I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on the part of the “straights” to reassert the primacy of their worldview. The threat felt by those in power by the rise of the civil rights, anti-war and nascent environmentalist movement was a direct threat to business as usual. So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan, we have adopted a worldview that for decades has told us that happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success and conventional career paths.
Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely.
> So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success
I don't see a coherent argument here.
You can ignore Thatcher, since she was the head of a bankrupted, hapless country (Britain had food rationing for 9 years after WW2.)
Reagan was one of the most powerful leaders in world history. He wanted a strong America, both domestically and overseas. Can't really argue with that. We don't like people who utter words like "Evil Empire" [see Prof. Victor Davis Hanson], but somebody has to say it. Just be glad Reagan was on our side.
She became Prime Minister in 1979. Britain was probably over the nine years of food rationing by that time... 34 years after the war ended...
Re. gays, Mr. Reagan signed into law federal outlays of $5.73 billion for AIDS research and treatment and he opposed California Proposition 6, which would have fired public-school teachers for advocating homosexuality.
Re. blacks, his administration did push hard for tough-on-crime measures — measures which were supported by black groups in the 80s. They may or may not have been wise in retrospect, but they were a well-intended attempt to support black communities and black people.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/18/us/reagan-defends-financi...
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/reagan-administratio...
For example, have a listen to his 1983 Address to the Nation.
Be careful, also, to view him in context of the era he was active in. It's tempting to judge historical figures' actions in a modern context, but that dramatically alters the nature of what they did and why.
The peace-love-dope crowd were a reaction to our defense of South Vietnam. Once North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace and successfully invaded South Vietnam, there was no need anymore to react — we weren't defending anyone at that point. I imagine that there might also have been some embarrassed reactions to the boat people, the re-education camps and the mass murder which followed the invasion — after all those years of hailing Ho Chi Minh as the George Washington of Vietnam and pretending that the Viet Cong were freedom fighters, it was probably a bit embarrassing to see that they were just your normal run-of-the-mill dictator and his thugs.
Also, I think a lot of the peace-love-dope crowd just grew up and got jobs.
This is a peculiar comment to make under an article about a member of the 'peace-love-dope crowd' who had a job which he performed at an elite level.
Maybe it was naive but It's a shame we don't have that same forward looking feeling today.