The Conservative Turn
IntroducedA reported diagnosis is not the historian's verdict
- A source reports that conservatives perceived moral and cultural decline in the 1960s. A student paraphrases this as objective proof that society declined.
- Keep the attribution: the perception helps explain conservative mobilisation. It does not require the historian to endorse that evaluation.
Conservatives challenged on four fronts
- In the 1960s, conservatives challenged liberal laws and court decisions and perceived moral and cultural decline, seeking to limit the role of the federal government and enact more assertive foreign policies. In the 1960s — the challenge is contemporaneous with 8.9's high point, not a later reaction to its failure.
- Perceived is careful: the CED reports the conservative diagnosis of moral and cultural decline rather than confirming it.
The CED dates the conservative challenge to...
Contemporaneous with liberalism's high point.
Confidence in government fell
- Public confidence and trust in government's ability to solve social and economic problems declined in the 1970s in the wake of economic challenges, political scandals, and foreign policy crises. Three causes: economic challenges, political scandals, and foreign policy crises — their political interpretations could also have ideological dimensions.
- 8.9's liberalism rested on a firm belief in the efficacy of government power; this sentence describes declining confidence, without proving that confidence vanished for everyone.
Select all three causes of declining confidence in government.
The three listed pressures help explain declining confidence. Their interpretations may also involve ideology; they are not inherently ideology-free.
Four fields of clash
- The 1970s saw growing clashes between conservatives and liberals over social and cultural issues, the power of the federal government, race, and movements for greater individual rights. Four fields, and they are the subjects of 8.10 through 8.13 — the clashes are about the period's own developments.
- So the conservative turn is not a separate story; it is the response 8.1's second thread promised.
Assemble the conservative turn
Three policies rest on one economic claim, and two of them pull against each other on the deficit.
Select all four fields of clash in the 1970s.
They are the subjects of 8.10 through 8.13.
The conservative challenge is contemporaneous with liberalism's high point, not a later reaction to failure. The CED dates it in the 1960s — and 8.1's second thread had already promised that movements and liberal efforts would generate a range of political and cultural responses.
'Perceived moral and cultural decline' shows the CED is...
The same careful register as 7.4's 'what they saw as'.
Religious growth and political activism
- The rapid and substantial growth of evangelical Christian churches and organisations was accompanied by greater political and social activism on the part of religious conservatives. Accompanied by links growth and activism without making one cause the other.
- Europe's 9.14 recorded religion continuing to play a role despite... modern secularism; here the CED records growth, which is a stronger claim.
'Accompanied by' links evangelical growth and activism...
A careful linking verb.
Two objectives, one turn
- 8.14 carries continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government and the effects of the growth of religious movements. Federal role: challenged in the 1960s, undermined by declining confidence in the 1970s, contested across four fields.
- Religion: evangelical growth accompanied by political and social activism, which supplied the turn with organisation.
A movement at its most confident is also at its most visible, and visibility is what an opposition needs to organise against. The high point and the challenge arrive together for the same reason.
Carry the reasoning to a new case
- The 1960s challenge preceded the 1970s loss of confidence associated with economic problems, scandals and foreign-policy crises.
- Those crises could be interpreted ideologically; do not label them inherently free of ideology.
Order the two dated developments and the appropriate interpretive caution.
Chronology prevents making the 1970s events the beginning of a challenge already visible in the 1960s.
In the 1960s, conservatives challenged liberal laws and court decisions and perceived moral and cultural decline, seeking to limit the role of the federal government and enact more assertive foreign policies. Public confidence and trust in government's ability to solve social and economic problems declined in the 1970s in the wake of economic challenges, political scandals, and foreign policy crises, and the 1970s saw growing clashes... over social and cultural issues, the power of the federal government, race, and movements for greater individual rights. The rapid and substantial growth of evangelical Christian churches and organisations was accompanied by greater political and social activism on the part of religious conservatives.