Schulman - The Seventies

Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001.

Argument
The Seventies shouldn't be remembered for its pop culture and as an otherwise lost decade. It should be remembered for:

-The rising again of the South. Political power gained in the Sunbelt. "the South's historic policy prescriptions-low taxes and scant public services, military preparedness and a preference for state and local government over federal supremacy-came to define the national agenda"
-An explosion of public spirituality accompanied this political and ideological shift, especially as conservative Christians emerged as an effective influence outside time-honored denominational spheres.
-the triumph of the market as "the favored means for personal liberation and cultural revolution." The 1970s saw a marked decline in trust in the federal government, as many Americans turned instead to the private sphere and what Schulman calls "an unusual faith in the market." Easy credit led Americans to invest in the market, putting their faith in the market to sustain them in the long run where the government seemed to be failing.
-Other important developments: the rise of feminism, the development of new voices in music and film, the growth of identity movements around ethnicity, sexuality, race, and age, and the rise of New Age religious ideas and personal growth.

Other interesting bits
Schulman tries to synthesize political developments using culture. Disco was the last great expression of integration in the decade, and the anti-Disco movement was a reflection of the shifting to a conservative consensus.

The identity movements reflected the morphing of 60s activism into more individualistic venues.

Review
Katherine Jay - Reviews in American history

"The concept that southern attitudes came to dominate national policy debates is not new, but Schulman explores the concept of "southernization" beyond its political impact, looking at emerging cultural and social manifesta- tions, particularly in a chapter on the "reddening" of America. Here, he offers a fascinating read on the rise of the Sunbelt by examining the widespread popularity of motorcyclist Evel Knievel, country music, and football, includ- ing the promotion of the Dallas Cowboys as "America's team." He convinc- ingly argues that "a new, defiant, resurgent South found its way into country music," whether through Loretta Lynn's pride in being a "Coal Miner's Daughter" in 1970 or the more militant anthems of Hank Williams, Jr. and the group Alabama in the late 1970s (p. 115). These developments made many in the national press uncomfortable, perhaps because they also reflected a larger shift toward conservative southern values. As more Americans began to listen to the twangy sounds of country music, the South itself became a vital center of jobs and production, luring businesses and factories with its nonunion policies and aggressive promotions. This economic growth, along with favorable federal largesse and a rapidly growing population, made southern politicians major players in Washington D.C., while southern cultural norms lost their hillbilly edge and moved definitively into the mainstream."

Connection
While Lassiter (in his deeper Silent Majority) argues the south came to look more like the rest of the suburbanizing nation, Schulman argues the nation was "southernized"/"reddened" in that southern culture found broad appeal throughout the nation.

Bennett - Party of Fear

Bennett, David Harry. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Argument
Bennett periodizes extremist Right movements in American history. He argues nativism was the unifying trait until the 1921 immigration quotas closed the door to the flood of immigrants. In the 1930s, inverted nativism attacking elites began to appear, culminating after World War II with McCarthyism. Throughout the Cold War, communist conspiracy theories most prominently the John Birch Society abounded on the extreme right, though never taking up the nativist strains that they had in 1919. Bennett charts the rise of the New Right, particularly the Religious Right of Buchanon, Falwell, et al - their brief decline and the end of the Moral Majority in 1990, and their reemergence as the Christian Coalition during the Clinton Presidency. The religious right warned that the govt was being steered in an amoral and evil direction away from tradition family values. More anti-govt were contempoary the militia movements. The book ends on the verge of the 1996 election.

Thus, we see a broad period of Nativism (Know-Nothings to first Red Scare to 20s KKK), followed by inverted Nativism (Father Coughlin, Gerald LK Smith) stretching into the Cold War (McCarthyism). Cold War conspiracy theories morphed into anti-govt conspiracy theories (John Birch Society), blending with the rise of the religious right lead to movements ranging from the mass movements of the televangelists to neo-Nazis to Militias to the tiny movements of Christian Identity (Jesus was not a Jew, Americans are God's true chosen people).