Chapter in Perspective

This chapter brings the story close to the present, yet is linked in innumerable ways, as we now realize, to all that came before it. The trends discussed so far, the rise of the United States as an industrial nation and as an international power, the growth of a consumer-driven economy, the debate over the meaning of equality and freedom, the role of government in regulating the economy and maintaining the welfare of its citizens, all remained central to the nation at the end of the twentieth century. More narrowly, this chapter reveals a reaction to the events of the Vietnam Era and the Age of Limits. Ronald Reagan was one of the most visible leaders of the reaction: He wanted to rein in the programs of the Great Society and recommit the United States to an interventionist foreign policy. Further, he and his advisers believed that less government, not more, would reverse the economic slide that weakened the nation in the 1970s. Conservatives generally objected to the liberal bias they saw in the Courts, the media, and the schools. These became areas of conflict that Bill Clinton inherited after his victory in 1992.