History of the United States II / Unit 18 USH2 2590 review, 2 to 3 minutes
The Arc of Theme Seven
The idea
Theme seven, liberalism and conservatism, can now be stated in one arc. The Progressives of unit six joined expanding democracy with restricting it, entries 0754 and 0755. In unit ten conservatism meant Hoover's voluntarism, entry 1360; in unit eleven the New Deal stood between critics from the left and the right, entries 1528 and 1531, and moved toward the pressure, entry 1532. A conservative coalition crossing party lines checked it by nineteen thirty-eight, entry 1549. Eisenhower's middle ground kept it, entry 1830, and Johnson's Great Society extended it, entry 1967.
In practice
Eight positions across a century: Progressive, voluntarist, New Dealer, middle ground, Great Society liberal, New Right conservative, New Democrat and Tea Party.
Where people slip
From nineteen sixty-eight the argument turned. Nixon's southern strategy, entry 2125, and the crisis of confidence of entry 2165 prepared the ground for the New Right, entries 2252 and 2263, which carried Reagan to office, and entry 2307 records the Yawp's finding that the programmes of the New Deal and Great Society survived the Reagan years, battered but intact. The New Democrat Clinton, entry 2294, moved his party toward the centre, and the Tea Party, entry 2442, arose to cut spending and shrink the federal government, in opposition to a health care law that, entry 2441 records, used a formerly conservative model. The portable test for any period is the same as theme six's: ask who wanted the federal government to do more, who wanted it to do less, and who their allies were. The answer changes; the question does not. The course ends here, with both themes stated: the federal role was set by crisis and contested ever since, and the traditions that argue over it have kept their names while trading their coalitions.
Your place on the trail
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Unlocks
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