The Day The 60's Died Analysis

American democracy is fluid; it is constantly evolving and changing. The earliest divide in American politics stems from the very establishment of the government. Regardless of the hope the American founders possessed, political parties began to form almost immediately as the country began to take shape. Today, the two main parties are the Democrats and the Republicans, however each party was not always the same at their start as they are currently.
The Democrats traced their roots back to Thomas Jefferson and called themselves the “party of the fathers”. This group consisted mostly of Catholics and Jews (508). After the end of reconstruction, most white voters in the former confederate states remained loyal to the Democrats. This created

the “solid south” lasting for the next seventy years (508). Democracy in the South, after the Civil War, was for whites only. They successfully reconstructed a society based on the principles of white dominancy and black dependency. This new society was easily enforced by intimidation, raw violence, and Jim Crow laws.
The defeat of the Southern Confederacy weakened the Democrats, associated in voters' minds, with the Southern cause. For many years the Republicans were the main party. Republicans favored business interests and high tariffs while the Democrats supported free trade. Democrats attracted farmers and the immigrants pouring into the country between the time of the Civil War and the turn of the century (508).
Republicans, were those tracing their roots tracing back to Abraham Lincoln around the 1800s and consisted of Presbyterians and Methodists (508). Presidents of the “Gilded Age” included those Republicans from the Presidency of Rutherford B Hayes to William McKinley. The Sherman Antitrust Act, illustrated the nation’s apprehension of corporate abuses of power. Also, it demonstrated a growing desire to use federal measures to intervene on behalf of public interest (517). As corporate capitalism became increasingly powerful, public pressure toward government intervention grew (517).
The rise of urban industrialism defied the American promise, which for a long time had been subjugated by Jeffersonian agrarian ideas. These ideas favored a nation of small communities of small independent family farms. In the 1890s, growing anger and frustration led farmers and workers to unite together. This action created a grassroots movement, establishing a new people’s party, determined to fight for change (551).
The numerous elements of Progressive reform were responses by educated middle-class Americans to the rapid pace of industrialization, immigration, and urbanization in which characterized the period. The Progressive Era created a balance between promoting impartiality and social justice. Also, progressivism contained a racial dimension.
The two major parties were not so deeply divided again until the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Depression. The Presidential election of 1932 ushered in Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs. Roosevelt Democrats thought the federal government was actively helping people economically marred by the Depression. Under Roosevelt’s New Deal, the government passed economic relief measures, social security, and laws aiding unions. Republicans believed the government possessed too much power and was shaping the country into a welfare state. In order to counteract government interference, they fought against it with business.
Traditional liberalism opposed the tyranny of centralized government. However, it did not address the enormous power of the Gilded Age business giants such as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. The gap between the rich and the poor widened and progressivism began to flourish. Progressives wanted to use the government to counterbalance the power of private interests in which redefined liberalism in the 1900s.
Growing concern about the power of wealthy individuals and a suspicion of the trusts started to develop with Progressives. The election of President Teddy Roosevelt allowed for the promotion of conservation, the initiation of antitrust reforms, and championing the United States as a world power. However, Teddy Roosevelt’s successor, William Taft, failed to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps causing a split in the Republican party. This paved the way for Woodrow Wilson’s Presidential election victory, in which he presided over reforms in banking, business, and labor.
The emergence of World War I helped the Progressives achieve their goals of national prohibition and woman suffrage, but promoted attacks on Americans civil liberties . In 1919, Wilson was unable to work out a desirable compromise marking the end of the WWI. This resulted in his presidential defeat and signaled the end of progressivism. Political reformers such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began to be replaced by the more influential American businessmen (646).
From 1921 to 1933 Republicans controlled the White House (647). Hoover was the last Republican in office and was in control at the start of the Great Depression in 1929 (665). Hoover was quite unsuccessful in improving the economy, in which steadily declined each year after the Great Depression occurred. The weakened economy caused citizens to demand new leaders (673).
This allowed the successful election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was the Democratic president from 1933 through 1945. During this time there were two wings of the Democrat party. The first wing were the southern, native-born, white, rural Protestants. The second wing were the northern, immigrant, urban, Catholics. Even though the Democrat party was divided, both sides were united than ever under Roosevelt. The Republican Party, however, began to believe government was the problem, not the solution.
The rise of the new Republican party can be seen through the Presidency of Richard Nixon and more specifically the events chronicled in the documentary film, “The Day the 60’s Died”. This film demonstrates the growth of the antiwar movement on United States college campuses at the height of the Vietnam War .
The 1960’s was a time society fantasized of a better world. However, the horrors of the Vietnam War soon became evident; the mass amounts of death occurring because of the war became a reality. It created a “movement”, especially in American colleges, in order to stand up for what they believed to be “right”. By 1970, many Americans believed sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake, however there were also various individuals becoming increasingly critical of the student antiwar movement

(5:25)
People, especially students, had an increasingly growing antiwar mentality and protests were continually expanding. Nixon finally announced the withdraw of 150,000 American troops from Vietnam in which provided false hope to the American people whom believed this meant the war would be ending (8:19). Nixon, determined not to lose the war, instead, announced his decision on o invade Cambodia on April 30, 1970 (9:01).
On May 1, 1970 troops began to cross over into Cambodia and, in the United States, students erupted into protests all throughout the country (10:42). Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia was the last straw for students participating in the antiwar movement. Liberals began to side with the students, which greatly angered Nixon because he viewed the students as anarchists. He compared the “bums” to the military members, he dubbed as heroes (13:32).
On May 2, 1970, students at Kent State University in Ohio, began to gather in protest of the war they believed to be illegal (17:00). Events on campus began to worsen and two days later on May 4, 1970, six hundred National Guardsmen were sent to the University (18:30). The protests of the invasion of US troops into Cambodia became a spectacle for many students on campus. They formed lines near the ROTC building they had previously burned down. This caused the Guardsmen to begin throwing tear gas at the students initiating an exchange between the two groups (21:50). The Guards began to fire their bayonets into the crowd of students (22:07). As a result four students, two men and two women, were killed.
In the aftermath of the shootings at Kent State many people in the United States blamed the students for their own deaths (28:00). Strikes across hundreds of campuses began and caused a wave of shock and anguish. White construction workers were beating up protesters while wall street businessman cheered them on (31:05).
Meanwhile, the war was getting worse. Military members in Cambodia had heard about the happenings at Kent State and were extremely startled (25:34) However, it gave them some comfort as their urge to get back home was increasing every day. They believed these protests would be the cause to end the war (34:00).
Meanwhile, in the United States, there was a steadily increasing fear the protesters would attempt to attack the White House. In an attempt to calm the protests, Nixon held a rare press conference. There, he was hammered with difficult questions by the press in regards to America being in a revolution. This had troubled Nixon and in an attempt to calm himself, he traveled to the Lincoln Memorial among the protesters. He shared his reasonings for the decisions being made, especially for the invasion of Cambodia (40:23). Demonstrations held the next day were anti-climatic and things were thought to begin to cool down (43:03).
Political parties became ever more involved after the Kent State incident. Democrats in NY began to march in support of Nixon (43:35). The fallout from Kent State allowed Nixon to bring working blue collar Americans into the Republican party (44:27).
Eventually, the military was pulled from Cambodia and in the fall of 1970, multiple students were charged in connection with initiating the riots at Kent State (46:40). This completely absolved the National Guardsmen of responsibility for the deaths occurring on May 4, 1970. Conditions changed on Kent State’s campus and the movement became fragmented. Students had begun to feel the government won and they did not stand a chance, so, they dispersed (47:40).
The women’s movement and the gay rights movement were descendants of the anti war movement. The people protesting in those movements were exactly the same type of people from the antiwar movement, meaning they had the same desire to change the country for what they believed to be correct; all of them wanted a fair and equal life (50:25).
The last antiwar movements were held in the spring of 1971 with many of them being led by Vietnam veterans. The war would did end for another two years.
On November 7, 1972 Nixon won re-election., which pointed to the nation’s verdict of the antiwar movement. Nixon had won and allowed for the republican party to keep doing so, politically, until the 1980’s (50:57).
Nixon’s landslide presidential victory in 1972, was ultimately due to the force of the antiwar movement into retreat. The protestors lost the political battle, but had laid the foundations for changing the culture. The Vietnam era was a time of turbulence in the United States and, just as from the beginning of the nation’s history, it would add to the constant fluidity of the political parties within.