In the mid fifties, "generosity was voted the most conspicuous American characteristic, followed by friendliness, understanding, piety, love of freedom, and progressivism. The American faults listed were petty: shallowness, egotism, extravagance, preoccupation with money, and selfishness." William Manchester in "The Glory and the Dream" quoting George Gallup's Institute of public opinion.
The past is often a fantasy, it seems human nature only remembers what it desires or dislikes about the past, reality is far away. The sixties brought an incredible reaction and FDR and LBJ's attempts to create a more just and fair society bothered the well heeled. Add in the another stupid war Vietnam and you have a requirement for a scapegoat. Find a scapegoat and you establish focus. History is full of this stuff. Another change was the growth of the 'Contented' class as Galbraith names them. Once you have yours the others don't count and the past confirms it.
"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilised underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment
Judt's book is insightful. "For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land' [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/1594202761/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: Ill Fares the Land (9781594202766): Tony Judt: Books[/ame]
The past is often a fantasy, it seems human nature only remembers what it desires or dislikes about the past, reality is far away. The sixties brought an incredible reaction and FDR and LBJ's attempts to create a more just and fair society bothered the well heeled. Add in the another stupid war Vietnam and you have a requirement for a scapegoat. Find a scapegoat and you establish focus. History is full of this stuff. Another change was the growth of the 'Contented' class as Galbraith names them. Once you have yours the others don't count and the past confirms it.
"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilised underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment
Judt's book is insightful. "For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land' [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/1594202761/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: Ill Fares the Land (9781594202766): Tony Judt: Books[/ame]