senator in the Congress.

We the people...can't we be nicer employers to our employees, those representing us nationally? These senators and representatives are getting yelled at about things that aren't part of and should not be part of the health care debate. It's like the hardcore misinformed anti-health carers are reading from a different script than the sane portion of the country. My script has a written by credit with common sense listed.

Those people have the right to free speech, but that speech should not be filled with such hatred and disgust. However they should speak when understanding special interests encourage their spread of the misinformation which rip the political seams of the United States. A respectful opposition to health care, rather than a disrespectful and disgraceful one. This is a discussion on health care and not a debate whether or not the president should send U.S. soldiers, men and women, to invade a country with no threat to our national security.

If you believe the United States is going down the wrong path you have ever right to believe that. When not respectfully protesting, the remedy is at the ballot box. You hate what your senator is doing with health care, then vote him or her out! Same with your representative. But understand that in the last federal election, which was November 4, 2008, the Democratic Party's presidential ticket received 53% of the popular vote, rounding up of course. No landslide. Sure the popular vote means nothing, except gives a percentage representation of the nation's pulse since four years past. The Electoral College, which does mean something, shows a landslide of 67% for then-Senator Barack Obama to Senator John McCain's 32%.

The rounded 53% is important. While George W. Bush did received 50% in 2004 and claimed a mandate and political capital to spend, he was far from it. President Obama has both political capital and more of a mandate than Bush had in either 2000 or 2004. Let the will of the majority play out. The election showed less division, but the health care debate did what misleading a nation to war could not do and that is wake the unbeliever to preach the falsehoods and feed the stereotype of American stupidity.

Texas Conservatism - How is the presidency of George W. Bush a reflection of American cultural politics?

The Reagan Revolution in 1980 ushered in conservatism as the nation’s dominant ideology. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator from Arizona, lost in a landslide as a conservative Republican against a liberal Democrat. That election was the beginning of the end of liberalism as the United States’ dominant ideology. The 1964 election was a prelude to the Reagan Revolution of 1980. Goldwater won his home state and five Southern States, former members of the Confederacy. Conservatives would need more than the old Confederacy to win a presidential election. They would need a strong leader, a father figure. A large untapped minority, White Christians, needed a voice in politics as social issues were being controlled by the liberals in power. Reagan would be the answer for conservatism to become the nation’s dominant ideology. American cultural politics up to 1980 were defined by the liberals that had dominated the government since the 1960s. The American culture would shift dramatically to the right with the Reagan Revolution of 1980. The shift would be seen in the approach to governing and the shift would be given by voters in need of a voice, the Religious Right. Reagan’s success as a president with a Western conservative ideology would be emulated unsuccessfully and displaced with the presidency of George W. Bush’s Texas conservatism, as Christian Conservatism became the dominant and divisive ideology of the nation.

Reagan’s election in 1980 began a shift in the nation’s ideology. Liberalism was on its way out, and conservatism was on its way in. The two major party candidates for president in 1980 represented the differences in their use of presidential power. Outgoing president, Jimmy Carter, took on a more motherly approach to governing, whether in response to the Soviet Union or the dealing with the Iran hostage situation in 1979. Unlike Carter, Reagan took a father figure approach to governing, a strict father. Reagan would stand up to the Soviets and dismantle the Great Society, things conservatives would expect from their strict father.

Reagan’s strict father figure approach to governing is known as the “Strict Father Model” according to George Lakoff. Lakoff says that “life is difficult and that the world is fundamentally dangerous” (2002, 65). This quote defined the conservative approach to the world and the outlook that leaders like Reagan and Barry Goldwater took in governing under the model of a strict father. Lakoff used the idea or model of a household ran by a strict father and applied that to the political parties, namely the Republican Party, and their style of governing.

The strict father figure was what conservatives were looking for. Southern White Christians favored this style of governing over a more Nurturant approach, as shown by President Carter. The approval of the strict father model was reaffirmed in Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984. American cultural politics were now on a conservative path and this path would need to be maintained by successors to the Reagan Revolution.

The strict father figure model would be what Christian Conservatives looked for in their leader. George H. W. Bush was more of a moderate Republican than both his son and President Reagan. Bush served for eight years as vice president under Reagan. His election to a term as president is often called by some as Reagan’s third term. Bush was his own man and was not Reagan in numerous ways; in ideology or his communicative abilities. This is not to say that Bush was a Nurturant politician like Carter. Bush, the 41st, led a coalition of thirty nations during the Gulf War in 1991 and achieved heights not seen in presidential polling after a quick win in the Persian Gulf. The popularity shown in the polls would not last, for it would be the economic recession of the early 1990s and the popularity of third party candidate, Ross Perot, which contributed to Bush’s removal from office by the voters in 1992. Conservatives were without a voice, if only for a brief moment.

With the election of a Democrat in 1992, it did not signal the end of conservatism as the dominant ideology. Centrist Bill Clinton had to contend with a Republican led Congress two years into his first term. The “Contract with America” offered a conservative agenda as an alternative to the Clintons. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, saw it his duty, as leader of the people’s house, to offer an agenda, a conservative agenda. This can be seen as an interlude in the Reagan Revolution, as the legislative branch was the only power of conservatives for the remainder of the 20th Century before George W. Bush.

Eventually the overreaching Republicans in the House realized they needed President Clinton’s help if they were to accomplish anything. Divided government, between a conservative dominated legislative branch and a centrist Democrat in the White House, would prove to be successful. For conservatives however, Gingrich was not working and Senator Bob Dole of Kansas was no match for the popular president in the election of 1996. However, conservative dominance over the branches of government was approaching.

Christian Conservatives needed another voice to lead their conservative agenda. They needed another strict father which they did not have in George H. W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, or Bob Dole. George W. Bush modeled himself after Ronald Reagan. Bush was no Reagan as much as he tried to portray himself that way.

Bush wanted it to be “morning in America” during his presidency. Bush emulated Reagan in numerous ways. Reagan faced the threat of the Cold War. By the time of Reagan’s Administration, the Cold War had been going on for thirty-five years. Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union; the Evil Empire. Bush came into office during a time of peace and prosperity. The terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania altered our time of peace and into a time of terror, according to the Bush Administration. After a successful war in Afghanistan, thought to be victorious at the time, a follow-up to the September 11th attacks, Bush created the Axis of Evil in his 2002 State of the Union Address. In the address he labeled Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as members of an Axis of Evil; a term sounding as if it was plucked from a high school term-list for World War II. Now he, just like Reagan, had an evil opposition that the good United States would face.

Lakoff’s model of a strict father also used the approach of labeling things good vs. evil. This came from the idea of the strict father having “moral strength.” According to Lakoff, “Moral Strength is what the strict father must have if he is to support, protect, and guide his family” (2002, 74). Just as a father needs moral strength to guide his family, a president needs it to guide his country as well. The Religious Right certainly saw things in the light of good vs. evil. They expected their leader, George W. Bush, to explain things in this manner to them. They expected him to have Moral Strength. He never once wavered from the perception of having Moral Strength.

Bush faced the new War on Terrorism, much like Reagan faced the end of the Cold War. Good and evil labels were handed out establishing the United States as good and all opposition as evil. Lakoff explains the Moral Strength metaphor’s use of good and evil:

“The metaphor of Moral Strength sees the world in terms of a war of good against the forces of evil, which must be fought ruthlessly. Ruthless behavior in the name of the good fight is thus seen as justified. Moreover, the metaphor entails that one cannot respect the views of one’s adversary: evil does not deserve respect, it deserves to be attacked!”

Bush followed the Moral Strength metaphor. An example of his use of it occurred recently when the President of Iran wanted to debate President Bush, the Administration did not feel that the evil Iran deserved the respect of a response to such a call.

As mentioned above, the Religious Right saw the world in terms of good vs. evil. The Religious Right was the other element to the success of the conservative movement which came from the Reagan Revolution. With the help of the Religious Right, the politics of American culture were being defined. A strict father with moral strength would set the country back on the right path after its deviation down the path of liberalism. The Religious Right and Southern White Conservatives would merge and become Southern White Christians.

The Southern Whites and Religious Right united in force in 1980 to help create the Reagan Revolution. The revolution was their voice being heard and liberalism of the past was to end. The two groups would form a powerful electorate that would shape the politics of culture for the next three decades.

Southern Whites were constituents of the region of the United States known as the South. The South is the former Confederate States of America, the states that rebelled from the Union in the 1860s. The Confederates fought and lost the Civil War, from 1861-1865.

After the Civil War, the Southern Whites never voted Republican, the party of Abraham Lincoln. This pledge to not vote Republican would last almost one hundred years. Lincoln put an end to slavery, a way of life in the South, creating the staunch opposition to the Republican Party by Southern Whites. It would be the Democratic Party’s embracement of the Civil Rights movement which would end the relationship between Southern Whites and the Democratic Party.

The party name had changed, but the Southern White ideology of conservatism remained. In 1964, five of the former Confederate States voted with Arizona to give Republican Barry Goldwater his only electoral votes in the landslide election.

In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips talked about the importance of the Civil War to Southern culture. He cited the editor of The Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, where Samuel Hill explained the South’s response to their “polarized sectional memories” of antebellum, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Hill said that the South’s response “is singular in American history, religious and otherwise, and is seen quite clearly in its religious life. A region became a culture, constructively and defensively, and creatively and reactively” (Phillips 2006, 138). This culture of the South fell into Lakoff’s strict father model. They want a leader that follows the strict father model.

Reagan governed the country exuding a strict father presence, but with superb communication skills, especially through humor, which could deflate the notion that a conservative was too radical to lead the country. George W. Bush would take the strict father approach to governing just as Reagan had. Once again though, there is a difference between Reagan and Bush in their use of the strict father approach. Reagan had the threat of the Soviet Union and showed the United States stood up to evil in the world. Bush did not stop at standing up to the evil that faced the United States, he would unilaterally invade a country he thought posed a threat. The Southern Whites could not elect either Bush or Reagan without help from others in the electorate.

The help would come from the Religious Right. The Religious Right was made up of evangelicals. One of the evangelic leaders, Jerry Falwell, felt that the country was on a “downward spiral” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2004, 84). This downward spiral was coming from the liberalism that had dominated the country prior to 1980. The evangelicals had voted for their last Democrat in 1976. That Democrat, Jimmy Carter, was a true Christian without any followers.

Reagan would become the voice that Christians sought in politics. “For the Right, the Reagan era was the first time that one of their own was in the White House, a sensation that they did not have again until George W. Bush’s administration” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2004, 92). Reagan’s strict father approach to governing to turning back the liberalism of the 1960s was approved of by the Religious Right. The difference between Reagan and Bush, in regards to the Religious Right, was that Reagan tolerated the Religious Right where as Bush embraced them.

Evangelical leaders formed the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority became the political arm for Christians. “The Moral Majority rapidly emerged as a hard-line Christian voice on domestic issues like abortion, school prayer, women’s rights and gay rights” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2004, 85). Their issues would become those of the Southern Whites. The Religious Right and Southern Whites would combine electoral forces to become the Southern White Christians. The Christian conservative ideology would remain the nation’s dominant ideology over the next three decades.

The dominance would begin with the Reagan Revolution. “Christian nationalism, like most militant ideologies, can exist only in opposition to something” (Goldberg 2006, 69). This Christian nationalism, the ideology of the country, was an opposition of the liberal programs like the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s.

Bush’s “mandate” came from the political capital in the form of votes from the Southern White Christians. Bush emulated his conservative mentor, but took things too far. Bush’s embrace of the Southern White Christians and taking the strict father approach almost literally has contributed to the cultural divide of the nation. Phillips quotes political commentator Bill Schneider “the great civil rights war of the 1960s, a cultural civil war” (Phillips 2006, 140). The cultural civil war is played out in elections. The Reagan Revolution was the first and big blow to liberalism from the Southern White Christians. The compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush would continue Reagan’s strict father approach as well as defend traditional values cherished by Southern White Christians. However the dominance of conservatism as the nation’s ideology would continue to divide the nation.

The Texas conservatism brought to Washington by Bush would not help a nation divided on cultural values. Bush’s Texan conservatism would combine the elements of Reagan’s Western conservatism like the strict father approach, but would contain a strong Southern White Christian base with an agenda to return traditional values to American life. The neo-conservatives would be another aspect of the Texas conservatism brought to Washington in 2001 by Bush. Another aspect of the Bush Administration’s Texas conservatism would be the “go-it-alone” mentality when it came to war, like the invasion of another country.

The “go-it-alone” mentality went along with Lakoff’s notion of Moral Strength which is part of the strict father model. The Moral Strength and strict father model are examples of conservative thought, which goes with the Southern White Christian ideology.

The ideology that came in with the Reagan Revolution to turn back liberalism could be in its last throes beginning with the reelection of Bush in 2004. Bush hoped to emulate his conservative predecessor, he was however futile in his attempt. Bush was not Reagan. Reagan was supported by the Christian Conservatives. Reagan tolerated the Religious Right. Bush embraced the Religious Right. Reagan stood up to the Soviet Unions and prevented the remaining years of the Cold War from turning into a Hot War. Bush invaded a country with support from Great Britain, Spain, and Poland; the Coalition of the Willing. Bush was not a Western conservative. He was a Texan with a “go-it-alone” mentality of the Lone Star State and coupled with the Southern White Christians whose ideology was dominant in American culture, he sought to make the country right with his form of conservatism. His embrace of the Southern White Christian created the image of god anointed politician which contributed to the division of culture in the country. The 2004 election could be seen as the beginning of the epilogue in the Reagan Revolution, the story of conservatism as the nation’s dominant ideology.
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REFERENCES
Goldberg, Michelle. 2006. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

Lakoff, George. 2002. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. 2004. The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America. The Penguin Press: New York.

Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed money in the 21st Century. Viking.

Liberalism’s Fall, Conservatism’s Rise: Why liberalism ceased to be the nation’s dominant ideology?

1964 began the decade known as the 1960s. Events both social and political, the Beatles arrival at JFK airport and the Democratic victories in the Congressional elections both in 1964, began a decade of change. In the election of 1964, the American people overwhelmingly voted for President Lyndon Johnson and a liberal agenda. 1964 and onward would bring monumental change to the status quo and traditional values with Civil Rights legislation; the Great Society programs; Feminism; and gay rights. The 1960s’ Cultural Revolution, which came from liberalism, would be too much of a change for Americans by the end of the 1960s. Liberalism ceased being the nation’s dominant ideology with the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s, a response to the Cultural Revolution. Conservatives fearful of social changes in both values and legislation created a reactionary section of the Republican Party determined to end liberalism as the governing ideological force and return the nation to traditional conservative values.

The status quo and those in favor of traditional values would remain silent for some time. The alternative to the landslide victor of the 1964 Presidential Election was distant second place winner Barry Goldwater. Goldwater, the Republican candidate, received Electoral votes in his home state of Arizona and 5 former Confederate States, the former members of the Solid South. The Solid South, which voted Democrat since the Civil War, could not accept the changes that came with the Cultural Revolution. The Conservative candidate Barry Goldwater would not be a match for Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats with their liberal agenda. Johnson’s success was necessary so Civil Rights legislation and social programs under the Great Society banner could be passed. The reaction to Johnson’s successes and the changes brought by those successes in social values was rooted here and the reaction came to life in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963 elevated Lyndon Johnson to the Presidency. The American people elected Johnson to his own full term in 1964. In his own term, Johnson wanted to complete the work of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Johnson had his own legislative packed agenda titled the Great Society. The legislation which made up the Great Society was the most passed since the days of the Great Depression. Johnson’s liberal approach to governing, assist the citizens that needed assistance, the disenfranchised African-Americans and the single-mother were two examples that needed assistance. This liberal way of governing would be a reason the right would rise against the liberalism governing the nation.

The liberal way of governing followed a model put forth by author George Lakoff. In his book Moral Politics, Lakoff uses the concept of a family to model how a government functions in certain respects. The relationship of the parent or parents to their children is similar to that of the government to the citizens. The upbringing of a child by a parent is approached in two ways, both justified as moral in their own right according to Lakoff. One model has a parent who can be firm and another model showing a parent who is lenient with their child. The parent in one model allows questions, while the other model does not. A child cries, one parent will respond and one would let the child cry it out. The two models can be applied to the way our political parties in power govern.

Lakoff’s models suggest how certain ideologies would approach governing. The government can make decisions, no matter how popular or unpopular, in the favor or against the favor of its citizens. The government allows for dissent or the government denies dissent. The government helps its citizens or it allows the citizens to help themselves.

One of Lakoff’s models is known as the Nurturant Parent. This model can contain a single-parent or two-parents. Nurturant Parent Model can best be defined as “one of being cared for and cared about, having one’s desires for loving interactions met, living as happily as possible, and deriving meaning from mutual interaction and care” (Lakoff 2002, 108). This model represents the parent who is lenient, allows questions, and responds to the child in tears. The models also apply to how governments interact with the citizens. The lenient approach would help bring liberalism to its end.

The ideology that fits the Nurturant Parent Model would be liberalism. Liberalism, usually associated with government sponsored programs, helps those in need of assistance. Government in the United States traditionally did not heavily involve itself in the lives of the citizens. This changed dramatically in the 1930s with Franklin Roosevelt’s legislative agenda containing many government sponsored programs to help the depressed nation. Liberalism of the 1960s would be the continuation of the New Deal, brought to the American people by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The liberal agenda of the Great Society would be a part of the liberalism that would be rejected in the 1980s.

The legislative agenda of the Great Society was the Nurturant Parent Model at work. The “caring for and caring about” (Lakoff 2002, 108) part of this model’s definition sums up the legislation found in the Great Society. Some examples of the Great Society are Medicaid and Medicare.

The Nurturant Parent Model wants their child to become self-dependent. This was not happening in the eyes of those that did not want a liberal government that created social programs of assistance. Those citizens on government programs were dependent on the government. They needed to be dependent on themselves. The other aspect of liberalism, the non-legislative aspect, the movements of women and gay rights was just as disturbing as the liberal social programs.

Feminists and Gay Right Activists were the other aspects to the liberalism of the 1960s. The movements by Feminists and Gay Rights Activists were another affront to the traditional values. These cultural changes occurring during the Cultural Revolution were too much for those that sought to maintain traditional values. The unification of Southern Whites and the Religious Right would give an electoral voice wanting and waiting to be heard.

Southern White Christians were citizens of the Southern region of the United States, the former Confederate States of America. Other regions would eventually join to make up the electoral base needed to win elections. The South had traditionally voted Democratic since the Civil War. The vow to never vote for the party of Abraham Lincoln was broken in the 1960s. Lincoln had destroyed the Southern White males way of living by ending their peculiar institution. In Reconstruction, Lincoln wanted “malice toward none and charity for all” and did not deserve the generational vow of not voting Republican. The Southern Whites were once again facing a major change in society.

The changes in society in the 1960s brought the loyalty of the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party into question. The Democrats were helping the African-Americans through Civil Rights legislation and programs of the Great Society. The Nurturant Parent Model was not working in the eyes of the Southern Whites. Those that were on government programs were too dependent instead of becoming more self-dependent. Another approach needed to be taken.

The Nurturant Parent Model, as a failure, could not be the only reason the Southern Whites abandoned the Democrats in the 1960s. Since the days of FDR, the Democrats have come to the aide of the African-Americans through social legislation under the banner of the New Deal. Fast forward thirty-plus years, Democrat Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, had signed Civil Rights legislation. The Democratic Party was continuing to fight for the rights of African-Americans. All of that was plenty of reason to want to see an end to liberalism in the eyes of the Southern Whites.

The rights of African-Americans led Southern Whites to abandon one party for another. In the 1860s, Lincoln ended slavery in the territories in rebellion and the Republican Party tried to reconstruct the defeated South into the new order of society following the Civil War, both were reasons never to support the Republican Party since they fought for the rights of African-Americans. Once again, Southern Whites switched parties because the party fought for rights of the minority, the one’s without a voice, the African-Americans. In the 1960s, it was the Democratic Party’s support of Civil Rights legislation which ended their solid grip on the South.

The abandonment of the Democratic Party by the Southern Whites began the revolt against liberalism which would bring it to its end. The revolt began in the election of 1964 with five Southern Electoral votes going for Goldwater, the Republican Candidate. The Nurturant Parent Model did not work. Liberalism did not work for the country in their eyes. Citizens were becoming dependent on their government. Non-traditional values were becoming the norm. Southern Whites wanted a new approach to governing and soon so would many more Americans, including the Religious Right. However, Southern White Christians would need someone to lead them on this revolt against liberalism.

The mid-1970s ended the 1960s, which began in 1964. The country had finished their involvement in a foreign war falsely presented to the people of the United States. The president committed impeachable offenses. The social programs of the Great Society continued on. There were also Civil Rights legislation, Feminists, and Gay Rights Activists, just a few things to show a Cultural Revolution that came from the 1960s.

The Cultural Revolution was too much for some people. “Through the years of liberal social policies in the 1960s, a substantial share of the electorate showed itself deeply unhappy with the ongoing cultural revolution, though it could rarely make its voice heard in mainstream political debate” (Jenkins 2006, 75). The voice they would get would come from former Hollywood actor and Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 not only began the 1980s but began the conservative response to 1960s liberalism, also known as the Reagan Revolution. President Johnson approached domestic policy, using Lakoff’s model, as the Nurturant Parent. President Reagan would be the counterpart model to the Nurturant Parent, the Strict Father.

The Strict Father model is an approach to both parenting and governing. In the Strict Father Model the household is run by the father and the mother upholds his authority. The children are similar to subordinates in the military, which must obey their superior’s authority. In this model there are no questions asked when asked to do something. The father in this model can reprimand their children as firm as he sees fit. Lakoff said this model takes the view “that life is difficult and that the world is fundamentally dangerous” (Lakoff 2002, 65). A strong father figure is there to guide and protect the family. Reagan filled this role for the Conservatives looking for the voice to opposing liberalism.

Reagan’s approach to governing followed the model of Strict Father. Despite a difference in age, Reagan exuded a strict father appearance compared to his predecessor Jimmy Carter, whose tenure in office was more feminine in administration of the government. By the end of Carter’s term the country needed “to adopt more aggressive and confrontational attitudes toward its enemies” (Jenkins 2006, 151). The adoption of these attitudes would come with the election of Reagan.

Reagan would dismantle the Great Society. The Great Society’s legislative agenda gave opportunities to citizens in need of some kind of help. The reliance of the government to support its citizens went against the grain of a conservative. According to Seymour Martin Lipset, author of American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, the creed of the United States are the basic values of liberty, egalitarianism, and individualism. According to Lipset, the American Ideology is all we have, since we Americans have no bloodline that binds us as a nation. It has always been the American way to work hard and keep your earnings. Americans of the late 20th Century were no different than those of earlier generations. This creed of Lipset’s can be seen as Reagan’s response to the social programs of the Great Society.

The values in the creed of the United States went against government programs’ attempt to help. Liberty defined as you own yourself and nobody owns you. The government does not own you, you can go out and work hard trying to make something for oneself. Egalitarianism means that no one is born into special privilege. If born into poverty, one can get out of it through hard work and should not continue every generation relying on the government for support. Finally, there is individualism, which is about there being one you, a unique individual. Government does not involve itself in the lives of the individual.

The social programs did not help the citizens of the United States, but instead created problems for the citizens. Reagan blamed the government for the social problems the United States faced in the 1960s. He wanted Americans to feel good about themselves again. His campaign ads said “it’s morning in America.” Reagan exuded an optimistic view of America and what it can achieve, especially with less government. The less government would come in the area of social programs. Big government would remain but in a different area of the federal government.

Where President Johnson was big on government spending for social programs, President Reagan matched him in military spending, the big government that Southern White Christians liked, a strong defense. Reagan’s defense military build-up against the Soviet Union was appealing to Americans who sought comfort in the Strict Father Model, the model which helped win the Cold War.

The Strict Father was the solution at the time to clean up the mess left by the Nurturant Parent. If 1964 was the beginning of liberalism’s end with the landslide reelection of Lyndon Johnson, then 1984, with the landslide reelection of Ronald Reagan, confirmed that liberalism was not the dominant ideology, rather conservatism was now the nation’s dominant ideology and that it was here to stay. The social changes brought by liberalism of the 1960s created the reactionary Southern White Christians which would see to liberalisms end with Reagan’s victory in 1980. Just as liberalism began a long march from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs through to Johnson’s Great Society programs, and the cultural changes that came with the 1960s; conservatism has reached the beginning of its end with the reelection of George W. Bush to a second term in 2004. The Reagan Revolution ended liberalism as the nation’s dominant ideology, only time will tell if Compassionate Conservatism is the end of conservatism as the nation’s dominant ideology.

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Jenkins, Philip. 2006. Decade of Nightmares – The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Lakoff, George. 2002. Moral Politics – How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1996. American Exceptionalism – A Double-Edged Sword. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company.