Rightward Bound

by Schulman, Bruce J.

• ISBN13: 9780674027572
• ISBN10: 0674027574
• Format: Hardcover
• 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

Introduction

Mobilizing the Movement

Inventing Family Values

The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism

Make Payroll, Not War

Gender and America's Right Turn

Civil Rights and the Religious Right

The Decade of the Neighborhood

Cultural Politics and the Singer/Songwriters of the 1970s

Financing the Counterrevolution

The Battle over Policies and Politics

The White Ethnic Strategy

The Conservative Struggle and the Energy Crisis

Turnabout Years: Public Sector Unionism and the Fiscal Crisis

Detente and Its Discontents

Carter's Nicaragua and Other Democratic Quagmires

Conservatives, Carter, and the Politics of National Security

Epilogue

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

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