The Resurgence of Conservatism
1980-1988

The 1980’s started with a presidential election and ended by making Americans once again feel good about themselves and their place in the world.

The Religious Right organized against all of the social protest movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They espoused the views of small government, low taxes, and hands off businesses (less regulation). These so called neo conservatives of the religious right got behind former actor Ronald Reagan for President. The Reagan years ushered in an era reminiscent of the 1920’s with government working with business to make profits and get people jobs.

Reagan’s plan for the stagnant economy was supply side economics, or Reaganomics. The plan was to cut taxes on businesses and the wealthy. The idea was that the money would trickle down to the middle and lower class. With lower taxes, the government had less money to spend and cut programs to the poor. This caused the number of homeless people to skyrocket. The 1980’s, as in the 1920’s, was a period when the gap between rich and poor widened.

Society was changing in the 1980’s. Cable Television ushered in a time when the T.V. had programming twenty four hours a day. Channels dedicated to news (CNN), sports (ESPN), and music (MTV). As in the 1950’s new music burst on the scene. Rap music began as African American music, just as Rock n Roll did, until it achieved mainstream acceptance in the following decade.

A new disease would put the breaks on the sexual revolution. The birth control pill, introduced in the 1960’s, and the legalization of abortion in Roe v Wade, created a sexual freedom among young people. The discovery of AIDS in the 1980’s halted that freedom. At first it was only infecting homosexuals, which the religious right saw as justice to sinners. By the end of the decade it was affecting all groups of society, however.

President Reagan called the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire”. He quickly built up our nuclear weapons. The Soviets followed suit and a dangerous new arms race surged forward. Reagan increased defense spending, sending the country into deep debt. His most ambitious plan was Strategic Defense Initiative (S.D.I.) or Star Wars. It would put a missile defense shield into space at the cost of 1 trillion dollars; it did spend billions but was not successful. In 1984 the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signaled a willingness to make changes in Soviet society. His two plans, glasnost and perestroika radically altered the U.S.S.R. These changes, coupled with the disastrous war in Afghanistan and the costly arms race would eventually lead the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev and Reagan got along very well and signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty (I.N.F.), which called for the destruction of some nuclear weapons.

Reagan intervened in the civil wars in Latin America, always opposing the communist side (containment policy or Truman doctrine). Congress passed a law making it illegal to support the Contra Rebels in Nicaragua. Reagan’s employees in the National Security Advisors office violated this law. It was known as the Iran Contra affair. What came out at the hearings that the president fell asleep at meetings and didn’t know what was going on in his administration very well. However, none of these things mattered as the Teflon president’s reputation is untarnished.