The Rise of Conservatism: Crash Course US History #41

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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.

Transcript Provided by YouTube:

00:00
Episode 41: Rise of Conservatism
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Hi, Im John Green, this is CrashCourse U.S. history and today were going toNixon?were
00:05
going to talk about the rise of conservatism. So Alabama, where I went to high school, is
00:09
a pretty conservative state and reliably sends Republicans to Washington. Like, both of its
00:14
Senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, are Republicans. But did you know that Richard
00:19
Shelby used to be a Democrat, just like basically all of Alabamas Senators since reconstruction?
00:25
And this shift from Democrat to Republican throughout the South is the result of the
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rise in conservative politics in the 1960s and 1970s that we are going to talk about
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today. And along the way, we get to put Richard Nixons head in a jar.
00:37
Stan just informed me that we dont actually get to put Richard Nixons head in a jar.
00:40
Its just a Futurama joke. And now Im sad.
00:42
So, youll remember from our last episode that we learned that not everyone in the 1960s
00:46
was a psychedelic rock-listening, war-protesting hippie. In fact, there was a strong undercurrent
00:51
of conservative thinking that ran throughout the 1960s, even among young people.
00:55
And one aspect of this was the rise of free market ideology and libertarianism. Like,
00:59
since the 1950s, a majority of Americans had broadly agreed that free enterprise
01:04
was a good thing and should be encouraged both in the U.S. and abroad.
01:08
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, and also in deep space where no man has gone before?
01:11
No, MFTP. Youre thinking of the Starship Enterprise, not free enterprise.
01:15
And anyway, Me From The Past, have you ever seen a more aggressively communist television
01:19
program than The Neutral Zone from Star Trek: The Next Generations first season?
01:23
I dont think so. intro
01:28
Alright so, in the 1950s a growing number of libertarians argued that unregulated capitalism
01:37
and individual autonomy were the essence of American freedom. And although they were staunchly
01:42
anti-communist, their real target was the regulatory state that had been created by
01:46
the New Deal. You know, social security, and not being allowed to, you know, choose how
01:50
many pigs you kill, etc. Other conservatives werent libertarians
01:53
at all but moral conservatives who were okay with the rules that enforced traditional notions
01:58
of family and morality. Even if that seemed like, you know, an oppressive government.
02:02
For them virtue was the essence of America. But both of these strands of conservatism
02:07
were very hostile toward communism and also to the idea of big government.
02:11
And its worth noting that since World War I, the size and scope of the federal government
02:15
had increased dramatically. And hostility toward the idea of big government
02:19
remains the signal feature of contemporary conservatism. Although very few people actually
02:24
argue for shrinking the government. Because, you know, that would be very unpopular. People
02:28
like Medicare. But it was faith in the free market that infused
02:31
the ideology of the most vocal young conservatives in the 1960s.
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They didnt receive nearly as much press as their liberal counterparts but these young
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conservatives played a pivotal role in reshaping the Republican Party, especially in the election
02:43
of 1964. The 1964 presidential election was important
02:47
in American history precisely because it was so incredibly uncompetitive.
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I mean, Lyndon Johnson was carrying the torch of a wildly popular American president who
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had been assassinated a few months before. He was never going to lose.
03:01
And indeed he didnt. The republican candidate, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, was demolished
03:06
by LBJ. But the mere fact of Goldwaters nomination
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was a huge conservative victory. I mean, he beat out liberal Republican New York Governor
03:13
Nelson Rockefeller. And yes, there were liberal Republicans.
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Goldwater demanded a harder line in the Cold War, even suggesting that nuclear war might
03:20
be an option in the fight against communism. And he lambasted the New Deal liberal welfare
03:25
state for destroying American initiative and individual liberty. I mean, why bother working
03:30
when you could just enjoy life on the dole? I mean, unemployment insurance allowed anyone
03:34
in America to become a hundredaire. But it was his stance on the Cold War that
03:38
doomed his candidacy. In his acceptance speech, Goldwater famously declared, Extremism
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in the defense of liberty is no vice. Which made it really easy for Johnson to paint
03:47
Goldwater as an extremist. In the famous Daisy advertisement, Johnsons
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supporters countered Goldwaters campaign slogan of in your heart, you know hes
03:55
right with but in your guts you know hes nuts.
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So in the end, Goldwater received a paltry 27 million votes to Johnsons 43 million,
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and Democrats racked up huge majorities in both houses of Congress. This hides, however,
04:09
the significance of the election. Five of the six states that Goldwater carried were
04:13
in the Deep South, which had been reliably democratic, known as the Solid South,
04:19
in fact. Now, its too simple to say that race alone
04:21
led to the shift from Democratic to the Republican party in the South because Goldwater didnt
04:25
really talk much about race. But the Democrats, especially under LBJ, became
04:29
the party associated with defending civil rights and ending segregation, and that definitely
04:35
played a role in white southerners abandoning the Democrats, as was demonstrated even more
04:40
clearly in the 1968 election. The election of 1968 was a real cluster-Calhoun,
04:44
I mean, there were riots and there was also the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, who was
04:49
very unpopular with the anti-war movement, and also was named Hubert Humphrey, and thats
04:54
just what happened with the Democrats. But, lost in that picture was the Republican
04:58
nominee, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was one of the few candidates in American history
05:02
to come back and win the presidency after losing in a previous election. Howd he
05:06
do it? Well, it probably wasnt his charm, but
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it might have been his patience. Nixon was famous for his ability to sit and wait in
05:15
poker games. It made him very successful during his tour of duty in the South Pacific. In
05:19
fact, he earned the nickname Old Iron Butt. Plus, he was anti-communist, but didnt
05:23
talk a lot about nuking people. And the clincher was probably that he was from California,
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which by the late 1960s was becoming the most populous state in the nation.
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Nixon won the election, campaigning as the candidate of the silent majority of
05:34
Americans who werent anti-war protesters, and who didnt admire free love or the communal
05:40
ideals of hippies. And who were alarmed at the rights that the
05:43
Supreme Court seemed to be expanding, especially for criminals.
05:47
This silent majority felt that the rights revolution had gone too far. I mean, they
05:51
were concerned about the breakdown in traditional values and in law and order. Stop me if any
05:55
of this sounds familiar. Nixon also promised to be tough on crime,
05:58
which was coded language to whites in the south that he wouldnt support civil rights
06:02
protests. The equation of crime with African Americans has a long and sordid history in
06:07
the United States, and Nixon played it up following a Southern strategy to further
06:11
draw white Democrats who favored segregation into the Republican ranks.
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Now, Nixon only won 43% of the vote, but if youve paid attention to American history,
06:20
you know that you aint gotta win a majority to be the president.
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He was denied that majority primarily by Alabama Governor George Wallace, who was running on
06:27
a pro-segregation ticket and won 13% of the vote.
06:30
So 56% of American voters chose candidates who were either explicitly or quietly against
06:35
civil rights. Conservatives who voted for Nixon hoping he
06:38
would roll back the New Deal were disappointed. I mean, in some ways the Nixon domestic agenda
06:43
was just a continuation of LBJs Great Society. This was partly because Congress was still
06:47
in the hands of Democrats, but also Nixon didnt push for conservative programs and
06:51
he didnt veto new initiatives. Because they were popular. And he liked to be popular.
06:56
So in fact, a number of big government liberal programs began under Nixon. I mean, the environmental
07:00
movement achieved success with the enactment of the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water
07:04
Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration
07:08
and the National Transportation Safety Board were created to make new regulations that
07:12
would protect worker safety and make cars safer.
07:15
Thats not government getting out of our lives, thats government getting into our
07:19
cars. Now, Nixon did abolish the Office of Economic
07:20
Opportunity, but he also indexed social security benefits to inflation and he proposed the
07:21
Family Assistance Plan that would guarantee a minimum income for all Americans.
07:22
And, the Nixon years saw some of the most aggressive affirmative action in American
07:23
history. LBJ had begun the process by requiring recipients of federal contracts to have specific
07:24
numbers of minority employees and timetables for increasing those numbers.
07:25
But Nixon expanded this with the Philadelphia plan, which required federal construction
07:26
projects to have minority employees. He ended up attacking this plan after realising that
07:27
it was wildly unpopular with trade unions, which had very few black members, but he had
07:28
proposed it. And when Nixon had the opportunity to nominate
07:29
a new Chief Justice to the Supreme Court after Earl Warren retired in 1969, his choice, Warren
07:30
Burger was supposed to be a supporter of small government and conservative ideals, but, just
07:31
like Nixon, he proved a disappointment in that regard.
07:33
Like, in Swan v. Charlotte-Mecklenbug Board of Education, the court upheld a lower court
07:38
ruling that required busing of students to achieve integration in Charlottes schools.
07:42
And then the Burger court made it easier for minorities to sue for employment discrimination,
07:47
especially with its ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. This upheld
07:52
affirmative action as a valid governmental interest, although it did strike down the
07:55
use of strict quotas in university admissions. Now, many conservatives didnt like these
07:59
affirmative action decisions, but one case above all others had a profound effect on
08:04
American politics: Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade established a womans right
08:08
to have an abortion in the first trimester of a pregnancy as well as a more limited right
08:13
as the pregnancy progressed. And that decision galvanized first Catholics and then Evangelical
08:19
Protestants. And that ties in nicely with another strand
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in American conservatism that developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Lets go to the ThoughtBubble.
08:26
Many Americans felt that traditional family values were deteriorating and looked to conservative
08:31
republican candidates to stop that slide. They were particularly alarmed by the continuing
08:35
success of the sexual revolution, as symbolized by Roe v. Wade and the increasing availability
08:41
of birth control. Statistics tend to back up the claims that
08:43
traditional family values were in decline in the 1970s. Like, the number of divorces
08:48
soared to over one million in 1975 exceeding the number of first time marriages. The birthrate
08:54
declined with women bearing 1.7 children during their lifetimes by 1976, less than half the
09:00
figure in 1957. Now, of course, many people would argue that the decline of these traditional
09:04
values allowed more freedom for women and for a lot of terrible marriages to end, but
09:09
thats neither here nor there. Some conservatives also complained about the
09:12
passage in 1972 of Title IX, which banned gender discrimination in higher education,
09:17
but many more expressed concern about the increasing number of women in the workforce.
09:21
Like, by 1980 40% of women with young children had been in the workforce, up from 20% in
09:27
1960. The backlash against increased opportunity
09:30
for women is most obviously seen in the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1974, although
09:35
it passed Congress easily in 1972. Opponents of the ERA, which rather innocuously declared
09:41
that equality of rights under the law could not be abridged on account of sex, argued
09:46
that the ERA would let men off the hook for providing for their wives and children, and
09:51
that working women would lead to the further breakdown of the family. Again, all the ERA
09:56
stated was that women and men would have equal rights under the laws of the United States.
10:01
But, anyway, some anti-ERA supporters, like Phyllis Schlafly claimed that free enterprise
10:05
was the greatest liberator of women because the purchase of new labor saving devices would
10:10
offer them genuine freedom in their traditional roles of wife and mother. Essentially, the
10:15
vacuum cleaner shall make you free. And those arguments were persuasive to enough people
10:19
that the ERA was not ratified in the required of the United States.
10:23
Thanks, ThoughtBubble. Sorry if I let my personal feelings get in the way on that one. Anyway,
10:27
Nixon didnt have much to do with the continuing sexual revolution; it would have continued
10:31
without him because, you know, skoodilypooping is popular.
10:34
But, he was successfully reelected in 1972, partly because his opponent was the democratic
10:39
Barry Goldwater, George McGovern. McGovern only carried one state and it wasnt
10:43
even his home state. It was Massachusetts. Of course.
10:47
But even though they couldnt possibly lose, Nixons campaign decided to cheat. In June
10:51
of 1972, people from Nixons campaign broke into McGoverns campaign office, possibly
10:57
to plant bugs. No, Stan, not those kinds of bugs. Yes. Those.
10:58
Now, we dont know if Nixon actually knew about the activities of the former employees
11:01
of the amazingly acronym-ed CREEP, that is the Committee for the Reelection of the President.
11:06
But this break in at the Watergate hotel eventually led to Nixon being the first and so far only
11:12
American president to resign. What we do know is this: Nixon was really
11:15
paranoid about his opponents, even the ones who appealed to 12% of American voters, especially
11:20
after Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971.
11:25
So, he drew up an enemies list and created a special investigative unit called the plumbers
11:30
whose job was to fix toilets. No, it was to stop leaks. That makes more sense.
11:34
Im sorry, Stan, its just by then the toilets in the White House were over 100 years
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old, I figured they might need some fixing, but apparently no. Leaking.
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Nixon also taped all of the conversations in the Oval Office and these tapes caused
11:41
a minor constitutional crisis. So, during the congressional investigation
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of Watergate, it became known that these tapes existed, so the special prosecutor demanded
11:43
copies. Nixon refused, claiming executive privilege,
11:44
and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in U.S. v. Nixon that he
11:45
had to turn them over. And this is important because it means that the president is not
11:46
above the law. So, what ultimately doomed Nixon was not the
11:47
break in itself, but the revelations that he covered it up by authorizing hush money
11:48
payments to keep the burglars silent and also instructing the FBI not to investigate the
11:53
crime. In August of 1974, the House Judiciary Committee
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recommended that articles of impeachment be drawn up against Nixon for conspiracy and
12:00
obstruction of justice. But the real crime, ultimately, was abuse of power, and theres
12:05
really no question about whether he was guilty of that. So, Nixon resigned.
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Aw man, I was thinking I was going to get away without a Mystery Document today. The
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rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document,
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and lately Im never wrong. Alright.
12:20
Today I am an inquisitor. I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate
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the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete,
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it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the
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subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. Aw. Im going to get shocked today.
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Is it Sam Ervin? Aw dang it! Gah! Apparently it was African American congresswoman
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from Texas, Barbara Jordan. Stan, that is much too hard.
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I think you were getting tired of me not being shocked, Stan, because its pretty strange
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to end an episode on conservatism with a quote from Barbara Jordan, whose election to Congress
13:02
has to be seen as a huge victory for liberalism. But I guess it is symbolic of the very things
13:06
that many conservatives found unsettling in the 1970s, including political and economic
13:10
success for African Americans and women, and the legislation that helped the marginalized.
13:15
I know that sounds very judgmental, but on the other hand, the federal government had
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become a huge part of every Americans life, maybe too huge.
13:22
And certainly conservatives werent wrong when they said that the founding fathers of
13:25
the U.S. would hardly recognize the nation that we had become by the 1970s.
13:28
In fact, Watergate was followed by a Senate investigation by the Church Committee, which
13:33
revealed that Nixon was hardly the first president to abuse his power.
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The government had spied on Americans throughout the Cold War and tried to disrupt the Civil
13:40
Rights movement. And the Church Commission, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Vietnam all
13:44
of these things revealed a government that truly was out of control and this undermined
13:49
a fundamental liberal belief that government is a good institution that is supposed to
13:54
solve problems and promote freedom. And for many Conservatives these scandals
13:58
sent a clear signal that government couldnt promote freedom and couldnt solve problems
14:02
and that the liberal government of the New Deal and the Great Society had to be stopped.
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Thanks for watching, Ill see you next week. Woah! Crash Course is made with the help of
14:12
all of these nice people and it exists because ofyour support on Subbable.com.
14:20
Subbable is a voluntary subscription service that allows you to support stuff you like
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monthly for the price of your choosing, so if you value Crash Course U.S. History and
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forever, for everyone, please check out Subbable. And I am slowly spinning, Im slowly spinning,
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Im slowly spinning. Thank you again for your support. Im coming back around. I
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can do this. And as we say in my hometown, dont forget to be awesome.


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