The New Conservatism and the Fate of the Great Society

The Great Society and Its Opponents.

Except for the Vietnam War, no other political issue left over from the 1960s was as controversial as the Great Society. The New Deal and the liberal social legislation that followed World War II had elevated millions of working-class Americans into the ranks of the middle class. In the 1960s politicians such as Johnson, Humphrey, and McGovern attempted to use similar government-sponsored programs (often called the Great Society for what they were trying to achieve) to elevate the living conditions of a new group of poor Americans. In the 1960s perhaps 20 percent of Americans remained in poverty. Through educational and legal assistance, through job-training programs and expanded welfare benefits, supporters of the Great Society hoped to bring poor people into the middle class. Even though the Great Society benefited poor whites, to many middle-class white Americans it appeared the government...

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