Andrea Meibos
American Heritage Honors
November 22, 1997

Mastery and Liberty in the 50s and 60s

After World War II, the United States was acknowledged, at home and abroad, as a world power to be reckoned with. Thus during the 1950's Americans' faith in their unshakable country grew, only to be shattered by the fragmenting events of the 1960's. Americans' conception of liberty also changed as their perception of the US and citizens' role in government changed.

The 1950s was an era of increasing executive power, confidence, and interest group pluralism. Both presidents Truman and Eisenhower continued the New Deal emergency presidential powers. Because Republicans no longer objected to New Deal practices, instead only pushing to make them more efficient, both these presidents, though one Democrat and the other Republican, continued in the New Deal procedural republic trend. The United States' undisputable power and economic prosperity due to Keynesian and military spending created suburbs and a sort of consumerist utopia for middle and upper class Americans. At the same time, however, interest group pluralism became an even stronger force in American government. By this method, democracy was based not on a system of shared beliefs, as in a traditional democracy, but instead on many factions adjusting government by their selfish interests. This was accomplished partly by the delegation of legislative power to the executive bureaucracy, so policy did not have to be created by law, but by administrative actions. The exponentially increasing executive power and the idealistic, materialistic philosophy of the 1950's paved the way for the disillusionment and fragmentation of the 1960's.

The executive power that was so prevalent in the 1950s began to deteriorate with the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson, while the Supreme Court acted as a decentralizing influence on the administrative state. Ironically, it was the very executive agencies themselves that caused the fragmentation and loss of presidential power. The many "iron triangles," wherein a bureaucratic agency regulates an interest group based on legislative committee and interest group opinion, soon grew so big the president was unable to directly control them. The Supreme Court in this era also acted to increase civil rights and promote decentralization, as the governments' right to control obscenity and privacy was slowly undermined. With Kennedy's assassination and the rise of violent civil rights and anti-war protests, the loss of control continued on its downhill slope. This uncontrollable snowball effect led to the shifting view of individualistic freedom in America.

The rise of the New Left in 1968, caused by disappointment with the hypocritical 50's idealism, brought a new dimension to U.S. politics. The Vietnam War and the civil rights movement of the time gave a restless generation of youth an outlet on which to focus their discontent. With so much consumer success, it lost its appeal, and youth began to look elsewhere for happiness. They professed to find this joy in unrestrained "love" and brotherhood, chemicals, rebellion against the "system", and unbridled creativity. While Haydn served as a voice for this generation and its many questions, he did not provide a practical solution for America's moral corruption, calling only for more interdependence, authenticity, and participatory democracy. Marcuse's suggestion to liberate people from themselves by drugs and rejecting the system was not much more pragmatic. Politicians, however, took these claims seriously, incorporating them into the Democratic party and causing such programs as Johnson's war on poverty and the endeavor to create a Great Society. This liberation, more individualistic in that the individual was freed from any transcendent good, yet less individualistic in its embracing of interdependence and social compassion, clearly changed politics and American values for future generations.

The Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's is still more evidence of American discontent and the unraveling of state power. African Americans during World War II enjoyed some advances in civil rights as they were able to obtain more advanced jobs due to the decrease in laborers, although their petition to the UN was ineffective. There were then two basic civil rights movements: the black separatist, violent, revolutionary ideals of leaders like Malcolm X; and the cooperative, step-by-step, moral efforts of those like Martin Luther King Jr. The final result was the Civil Rights Act, the main effect of which was to entitle African Americans to public services between states, like restaurants, hotels, and stores, though it also prohibited private employment discrimination and government discrimination. Later, the Supreme Court interpreted this to support the disparate-impact theory, which states that policies or actions cannot have discriminating results, leading to affirmative action laws which are just now being nullified. The constitutional significance of the Civil Rights movement was a reinforcement of the federal government as it imposed its standards on the local level, yet at the same time it enlarged the bureaucracy leading to the loss of control experienced by Johnson.

The gain and then loss of the sense of mastery in the American people led to the disillusioned radical movement of the 60's, and also to a redefining of equality, individualism, and freedom.

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