The Reagan Revolution

1
The Reagan Revolution

• Social Change and Foreign Policy

2
Study Guide Identifications

• Supply side economics/Reaganomics
• Carter Corollary
• Reagan Doctrine
• Operation Cyclone
• Camp David Accords 1978
• Feminization of Poverty
• New Right
• Religious Right
• Sandanistas vs. Contras/freedom fighters
• Renewed Cold war/Evil Empire
• Mikhail Gorbachev/End of Soviet Union
• Iran Contra Affair/Boland Amendments/NSC

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Study Guide Questions

• What was the legacy of the 1960s?
• What changes took place concerning identity and
  womens roles, or questions of womens roles?
• What Characterized the New Right?
• What was the Conservative Social Agenda?
• What was foreign policy under Reagan?

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Legacy of the 1960s Activism

• Came to characterize American political life
• Mass demonstrations - Protest advocacy tool.
• 1980s - Clamshell alliance
• Against a nuclear reactor
• Take Back the Night
• Protest sexual assault and violence
• 1995 Million Man March
• Campaign of social reconstruction in black
  communities
• Mass demonstrations - lost power to attract media

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Womens Roles

• Ideas of domesticity
• Reality much different
• Birth control pill - sexual behavior.
• Many women questioned gender based divisions in
  both public and private sectors.
• 1970s-80s activism
• Distribution of political power
• Feminization of poverty
• Womens self-sufficiency

6
Group Identity

• Increased emphasis on group identity as the basis
  for social activism grew  
• Cultural differences among Americans should be
  affirmed rather than feared, celebrated rather
  than simply tolerated.
• Battles against discrimination and for cultural
  pride continued
• African American
• American Indian
• Asian
• Mexican
• Homosexual Movements 

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Efforts to Reform American Foreign Policy

• Ford Jimmy Carter Administrations in the mid
  1970s
• Cost of Vietnam speed decline of U.S. as super
  power
• Salt I II treaties with Soviet Union
• Negotiate strategic arms control relative peace
• Carter promise of commitment to Human Rights
• Condemned policies that allowed the U.S. to
  support right wing monarch and military dictators
  in the name of anti-communism

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Carters Reform Efforts

• Reform CIA discourage intervention and covert
  action abroad
• Make the CIA act within the law, rather than
  above the law
• Temporary changes
• Camp David Accords
• 1978 terms for peace in the Middle East
• Negotiations between Israel, Egypt Palestine
• Anwar el-Sadat (Egypt), Prime Minister Menachem
  Begin (Israel), Arafat (PLO)
• Conflict since Israel established in 1948 by
  Balfour Declaration following World War II

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Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan Iran Under
Carter

• Negotiated return of Panama Canal Zone to Panama
  by 2000
• following independence movement or revolt
  against United States control
• 1979 Sandanista Movement overthrows dictator and
  U.S. ally Anastasio Somoza
• Plea for U.S. support denied by Carter

10
Afghanistan Under Carter Administration

• 1979 Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan
• Carter "The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is
  the greatest threat to peace since the Second
  World War".
• 30,000 troops sent to crush Islamic independence
  movement against Soviet influence and control
• Carter argued that soviet presence posed a grave
  threat to the free movement of Middle East oil

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Carter Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

• Affirmed right of the military force to protect
  the interests in the Persian Gulf
• Halted exports to Soviet Union
• Canceled U.S. participation in the Moscow
  Olympics
• Supported Afghanistan Resistance against soviet
  occupation
• In May 1985, the seven principal rebel
  organizations formed the Seven Party Mujahideen
  Alliance to coordinate their military operations
  against the Soviet army.
• Operation Cyclone CIA under Carter Reagan
  provided aid
• Armed the Afghan Mujahideen 1979 1989, 20
  billion
• Increased military spending

12
Iran Hostage Crisis

• November 4, 1979 Iranian fundamentalists seized
  the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 American
  employees hostage for 444 days.
• Pahlavi Royal family as the shah of Iran in 1953
• millions of dollars into the economy and armed
  military.
• In 1979 a revolution led by the Islamic leader
  Ayatollah Tuhollah Khomenini had overthrown the
  Shah.
• Carter allowed the Shah to seek refuge in
  California
• retaliated by taking American staff as hostages.
• Attempts to return the hostages failed.

13
Election of 1980

• Walter Mondale Geraldine Ferraro
• Emphasized growing deficit, raise in taxes,
  called attention to the citizens denied
  prosperity in America
• Ronald Reagan and former CIA director and Texas
  Oil executive H.W. Bush.
• Choice between a (D) government of pessimism,
  fear and limits or his own based on Hope,
  Confidence and growth.
• Reagan began with an inauguration that cost
  millions of dollars, Nancys wardrobe cost
  25,000
• Began a show and celebration of wealth and power
  that would prevail
• His election interpreted by supporters as a
  mandate for conservatism that had been growing
  since the Nixon years

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Reagans Political Objectives

• Limit state support for welfare and social
  services
• Expand state power to enforce law and order
• Championed anti-communism
• Tapped the resentment over rising property taxes
  high inflation
• Backlash against
• Anti-war movement
• counterculture
• Womens liberation
• Urban uprisings
• Emphasized family issues
• Opposed sex education, abortion rights, gay
  liberation
• Opposed the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment

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c. Emergence of New Right

• Backlash against liberalism of 1960s
• Framed goals in terms of emphasis of Moral
  Values
• Largest component of movement were evangelical or
  born again protestants
• Opposed re-treat from anti-communist foreign
  policy domestic programs that addressed poverty
  and equality
• Religious right
• Protestants, fundamentalists, Evangelical
  churches.
• Battled to prevent the IRS from denying
  tax-exempt status to private Christian colleges
  that opposed racial integration
• Roe Vs. Wade
• mobilized fundamentalists and evangelical leaders
  joined with the Catholic conservatives in
  opposing abortion.  

16
Conservative Social Agenda

• National Conservative Political Action Committee,
  the Conservative Caucus, the Moral Majority
• No separation of church state
• Defending family values - by opposing abortion
  and degenerate life styles
• The Male-headed nuclear family needs protection
  from moral wrongs of homosexuals and feminists.
• Education New ideas such as multiculturalism
  and feminism dangerous
• Movement towards reinterpreting history from a
  multicultural non-traditional perspective is
  under fire.   

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Reagan Revolution

• Rejected the activist welfare states legacy of
  the New Deal Era
• Rejected Keynesian economics
• traditionally favored moderate tax cuts and
  increases in government spending to stimulate the
  economy and reduce unemployment, by putting money
  in peoples pockets, greater consumer demand
  would lead to economic expansion.
• Supply-siders or Reaganomics
• called for simultaneous tax cuts and reductions
  in public spending, this would give private
  entrepreneurs and investors greater incentives to
  start business, take risks, invest capital and
  create new wealth and jobs.

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Supply Side EconomicsReaganomics

• The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981
• benefited the richest fraction of the population
  that derives most of its income from rent,
  dividends and interest instead of from wages.
• The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981
• cut social and cultural programs, hardest hit
  areas included education, environment, health,
  housing, urban aid, food stamps, research on
  synthetic fuels and the arts

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• Greatly increased the defense budget
• Anti organized labor
• 13,000 federal employees all members of the
  Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization
  went who went on strike in 1981, he fired all of
  them. By 1990 15 of workers belonged to a labor
  union
• Deregulation
• weakened rules that governed environmental
  protection, workplace safety, consumer protection
  to increase the efficiency and productivity of
  business.
• Large corporations, wall street stock brokerages,
  investment banking houses, savings and loan
  industry were allowed to operate with a much
  freer hand than ever before.

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George Gilder, conservative author of Wealth and
Poverty (1988)

• summarized this economic theory A successful
  economy depends on the proliferation of the
  rich.
• Politically supply-siders look to reward the
  most loyal republican constituencies , the
  affluent and business community.
• They reduce the flow of federal dollars to two
  core democratic constituencies the recipients
  and professional providers of health and welfare
  programs.

21
Promise Reality

• Promise to balance the budget
• Reality National debt tripled from 914 billion
  (1980) to 2.7 Trillion (1989)
• Fiscal crisis became a structural problem
• Supply side economics ultimately reversed America
  from being the leading creditor nation in the
  world to a debtor nation (340 Billion)

22
Best Worst Time, Reagan and American popular
culture

• Popular culture
• Celebration of wealth, money making and
  entrepreneurship
• Dominated 1980s to present
• Greater Inequality
• Middle class shrinking, poverty rising
• Promise of Middle class status
• Fewer able to improve living standards or reach
  the middle class

23
Reagans Promise to Restore World Supremacy

• Increased military spending
• Foreign policy
• Revival of cold war patriotism
• Championed U.S. Interventionism
• Intervened in Caribbean, Latin and South America
• Anti-communist Rhetoric centerpiece for foreign
  policy
• Labeled the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire the
  focus of evil in the modern world
• Though soviets dismantling retreat from arms
  race and empire building made cold war framework
  of international affairs irrelevant by 1980s

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Arms Race Nuclear Power

• 70 of Americans favored nuclear freeze
• 1982 750,000 people demonstrated, NY
• Halt on spending on and deployment of nuclear
  weapons
• 1982 Regan announced the SDI initiative
• Star Wars or the Strategic Defense Initiative
• Estimated 27 Billion, spent 17 billion
• Meaningful arms control undermined
• Soviet-U.S. relations deteriorated

25
Foreign Policy the Reagan Doctrine

• Reasserted Americas right to intervene anywhere
  in the world to roll back communism by
  supplying overt and covert aid to anti-communist
  resistance movements
• Assumed that political instability resulted from
  soviet influence
• 1983 invaded Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador 
• 1983 Grenada, Socialist leader assassinated
  installed a friendly government.

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CIA Covert Action

• Aided anticommunist forces in Afghanistan and the
  Contras in Nicaragua
• Waged a renewed cold war to support anticommunist
  governments that supported democracy to
  constrain the soviets sphere of influence.
• Freedom Fighters

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El Salvador

• Aided a repressive regime (pro-American)
• 1983 right wing death squads tortured and
  assassinated 1,000s of opposition leaders
• Bloody Civil war left 54,000 dead
• Reagan looked to Nicaragua
• Sandanista government posed an unusual and
  extraordinary threat to national security

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Nicaragua

• Nicaragua
• Sandanista Party
• 1984 Reagan escalated the undeclared war against
  the Sandanistas
• US augmented its military forces in neighboring
  Honduras
• Conducted training exercises throughout the
  region
• Stepped up economic pressure
• Launched a psychological offensive to discredit
  the Sandanistas.
• Trained and equipped an opposition military
  force of Nicaraguans or Contras.
• Supported murderous dictatorships in nearby El
  Salvador and Guatamala

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U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua

• 1909 - 1933 Taft coup on President Zalaya
• Trans isthmus Canal
• Nationalization of land
• 1936 Guardia Nacional Coup
• Somoza Regime 1937 47, 1950-56
• 1962 the FSLN, Liberation Front, Sandanistas
• Oppose regime of Anastasio somoza
• Nationalized banking
• Somoza Regime 1967-72, 1974-1979

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Public Criticism

• U. S. backed regimes were clearly implicated in
  human-rights abuses
• Nuns, journalists, humanitarian aid workers
  included
• Brutality and corruption among the contras or so
  called freedom fighters brought growing public
  criticism.
• American grass roots opposition
• Sister city projects offered humanitarian
  technical assistance to Nicaraguan communities
• 1984 Boland Amendments
• Congress ban on arms sales
• Forbade government agencies from supporting
  directly or indirectly military or para-military
  operations in Nicaragua

31
Iran-contra affair

•  Denied funding my congress,
• Reagan turned to the National Security Council to
  find a way to keep the contra war going
• 1984 1986 raised 37 million in aid from foreign
  countries and private contributors, largest
  mercenary army in the hemispheric history
• 1986    sold arms to Pro-Iranian Islamic Radicals
  in a secret deal to secure the release of
  American hostages of Muslim militants
• Sold arms to Iran to channel profits to the
  contra forces
• circumvented Boland Amendments
•   

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Cover up American Amnesia

• National Security Council
• advisors Robert McFarlane and Admiral John
  Poindexter
• sold weapons and missiles to Iranians using
  Israel and the go between.
• North and Poindexter lied to congress , shredded
  evidence and refused to keep the president fully
  informed to guaranteed his plausible
  deniability
• convicted as felons,
• 1992 H.W. Bush granted pardons to 6 key players
  in the scandal.

33
End of the Soviet Union Collapse of Communism

• Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary of the
  communist party in 1985)
• Policy of Glasnost (openness) Perestroika
  (economic liberalization)
• 1987 signed a major Arms Treaty that reduced
  each nations supply of range missiles
• He declared and end to the cold war
• Soviet sphere of influence and the union itself
  would cease to exist 

34
Consequences of Reaganomics

• National debt tripled to 2.7 Trillion 1989
• The fiscal crisis became a structural problem
  with profound long lasting implications for the
  American economy
• Became indebted to foreign nations (340 billion)
• Post WWII the leading creditor, now the biggest
  debtor

35
Greater Inequality

• Average weekly and hourly earnings dropped
  between 1980-1992
• Share of Total Net Worth of American Families
• Richest 1 31 1983 37 1989
• Next Richest 9 35 to 31 1989
• Remaining 90 33 to 32

36
Environmental De-regulation

• Sagebrush Rebellion
• Sympathetic to western movement of citizens who
  wanted vast federal land holdings in the west
  transferred to the states for less environmental
  protection and more rapid economic use
• Trees timber companies
• Expanded offshore oil drilling
• Expedited exploration for minerals

37
Greater Inequality

• Number of Poor, Rate of Poverty and Poverty Line
  1979-92
• Millions of poor 26.1 to 36.9 million in 1992
• Rate increased from 11.7 to 15
• Poverty Line increased from 7,412 to 14,335

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Crisis for Organized Labor

• Republican offensive against labor unions
• (Air Traffic Controllers Organization)
• Other companies followed suit leading to the
  decline of union membership and blue collar jobs
• Hormel
• Phelps-Dodge
• National labor Relations Board and other federal
  agencies weakened collective bargaining by their
  interpretation of labor management relations
• Workers accepted a roll back in wages and loss of
  other benefits to be able to keep their jobs

39
Job Creation

• Low wage jobs were created at a growth rate of
  50
• Middle wage jobs at 31.7
• High wage jobs at 11.9
• Deindustrialization and blue collar job
  destruction led to loss of standard of living
  achieved in the 1950s and 1960s

40
Median Family Income by race

• All races combined median income increased by
  1,000 between 1980 and 1992
• Income for Whites increased by 1,600
• Income for Blacks decreased by 450.00
• Income for Hispanics decreased by 1000.00

41
Feminization of Poverty

• Experience of poverty became the experience of
  predominately women and children
• Jobs available decreased for women with children
  were lower paying
• Took financial support of a male breadwinner to
  keep a family out of poverty
• Courts sided on behalf of fathers in court
• Loss of alimony
• Middle class women pushed into poverty
• Majority of men defaulted on child support
  payments
• Divorced men increased standard of living
• Divorce women decreased standard of living

42
Female Headed Households, 1992

• 13.7 million people
• Accounted for 37 of the nations poor
• Number of black women as heads of household
  increased from 30 in 1970 to 47 in 1980

43
Gender Economic Contradictions

• Social and economic pressure to fulfill
  traditional roles
• Vs
• The need for women to work

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Wage Gap

• 1980s Women made 60 cents on the male earned
  dollar
• 2003 women made 75 cents
• EXPLAINED
• Decline of earning among men
• Better educated women finding better jobs