Conservatism In The 1970's

Throughout the 1960s, the American government under Lyndon B. Johnson had produced an outburst of leftist, liberal in American vocabulary, policies, or the Great Society, that had involved high government spending, active economic regulation, and reduction of wealth inequality. By 1980 the steam of liberalism had given way to Reagan and the resurgence of conservatism, characterised by a dedication to minimal state intervention in economic activities as well as individuals’ financial condition. Between those two landmark decades stood the 1970s, the era more famous for inflation, the Watergate Scandal, and the energy crises than for a dynamic political significance. The decade, however, occupies a special position in American history as

Although the Democratic Party had never achieved as enormous a victory as the election of 1964, whereby the Party obtained 68 seats in the Senate5 and 295 in the House,6 it maintained a solid majority in both houses of Congress from 1969 to 1981.1 Though Southern Democrats who championed states' rights and fiscal conservatism blocked the Party from using its full force to pursue a left-wing economic agenda, the predominance of its leftist faction alongside the cooperation of such liberal Republicans as Nelson Rockefeller and James Matthias ensured that neither Boll weevils nor conservative Republicans could repeal much of the Great Society's

In response to the rapid deterioration of the living environment caused by industrial and automobile pollution, its severity highlighted by the burning of the Cuyahoga River in 1969,16 Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring all executive agencies to draft environmental assessments and impact statements for every federal project.16 Nixon not only signed the law but issued an executive order that created the Environmental Protection Agency to advance the cause of protecting nature.1 Henceforth, he endorsed a number of major environmental legislations, including the Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.7 Nixon also encouraged Congress to devote more resources into healthcare and medical research, even suggesting the creation of a federalised Medicaid for poor households with children and the health insurance employer mandate.7 In another instance, he allied with Democrats, liberal Republicans, and the Black Caucus to cancel the construction of the Three Sisters Bridge in favour of retaining the Washington