Word: matusow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Liberalism had entered the '60s with soaring hopes and unbridled confidence; but its policies had only led to the "unraveling" of America. What went wrong? This question is still open to debate. In Matusow's view, economists who misjudged the effect of higher taxes are partially to blame...
...ALTHOUGH MATUSOW does not specifically address the point, Kennedy's experience reflected both the limitations and the strengths of liberalism in the period. The attempt at reform was genuine, but the execution was conventional and doomed to failure Kennedy's most idealistic programs, shepherded through Congress by Lyndon Johnson in the mid-'60s, couldn't overcome the status...
...problems were caused not only be entrenched interests which stood to lose in the new programs, but also by the lack of political clout wielded by the poor whom the programs intended to aid. Matusow describes one program, designed by a maverick friend of Robert F. Kennedy '48, David Hackett, which emphasized community control of development and political action. It was the one program in the Great Society that could be deemed radical: "Other Great Society programs sought reform by appeasing institutions; community action would seek to reform institutions by empowering the poor...
...Matusow's description of this program's ultimate failure provides a telling critique of the idealistic and perhaps unrealistic hope some had placed in the federal government...
...Matusow recounts the decline of the Great Society through poor management and escalation of the Vietnam ment and the escalation of the Vietnam count of the counterculture which grew in the late '60s. He sees fundamental flaws there as well. Students for a Democratic Socity, the Yippies, the Black Panthers--all went through periods of romance with Third World revolutionism, and then turned to guerilla tactics, reinforcing their isolation from the American mainstream...