We’re going to talk about the Great Society here for a few moments.
I mentioned it in our last lecture on civil rights.
The context of the Great Society – It’s hard to put it into context; it’s sort of
an explosion of liberalism in the 1960s under the guidance of Lyndon Johnson.
There’s a sense that the political leadership looked out across the country in the mid-60s
and came to the realization that this was an extremely wealthy country that should be
able – at least in theory – to lift everybody up, to eliminate poverty, to provide education
for everyone.
You get the sense that LBJ had almost a sense of a Utopia that he was trying to create here
to solve everybody’s problems.
The context of the Great Society is that it indeed did lend itself to an explosion of
governmental activity.
Most of you have heard of Medicaid and Medicare, if you haven’t already partaken of its benefits,
National Public Radio, National Public Television, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the National Endowment for the Arts, Highway Beautification, National Parks, the EPA Environmental
Protection Agency, Fair Lending Practices, honesty in labeling with regard to products,
just on and on and on, an endless succession of legislation designed to improve society,
to solve problems.
A tremendous amount of money pushed into education, from pre-K all the way to graduate school.
You’ll see in the 60s, partially as a result of the GI Bill after World War II, and of
the booming American economy through the 50s and 60s, you see just an explosion of student
population at the universities and colleges across the country.
So the Great Society is Lyndon Johnson’s idea to raise everyone up so that opportunity
was available to all.
LBJ, of course, idolized Franklin Roosevelt and you get the sense that the Great Society
is in part LBJ’s attempt to sort of recreate the New Deal in the 1960s, and we live with
the results of the Great Society.
In fact, we’re still very much a part of this liberal innovation.
The conservative movement has, over the years, railed against not only the Great Society,
but the New Deal; these programs that many on the right consider to be governmental interference,
boondoggles, corruption.
Yet, it’s been very difficult to repeal, or to push back, these large domestic programs,
FDR’s and LBJ’s.
They’ve become part of the fabric of society.
I think you see the same thing today with Obamacare.
The Congress constantly talks about the Republicans in Congress, and the conservative media in
this country constantly talk about repealing Obamacare.
It’s already been in the Supreme Court I believe twice.
This is pure political demagoguery.
Obamacare is now becoming a part of the fabric of our domestic life.
It may take a generation to work out the kinks and the bugs, but you’re not going to repeal
it at this point.
And Obamacare can be legitimately seen as an extension of those domestic programs begun
by FDR and then continued by LBJ.
LBJ declared a war on poverty.
You see the rise of public housing, which of course, has become something of a blight
over the seceding generations.
You see institutions of welfare and food stamps, which many people today resent.
These programs all emerge in an attempt to create a sense of opportunity for everyone.
Race relations in this country during the Great Society are complex.
I think LBJ, by ushering in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and this massive
amount of legislation, I think he expected the African-American community to be grateful
to him, and there was gratitude on the part of many.
But there was also pent-up resentment in the African-American community, especially in
the cities in the North, and this resentment exploded in the mid-60s with race riots.
I remember seeing video of Detroit, and Watts in Loss Angeles, and other cities on fire,
race riots, police and African Americans going at it in the streets major cities.
I think LBJ was dismayed by this eruption of violence, and you have to remember that
this coincided with the growing anti-war protests regarding Vietnam.
So here you have Lyndon Johnson, who knows very little about Vietnam, and could care
less; his interest is in the Great Society, yet his energy and the wealth that he wanted
to use to build the Great Society are increasingly channeled into this war in Southeast Asia.
This begins to take on the trappings of a Greek tragedy.
Here you have this man whose entire life is devoted to raising up the poor and the downtrodden,
and yet, he spends the better part of his Presidency fighting a ridiculous war that
he did not understand in Vietnam.
And again, to go back to McCarthyism, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that LBJ’s
distraction to Vietnam is caused, in part, by this McCarthyite fear that he would be
accused of being soft on Communism.
So we have these 2 impulses moving at the same time, this sense that our country is
so wealthy that we can afford to be a generous people, and at the same time, the commitment
to contain Communism is a great distraction from the Great Society and the building of
this sort of liberal Utopia here in the United States.
I’m going to stop there with the Great Society.
I mentioned some of the programs, and I’ve mentioned some of the significance and the
context.
So we’ll stop there, and next time we’ll talk about Watergate.