Americans Have Always Been Hesitant

Americans have always been hesitant to trust the government. The earliest political battles fought were over the perceived powers of federalism, and how a strong government can lead to tyranny too easily. However, Roosevelt's New Deal policies and an increasingly outward-looking, globally engaged America transformed public opinions. Americans started to perceive themselves and their role in the world differently, and strong central government institutions from the military to Medicare become more politically and socially acceptable. Several generations prior to the New Deal and especially World War Two, Americans would not have lent their support as readily to foreign intervention. The prosperity that characterized Middle America during the middle of the twentieth century made it seem for a time that the new approach was working. Yet the 1960s was an era of dramatic change in public consciousness. These changes spilled over into subsequent decades and continue to characterize the nature of American political culture in the 21st century. New definitions of the "left" and "right" have since emerged, creating a divisive polis in America. In many cases, the divisions reflect race, socio-economic class, gender, and ethnicity.

The New Left and the New Right faced off for the first time in the 1960s. New Right conservatives resisted social progress trends including the Civil Rights movement, women's liberation, abortion rights, and gay rights. The New Right agenda was rooted in fundamentalist Christianity, which was in itself nothing new in America. The First Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening foreshadowed the ongoing undercurrent of Christian conservatism in America. What made the New Right different was that it represented a new unholy union between big business and big religion. Economic, social, and religious conservatives joined forces under the rubric of the New Right, "a combination of Christian religious leaders, conservative business bigwigs who claimed that environmental and labor regulations were undermining the competitiveness of American firms in the global market, and fringe political groups," (U.S. History, 2013). Emblems of the New Right blossomed during the 1970s and included Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority movement, which "raised money to defeat liberal senators, representatives, and governors. They sought to control school boards on the local level to advance their conservative agenda," (U.S. History, 2013). One of the Republican politicians the Moral Majority and related New Right groups supported was Ronald Reagan. Although not all New Right agendas were overtly racist, sexist, or classist, there were some strong and unapologetic bigots among the movement including extremist and terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (U.S. History, 2013). Generally, though, the New Right was far more representative of the institutions of social and political power in the United States due to its collusion with big business.

The New Left did not evolve directly as an opposition to the New Right, but emerged as an independent undercurrent of American society that had started to surface at the turn of the century. Progressives, labor rights activists, feminists, artists, and socialists were not part of the mainstream American society, and because of the lack of collaboration with big business or big politics, liberal elements of American society were often underground. The 1960s changed that, as the Civil Rights movement exploded and gave rise to a number of related social justice initiatives ranging from women's rights and gay rights to antiwar movements. The Free Speech movement was emblematic of the New Left during the 1960s, when students were empowering themselves en masse on a scale never before seen in American history. At the University of California, Berkeley represented the convergence of "privileged, gifted, mainly white students" and the ideals of Civil Rights. A new consciousness of social justice emerged, as the core institutions and structures of American society began to be called into question. The Free Speech movement matured in an ironic way, as the President of the University of California at Berekeley Clark Kerr had once been a member of the socialist organization Student League for Industrial Democracy, but during his tenure as university president instituted draconian measures to curb student free speech and individual self-expression ("The free-speech fight that shaped the New Left," 2008). Kerr's management strategy on campus only emboldened the New Left.

In addition to the Free Speech movement, the New Left included other student organizations including Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The former focused on the antiwar efforts to end the Vietnam conflict, placing the students in direct conflict with many of America's most powerful institutions and organizations. Sit-ins, and other non-violent protest tactics were used to gain media coverage as well as to effect real change. The increasing awareness of how the War in Vietnam was proceeding caused the New Left to grow dramatically, providing a credible opposition to the Department of Defense. As Zinn points out, an increasingly large proportion of Americans ceased affiliating with either the Democratic or Republican parties, expressing opposition to the core institutions of government that led to injustices like those being witnessed in Vietnam. Faith in government was eroding fast during the 1960s, paving the way well for the upheaval and turmoil that characterized the 1970s. The New Left was successful in raising awareness of core political issues, gaining traction for Civil Rights, and poking holes in New Right logic. However, the New Left lacked political cohesion and more importantly, sponsorship from big business or big religion. This meant that the New Left became a series of scattered political activist organizations including environmentalist groups and civil liberties organizations, whereas the New Right infiltrated the upper echelons of politics. The failure of the New Left to coalesce led to a kind of political impotence. The New Right proved eminently successful in infiltrating every level of American political culture and society.