Did The 1970s Mark A Decisive Turn Towards Conservatism In America?

Did the 1970s mark a decisive turn towards Conservatism in America? - Example introduction.

On May 21st 1971, when Marvin Pentz Gay Jr asked the nation, What s Going On? in his eleventh studio album, he asked a question which has tormented historians ever since: what s going on in the 1970s? Surely, a decade of modern American life holds more for us than bad hair, bad music and bad attempts at integrating African Americans with Blaxploitation movies like Gordon Park s Shaft (1971)? Surely, Americans, sitting in an ever-lengthening gas-queue, didn t actually hold their breath until the Reagan Revolution of 1980? Surely, the death of the liberal-Great Society dream brought something more ideologically profound than Nixon s corruption, Ford s golfing and Jimmy Carter s encounter with a killer rabbit ? Surely, in opposition to Peter Carroll s It Seemed Like Nothing Happened (1982), something did happen. Indeed, as we will see, the 70s bore fruit to the practical, administrative birth of Modern Conservatism, as well as the intellectual and emotional framework in which the newborn was nurtured. In arguing for the decisive turn towards Conservatism of the 1970s, we cannot ignore the continuities which Gareth Davies, Simon Hall, Stephen Tuck and Joshua Zeitz have traced. In arguing for decisive turns, we can hardly miss the most visible, and very real, electoral turns of 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 that speak so directly to the rising tides of Conservatism, nor will we shield our eyes from the less glaring reflections of change: the death of Grand Expectations , the militarisation of America s Suburban Warriors , the mummification and entombment of New Deal America , and the culture of narcissism which underpinned this decisive turn towards Conservatism. In a pursuit of a single decisive turn, we must surely look to the near-sighted arms of lifeguard Ronald Reagan if we are to be carried across the threshold and complete the long story of Conservatism that culminates outrageous Republican dominance of the 1980 Presidential Election. The 1970s, therefore, was indeed more than a bad hair decade , and played host to some fundamental shifts in American cultural-political life, marking, by 1980, a crushing turn to Conservatism.