Fourth marking period
april sgo click here
That 70's decade
THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT In some ways, though, 1960s liberalism continued to flourish. For example, the crusade to protect the environment from all sorts of assaults–toxic industrial waste in places like Love Canal, New York; dangerous meltdowns at nuclear power plants such as the one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania; highways through city neighborhoods–really took off during the 1970s. Americans celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970, and Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act that same year. The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act followed two years later. The oil crisis of the late 1970s drew further attention to the issue of conservation. By then, environmentalism was so mainstream that the U.S. Forest Service’s Woodsy Owl interrupted Saturday morning cartoons to remind kids to “Give a Hoot; Don’t Pollute.”FIGHTING FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS During the 1970s, many groups of Americans continued to fight for expanded social and political rights. In 1972, after years of campaigning by feminists, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, which reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It seemed that the Amendment would pass easily. Twenty-two of the necessary 38 states ratified it right away, and the remaining states seemed close behind. However, the ERA alarmed many conservative activists, who feared that it would undermine traditional gender roles. These activists mobilized against the Amendment and managed to defeat it. In 1977, Indiana became the 35th–and last–state to ratify the ERA.
Disappointments like these encouraged many women’s rights activists to turn away from politics. They began to build feminist communities and organizations of their own: art galleries and bookstores, consciousness-raising groups, daycare and women’s health collectives (such as the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, which published “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in 1973), rape crisis centers and abortion clinics.
THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT Even though very few people continued to support the war in Indochina, President Nixon feared that a retreat would make the United States look weak. As a result, instead of ending the war, Nixon and his aides devised ways to make it more palatable, such as limiting the draft and shifting the burden of combat onto South Vietnamese soldiers.
This policy seemed to work at the beginning of Nixon’s term in office. When the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970, however, hundreds of thousands of protestors clogged city streets and shut down college campuses. On May 4, National Guardsmen shot four student demonstrators at an antiwar rally at Kent State University in Ohio. Ten days later, police officers killed two black student protestors at Mississippi’s Jackson State University. Members of Congress tried to limit the president’s power by revoking the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the use of military force in Southeast Asia, but Nixon simply ignored them. Even after The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which called the government’s justifications for war into question, the bloody and inconclusive conflict continued. American troops did not leave the region until 1973.
THE WATERGATE SCANDAL As his term in office wore on, President Nixon grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. Though he won reelection by a landslide in 1972, he resented any challenge to his authority and approved of attempts to discredit those who opposed him. In June 1972, police found five burglars from Nixon’s own Committee to Re-Elect the President in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate office building. Soon, they found that Nixon himself was involved in the crime: He had demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation stop investigating the break-in and told his aides to cover up the scandal.
In April 1974, a Congressional committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies and defying the authority of Congress. Before Congress could impeach him, however, President Nixon announced that he would resign. Gerald Ford took over his office, and–to the distaste of many Americans–pardoned Nixon right away.
After Watergate, many people withdrew from politics altogether. They turned instead to pop culture–easy to do in such a trend-laden, fad-happy decade. They listened to 8-track tapes of Jackson Browne, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and Marvin Gaye. They made latch-hook rugs and macramé, took up racquetball and yoga, read “I’m OK, You’re OK” and “The Joy of Sex,” went to wife-swapping parties and smoked even more pot than they had in the 1960s. In general, by the end of the decade, many young people were using their hard-fought freedom to simply do as they pleased: to wear what they wanted, to grow their hair long, to have sex, to do drugs. Their liberation, in other words, was intensely personal.
(The 1970's Facts and Summary.History .com. http://www.history.com/topics/1970s.web)
Disappointments like these encouraged many women’s rights activists to turn away from politics. They began to build feminist communities and organizations of their own: art galleries and bookstores, consciousness-raising groups, daycare and women’s health collectives (such as the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, which published “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in 1973), rape crisis centers and abortion clinics.
THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT Even though very few people continued to support the war in Indochina, President Nixon feared that a retreat would make the United States look weak. As a result, instead of ending the war, Nixon and his aides devised ways to make it more palatable, such as limiting the draft and shifting the burden of combat onto South Vietnamese soldiers.
This policy seemed to work at the beginning of Nixon’s term in office. When the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970, however, hundreds of thousands of protestors clogged city streets and shut down college campuses. On May 4, National Guardsmen shot four student demonstrators at an antiwar rally at Kent State University in Ohio. Ten days later, police officers killed two black student protestors at Mississippi’s Jackson State University. Members of Congress tried to limit the president’s power by revoking the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the use of military force in Southeast Asia, but Nixon simply ignored them. Even after The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which called the government’s justifications for war into question, the bloody and inconclusive conflict continued. American troops did not leave the region until 1973.
THE WATERGATE SCANDAL As his term in office wore on, President Nixon grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. Though he won reelection by a landslide in 1972, he resented any challenge to his authority and approved of attempts to discredit those who opposed him. In June 1972, police found five burglars from Nixon’s own Committee to Re-Elect the President in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate office building. Soon, they found that Nixon himself was involved in the crime: He had demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation stop investigating the break-in and told his aides to cover up the scandal.
In April 1974, a Congressional committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies and defying the authority of Congress. Before Congress could impeach him, however, President Nixon announced that he would resign. Gerald Ford took over his office, and–to the distaste of many Americans–pardoned Nixon right away.
After Watergate, many people withdrew from politics altogether. They turned instead to pop culture–easy to do in such a trend-laden, fad-happy decade. They listened to 8-track tapes of Jackson Browne, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and Marvin Gaye. They made latch-hook rugs and macramé, took up racquetball and yoga, read “I’m OK, You’re OK” and “The Joy of Sex,” went to wife-swapping parties and smoked even more pot than they had in the 1960s. In general, by the end of the decade, many young people were using their hard-fought freedom to simply do as they pleased: to wear what they wanted, to grow their hair long, to have sex, to do drugs. Their liberation, in other words, was intensely personal.
(The 1970's Facts and Summary.History .com. http://www.history.com/topics/1970s.web)
Nixon: not the worst guy
Domestic Policy
- In 1973, President Nixon ended the draft, moving the United States military to an all-volunteer force.
- Responding to rising concern over conservation and pollution, President Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency, and later oversaw passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Mammal Marine Protection Act.
- By appointing 4 Supreme Court justices; Chief Justice Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and William Rehnquist, who later became Chief Justice, President Nixon ushered in an era of judicial restraint.
- Dedicated a $100 million to begin the War on Cancer, a project that created national cancer centers and antidotes to the deadly disease.
- Signed Title IX in 1972, preventing gender bias at colleges and universities receiving federal aid, opening the door for women in collegiate sports.
- President Nixon initiated and oversaw the peaceful desegregation of southern schools.
- Welcomed the astronauts of Apollo XI safely home from the moon, eventually overseeing every successful moon landing.
- President Nixon was a great proponent of the 26th Amendment, extending the right to vote to 18-20 year olds, lowering the voter age from 21.
- President Nixon effectively broke the back of organized crime, authorizing joint work between the FBI and Special Task Forces, resulting in over 2,500 convictions by 1973.
- President Nixon ended the policy of forced assimilation of American Indians, returned sacred lands, and became the first American President to give them the right to tribal self-determination.
- President Nixon participated in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with Soviet Secretary General Brezhnev in 1972 as part of the effort to temper the Cold War through diplomatic détente.
- Signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, helping to calm U.S.-Soviet tensions by curtailing the threat of nuclear weapons between the world’s two superpowers.
- President Nixon was the first President to visit the People’s Republic of China, where he issued the Shanghai Communiqué, announcing a desire for open, normalized relations. The diplomatic tour de force brought more than a billion people out of isolation.
- Signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
- Announced a groundbreaking foreign policy doctrine in 1969 that called for the United States to act within its national interest and keep all existing treaty commitments with its allies.
- Established a new relationship with the Middle East, eliminating Soviet dominance in the region and paving the way toward regional peace.
- Brought home the POWs from Vietnam, and hosted the largest reception in White House history in their honor.
- Initiated Project Independence in reaction to the oil embargo of 1973, which set a timetable to end reliance on foreign oil by 1980.
- In 1970, President Nixon avoided a second Cuban Missile Crisis involving a Soviet submarine base by adhering to his policy of hard-headed détente, an active rather than passive form of diplomacy.
- Supported Israel with massive aid in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which Prime Minister Golda Meir later said saved her country.
Movie: All the presidents men
the 80's : the reagan decade
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Ronald Reagan won the U.S. presidency in 1980, at the end of a decade of humiliation and frustration for the American people. Using his affable personality as a potent political weapon, Reagan helped to restore confidence in the country's future and went on to convert millions of Americans to his conservative political ideology. During the 1980s, Reagan oversaw a sustained economic recovery, driven primarily by one of the great bull markets of all time on Wall Street. Soaring profits in the stock market minted millionaires by the thousands, lending the Reagan era a certain gold-rush aura as more people attained spectacular wealth than ever before in American history. Looking beyond America's borders, the 1980s brought first heightened tension and then unexpected victory in the decades-old Cold War with the Soviet Union; the peaceful collapse of the global Communist bloc Reagan once denounced as an "Evil Empire" stood as a monumental triumph in American foreign policy.
Economic and diplomatic successes notwithstanding, Reagan's presidency still had its flaws—a widening gulf between the rich and ordinary working Americans, some serious foreign-policy blunders, and worsening race relations. Despite these limitations, Reagan left office with high approval ratings and today many Americans rank him among the greatest presidents ever. Perhaps most importantly, Reagan's powerful ideology continues to shape the contours of American politics to the present day. There is a strong case to be made that we're all still living in the Age of Reagan today.
Economic and diplomatic successes notwithstanding, Reagan's presidency still had its flaws—a widening gulf between the rich and ordinary working Americans, some serious foreign-policy blunders, and worsening race relations. Despite these limitations, Reagan left office with high approval ratings and today many Americans rank him among the greatest presidents ever. Perhaps most importantly, Reagan's powerful ideology continues to shape the contours of American politics to the present day. There is a strong case to be made that we're all still living in the Age of Reagan today.
the 90's and The clinton administration
Bush, 911 and the patriot act
LAST week of school!!!
have a great summer!
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle
