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The Rise of Conservatism: Crash Course US History #41

From: U.S. History by Crash Course

In which John Green teaches you about the rise of the conservative movement in United States politics. So, the sixties are often remembered for the liberal changes that the decade brought to America, but lest you forget, Richard Nixon was elected to the presidency during the sixties. The conservative movement didn't start with Nixon though. Modern conservatism really entered mainstream consciousness during the 1964 presidential contest between the incumbent president and Kennedy torch-bearer Lyndon B Johnson, and Republican senator Barry Goldwater. While Goldwater never had a shot in the election, he used the campaign to talk about all kinds of conservative ideas. At the same time, several varying groups, including libertarian conservatives and moral conservatives, began to work together. Goldwater's trailblazing and coalition building would pay off in 1968 when Richard Nixon was elected to the White House, and politics changed forever when Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal. You'll also learn about the ERA, EPA, OSHA, the NTSB, and several other acronyms and initialisms.

Full Transcript

The Rise of Conservatism Crash Course US History 41

speaker01 00:00:00

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course us history and we're xon were going talk about the rise of this Alabama where I went to high school is a pretty conservative state and reliably sends Republicans to Washington of its senators. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby are Republicans, but did you know that Richard Shelby used to be a Democrat? Just like basically all of Alabama senators since Reconstruction? And this shift from Democrat to Republican throughout the South is the result of the rise of conservative politics in the 1960s and 1970s that we're going to talk about today.

speaker01 00:34:00

And along the way, we get to put Richard Nixon's head in a jar. Just inform me that we don't actually get to put Richard Nixon's head in a jar to just a future Roman joke. Now I'm sad. So you'll remember from our last episode that we learned that not everyone in the 1960s was a psychedelic rock listening, war protesting hippie. In fact, there was a strong undercurrent of conservative thinking that ran throughout the 1960s, even among young people.

speaker01 00:56:00

This was the rise of free market ideology and libertarianism since the 1000 and 950 S, a majority of Americans had broadly agreed that free enterprise was a good thing and should be encouraged both in the us and abroad.

speaker01 01:08:00

Mr Green Mr Green and also in deep space where no man has gone before. No me from the past. You're thinking of the start enterprise, not free enterprise. And from the past, you ever seen a more aggressively communist television program than the neutral zone from Star Trek, the next generation's first season, I don't think so.

speaker01 01:32:00

Alright, so in the 1950s, a growing number of libertarians argued that unregulated capitalism and individual autonomy were the essence of American freedom. And although they were a staunchly anti-scam unist, their real target was the regulatory state that had been created by the New Deal. You know, social security and not being allowed to, you know, choose how many pigs you kill, etc. Other conservatives weren't libertarians at all, but moral conservatives who were OK with the rules that enforce traditional notions of family and morality, even if that seemed like, you know, an oppressive government. For them, virtue was the essence of America.

speaker01 02:05:00

But both of these strands of conservatism were very hostile toward communist and also to the idea of big government. It's worth noting that since World War One, the size and scope of the federal government had increased dramatically, and hostility toward the idea of big government remains the signal feature of contemporary conservativism, although very few people actually argue for shrinking the government because, you know, that would be very unpopular people like Medicare, but it was faith in the free market that infused the ideology of the most vocal young conservatives in the 1960s. They didn't receive nearly as much press as their liberal counterparts, but these young conservatives played a pivotal role in reshaping the Republican Party, especially in the election of 1000 and 964 the 19964 presidential election was important in American history precisely because it was so incredibly uncompetitive.

speaker01 02:52:00

I mean, Lyndon Johnson was carrying the torch of a wildly popular American president who had been assassinated a few months before. He was never going to lose, and indeed, he didn't the Republican candidate, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was demolished by LBJ, but the mere fact of Goldwater's nomination was a huge conservative victory. I mean, he beat out liberal Republican New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and yes, there were liberal Republican Goldwater demanded a harder line in the Cold War, even suggesting that Nuclear War might be an option in the fight against communist, and he lambasted the New Deal liberal welfare state for destroying American initiative and individual liberty. I mean, why bother working when you can just enjoy life on the dole? I mean, unemployment insurance allowed anyone in America to become 100 air, but it was his stance on the Cold War that doomed his candidacy. In his acceptance speech, Goldwater famously declared extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, which made it really easy for Johnson to paint Goldwater as an extremist. In the famous Daisy. Advertisement, Johnson supporters countered Goldwater's campaign slogan of In your heart, You know he's right, but in your guts, you know he's nuts.

speaker01 03:58:00

So in the end, Goldwater received a paltry 27 million votes to Johnson's 43 million, and Democrats racked up huge majorities in both houses of Congress.

speaker01 04:07:00

This hides, however, the significance of the election. Five of the six states that Goldwater carried were in the Deep South, which had been reliably Democratic, known as the Solid South. In fact, now it's too simple to say that race alone. Would the shift from Democratic to the Republican Party in the South, because Goldwater didn't really talk much about race with the Democrats, especially under LBJ, became the party associated with defending civil rights and ending segregation. And that definitely played a role in white Southerners abandoning the Democratic Party, as was demonstrated even more clearly in the 1968 election, the election of 19009, 68 was a real cluster Calhoun. I mean, there were riots and there was also the nomination of Hubert Humphrey. It was very unpopular with the anti-war movement and also was named Hubert Humphrey. And that's just what happened with the Democrats.

speaker01 04:56:00

But lost in that picture was the Republican nominee, Richard Millhouse Nixon, who was one of the few candidates in American history to come back and win the presidency after losing in a previous election, how do you do it? Well, it probably wasn't his charm, but it might have been his patience. Nixon was famous for his ability to sit and wait in poker games. It made him very successful during his tour of duty in the South Pacific. In fact, he earned the nickname Old Iron Butt. Plus. He was anti communist, but didn't talk a lot about nuking people, and the c-liner was probably that he was from California, which by the late 1960s was becoming the most populous state in the nation.

speaker01 05:31:00

Nixon won the election campaigning as the candidate of the silent majority of America who weren't antique war protesters and who didn't admire free love or the communist ideas of hippies and who were alarmed at the rights that the Supreme Court seemed to be expanding, especially for criminals. This silent majority felt that the rights revolution had gone too far, and they were concerned about the breakdown in traditional values and in law and order. Stop me, if any, of this sounds familiar. Nixon also promised to be tough on crime, which was coded language to whites in the South that he wouldn't support civil rights protests. The equation of crime with African Americans has a long and sordid history in the United States, and Nixon played it up following a Southern strategy to further draw white Democrats who favored Seg in the Republican ranks.

speaker01 06:16:00

Now, Nixon only won 43% of the vote. But if you've paid attention to American history, you know that you ain't got to win a majority to be the president. He was denied that majority primarily by Alabama Governor George Wallace, who was running on a pro se ticket and 1 13% of the vote. So 56% of American voters chose candidates who were either explicitly or quietly against civil rights conservatives who voted for Nixon, hoping that he would roll back the new deal, were disappointed in some ways, the Nixon domestic agenda was just a continuation of Lbj's Great Society.

speaker01 06:45:00

This was partly because Congress was still in the hands of Democrats, but also Nixon didn't push for conservative programs, and he didn't vetoed initiatives because they were popular and he liked to be popular. So in fact, a number of big government liberal programs began under Nixon, the environmental movement achieved success with the enactment of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were created to make new regulations that would protect worker safety and make cars safer. That's not government getting out of our lives, that's government getting into our car. And when Nixon had the opportunity to nominate a new chief justice to the Supreme Court after Earl Warren retired in 1000 and 960 five-nines choice, Warren Berger was supposed to be a supporter of small government and conservative ideals. But just like Nixon, he proved a disappointment in that regard.

speaker01 07:33:00

Like in Swan versus Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, the court upheld a lower court ruling that required busing of students to achieve in 2000. Charlotte's and then the Burger Court made it easier for minorities to sue for employment discrimination, especially with its ruling in Regents of the University of California versus Bai. This upheld affirmative action as a valid governmental interest, although it did strike down the use of strict quotas in university admissions. Now, many conservatives didn't like affirmative action decisions, but one case above all others had a profound effect on American politics. Roe v Wade Roe v Wade established a woman's right to have an abortion in the first trimester of a pregnancy, as well as a more limited right as the pregnancy progressed, and that decision galvanized first Catholics and then evangelical Protestants. And that ties in nicely with another strand in American conservatism that developed in the 1000 and 960 S and 1000 and 970 S. Let's go to the thought bubble.

speaker01 08:26:00

Many Americans felt that traditional fan family values were deteriorating and look to conservative Republican candidates to stop that slide. They were particularly alarmed by the continuing success of the sexual revolution, as symbolized by Roe v Wade and the increasing availability of birth control. Statistics tend to back up the claims that traditional family values were in decline in the 1970s, like the number of divorces soared to over 1 million in 1975, exceeding the number of first time marriages. The birth rate declined, with women bearing 1.7 children during their lifetimes. By 1976, half the figure in 1000 and 957. And now, of course, many people would argue that the decline of these traditional values allowed more freedom for women and for a lot of terrible marriages to end. But thats neither here nor there.

speaker01 09:10:00

Some conservatives also complained about the passage in 1000 and 970 twot Title IX, which banned gender discrimination in higher education. But many more expressed concern about the increasing number of women in the workforce. Like by 1980, 40 up percent of women with young children had been in the workforce, up from 20% in 19.

speaker01 09:28:00

The backlash against increased opportunity for women is most obviously seen in the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 19 9 74.

speaker01 09:35:00

Although it passed Congress easily in 1972, opponents of the era, which rather innocuously declared that equality of rights under the law could not be abridged on account of sex, argued that the era would let men off the hook for providing for their wives and children, and that working women would lead to the further breakdown of the family. Again, all the era stated was that women and men would have equal rights under the wall the United States, but anyway, some anti Era supporters like phylla schaffy claim that free enterprise was the greatest liberator of women because the purchase of new labor saving devices would offer them genuine freedom in their traditional roles of wife and mother. Essentially, the vacuum cleaner shall make you free and those arguments were persuasive to enough people that the E RA was not ratified in the required three quarters of the United States. Thanks thought bubble, sorry if I let my personal feelings get in the way on that one anyway, Nixon didn't have much to do with the continuing sexual revolution. It would have continued without him because, you know Scoot Lee pooping is popular, but he was successfully reelected in 1972, partly because his opponent was the Democratic Barry Goldwater, George McGovern. McGovern only carried one state and it wasn't even his home state, It was Massachusetts, of course, but even though they couldn't possibly lose Nixon's campaign decided to cheat. In June 1972, people from Nixon's campaign broke into McGovern's campaign office, possibly to plant bugs. Now, we don't know if Nixon actually knew about the activities of the former employees of the amazingly acronyms creep that is the committee for the reelection, the president, this break in at the Watergate Hotel eventually led to Nixon being the first and so far only American president to resign.

speaker01 11:14:00

We do know is this, Nixon was really paranoid about his opponents, even the ones who appealed to 12% of American voters, especially after Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. So he drew up an enemies list and. A special investigative unit called the Plumbers, whose job was to fix toilets? No, it was to stop leaks. That makes more sense. I'm sorry, standards. Just by then, the toilets in the White House were over 100 years old. I figured they might need some fixing, but apparently no leing, So what ultimately doomed Nixon was not the break in itself, but the revelations that he covered it up by authorizing hush money payments to keep the burglars silent and also instructing the FBI not to investigate the crime.

speaker01 11:52:00

In August 1000 thousand 900, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that articles of impeachment be drawn up against Nixon for conspiracy and obstruction of justice, but the real crime ultimately was abuse of power. And there's really no question about whether he was guilty of that. So Nixon resigned.

speaker01 12:09:00

Oh, man, I was thinking I was going to get away without a mystery document today. The rules here, simple. I guess. The author of the mystery document, and lately I'm never wrong. Today I am an inquisitor. I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminish, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. I'm going to get shocked today. Sam Irvin.

speaker02 12:45:00

dang it.

speaker01 12:49:00

Apparently, it was African American congresswoman from Texas, Barbara Jordan. Stan, that is much too hard. I think you were getting tired of me not being shock stand because it's pretty strange to end an episode on conservatism with a quote from Barbara Jordan, whose election to Congress has to be seen as a huge victory for liberalism. But I guess it is symbolic of the very things that many conservatives found unsettling in the 1970s, including political and economic success for African Americans and women in the legislature that helped the marginalized. I know that sounds very judgmental, but on the other hand, the federal government had become a huge part of every American's life maybe too huge, And certainly conservatives weren't wrong when they said that the founding fathers of the US would hardly recognize the nation that we had become come by the 1970s. In fact, Watergate was followed by a Senate investigation by the Church Committee, which revealed that Nixon was hardly the first president to abuse his power the government had spied on Americans throughout the Cold War and tried to disrupt the civil rights movement and the Church Commission, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Vietnam, all of these things revealed a government that truly was out of control. And this undermined a fundamental liberal belief that government is a good institution that is supposed to solve problems and promote freedom. And for many conservatives, these scandals sent a clear signal that government couldn't promote freedom and couldn't solve problems, and that the Liberal government of the New Deal and the Great Society had to be stopped.

speaker01 14:17:00

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