Rightward Bound

by Schulman, Bruce J.; Zelizer, Julian E.

• ISBN13: 9780674027589
• ISBN10: 0674027582
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-03-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Often considered a lost decade, a pause between the liberal Sixties and Reaganrs"s Eighties, the 1970s were indeed a watershed era when the forces of a conservative counter-revolution cohered. These years marked a significant moral and cultural turning point in which the conservative movement became the motive force driving politics for the ensuing three decades. Interpreting the movement as more than a backlash against the rampant liberalization of American culture, racial conflict, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, these provocative and innovative essays look below the surface, discovering the tectonic shifts that paved the way for Reaganrs"s America. They reveal strains at the heart of the liberal coalition, resulting from struggles over jobs, taxes, and neighborhood reconstruction, while also investigating how the deindustrialization of northern cities, the rise of the suburbs, and the migration of people and capital to the Sunbelt helped conservatism gain momentum in the twentieth century. They demonstrate how the forces of the right coalesced in the 1970s and became, through the efforts of grassroots activists and political elites, a movement to reshape American values and policies. A penetrating and provocative portrait of a critical decade in American history, Rightward Bound illuminates the seeds of both the successes and the failures of the conservative revolution. It helps us understand how, despite conservatismrs"s rise, persistent tensions remain today between its political power and the achievements of twentieth-century liberalism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Mobilizing the Movement
Inventing Family Values	p. 13
The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism	p. 29
Make Payroll, Not War: Business Culture as Youth Culture	p. 52
Gender and America's Right Turn	p. 71
Civil Rights and the Religious Right	p. 90
The Decade of the Neighborhood	p. 106
Cultural Politics and the Singer/Songwriters of the 1970s	p. 128
Financing the Counterrevolution	p. 148
The Battle Over Policies and Politics
The White Ethnic Strategy	p. 171
The Conservative Struggle and the Energy Crisis	p. 193
Turnabout Years: Public Sector Unionism and the Fiscal Crisis	p. 210
Detente and Its Discontents	p. 227
Carter's Nicaragua and Other Democratic Quagmires	p. 246
Conservatives, Carter, and the Politics of National Security	p. 265
Epilogue	p. 289
Notes	p. 295
List of Contributors	p. 349
Index	p. 351
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