30

=Chapter 30: The Affluent Society (1950s)=

** Main Ideas: **
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 * 1) The remarkable (if not "miraculous") postwar economic boom, and its impact on government spending, capital, and labor.
 * 2) The explosion of scientific and technological breakthroughs in the decades after World War I, particularly in the realms of medical research, computer electronics, military technology, and space exploration.
 * 3) The contours of the technological, consumer-oriented, and remarkably affluent society of the 1950s, and its shadow, consisting of a less privileged underclass and the existence of a small corps of aesthetic detractors.
 * 4) The origins of the civil-rights revolution for African-Americans, beginning with the Supreme Court's social desegregation decision of 1954.
 * 5) The business-oriented "dynamic conservatism" of President Dwight Eisenhower, which resisted most new reforms without significantly rolling back the activist government programs born in the 1930s.
 * 6) The foreign policy of Dwight Eisenhower, which continued to allow containment by building alliances, supporting anticommunist regimes, maintaining the arms race, and conducting limited interventions, but also showed an awareness of American limitations and resisted temptations for greater commitments.

** Handouts/Homework: **
While the United States appeared to be dominated by consensus and conformity in the 1950s, some Americans reacted against the status quo. Analyze the critiques of United States society made by TWO of the following: - Youth -Civil Rights Activists -Intellectuals (2006 Q5, AP 2006-7 Workshop materials anchor packet p 97)
 * FRQs:**

Compare and contrast the role of religion in society and politics in the1920s and the1950s. (AP Achiever, practice Q p455, advice p460)


 * Further Reading:** Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, //Origins of the Conservative Ascendancy: Barry Goldwater’s Early Senate Career and the De-legitimization of Organized Labor,// Journal of Amermican History, Vol. 95, No. 3, Dec 2008. Many historical narratives of the erosion of the New Deal liberal-regulatory order and the rise of the Right focus on post-1964 racial and cultural tensions. In contrast, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer traces Barry Goldwater’s early political career in the 1950s, in Arizona and in the U.S. Senate, to understand how he helped reclaim for American conservatism a language of freedom, individualism, and security that Progressives, New Dealers, and trade unionists had monopolized for almost two generations. He introduced into mainstream politics the idea that many routine, heretofore legal trade union activities were corrupt, dangerous, and un-American. As a result of his prominent role in the 1957–1958 McClellan “Rackets” committee hearings, Goldwater not only won a national following but also helped conservatives establish important footholds in the camp of postwar liberalism.