08 Aug Discuss the rise of the religious right and the so-called culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s
Please read the Week 8 resources and participate in this discussion.
- Describe the rise and decline of the American middle class over the past 50 years. In what ways did the War on Poverty and Great Society efforts of the 1960s overshadow the signposts that the easy prosperity of the post-WWII period was at an end? Did the successes and/or failures of that prosperous times get overblown as the stagflation of the 1970s and 1980s set in? Or, were there other trends (OPEC oil crises of the 1970s, de-industrialization in the Rust Belt, White flight to suburbs, the rise of Japan, Germany and the EU, and eventually, China, etc.) that spelled the end of Pax Americana from roughly 1973 on?
- Discuss the rise of the religious right and the so-called culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Is the US still dealing with the consequences of the infusion of evangelical ideas in its politics, and if so, in what ways? Is the US still fighting a so-called culture war against marginalized people, and if so, in what ways?
- What is the most important lesson that you learned in studying US history in this course, good, bad, and/or ugly? What will you take with you from studying this history?
