National Identity by 1980
The three threads, measured
- The United States responded to an uncertain and unstable postwar world by asserting and working to maintain a position of global leadership, with far-reaching domestic and international consequences.
- New movements for civil rights and liberal efforts to expand the role of government generated a range of political and cultural responses.
- Postwar economic and demographic changes had far-reaching consequences for American society, politics, and culture.
Identity was reshaped most in...
Five movements and three branches of federal action.
Leadership, argued over throughout
- Containment held from 8.2 to 8.8 with four aims and bipartisan support, and it produced Korea, Vietnam and the arms debate.
- Change: Vietnam ended the near-absence of domestic opposition, and executive power became a constitutional question.
- Continuity: the country stayed in the alliances and institutions it built, unlike 7.5's refusal in 1919.
Select all the continuities this lesson names.
The Cold War does not end in this unit.
Rights, expanded and contested
- Legal and political successes in ending segregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and court decisions expanding civil rights and individual liberties.
- Change: five movements demanding equality, and a federal government that answered through all three branches.
- Continuity: progress toward racial equality was slow, continuing resistance persisted, and the clashes of 8.14 were unresolved by 1980.
Leadership, rights, or affluence?
Sort each development by 1980.
The clearest change in the leadership thread is that Vietnam...
The policy was continuous; the reaction was not.
"Extent" demands a judgement with a limit, and the threads rank differently. Identity was reshaped most in who counts as a full citizen — five movements and three branches of federal action — and least in what government is trusted to do, since confidence declined in the 1970s after a high point in the mid-1960s.
Unlike 1919, after 1945 the country...
7.5's Senate had refused the Treaty and the League.
Affluence, and what it did not reach
- Growth from a burgeoning private sector, federal spending, the baby boom, and technological developments, suburbs, and a Sun Belt that reshaped politics.
- Change: a majority in suburbs and the South and West, immigration from around the world after 1965.
- Continuity: despite an overall affluence... poverty persisted, and confidence in government to fix it fell in the 1970s.
Identity was reshaped least in what government is ____ to do.
Confidence declined in the 1970s after a mid-1960s high point.
'The extent to which' once more
- The objective is the extent to which the events of the period from 1945 to 1980 reshaped national identity.
- Extent demands a judgement with a limit: identity was reshaped most in who counts as a full citizen, least in what government is trusted to do.
- Rank the three threads, name a continuity in each, and the answer is complete.
A country can change who is legally included and still lose faith in the institution that included them. Both happened in the same thirty-five years, and reporting only one of them describes half a period.
By 1980, global leadership had held through containment's four aims while Vietnam ended the near-absence of domestic opposition; rights had expanded through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, court decisions and five movements, though progress toward racial equality was slow and continuing resistance persisted; and affluence had produced suburbs, the Sun Belt and immigration from around the world, while poverty persisted and public confidence and trust in government... declined in the 1970s. The extent: greatest in who counts as a citizen, least in what government is trusted to do.