All in the Family : The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s

In the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty legislation promised an array of federal programs to assist millions of American families. In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan declared Republicans the party of traditional family values and promised to keep the federal government out of American lives. Again and again, historians have sought to explain the nation's profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, four decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right. The award-winning historian Robert O. Self is the first to recognize that the many separate threads of that realignment--from civil rights to women's rights, from the antiwar movement to the silent majority, from the abortion wars to gay marriage, from health care to welfare reform--all ran through the politicized modern American family. __All in the Family__ is a synthetic history of the last half of the... "In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty promised an array of federal programs to assist working-class families. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP the party of "family values" and promised to keep government out of Americans' lives. Again and again, historians have sought to explain the nation's profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, five decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right. The award-winning historian Robert O. Self is the first to argue that the separate threads of that realignment -- from civil rights to women's rights, from the antiwar movement to Nixon's "silent majority," from the abortion wars to gay marriage, from the welfare state to neoliberal economic policies -- all ran through the politicized American family. Based on an astonishing range of sources, All in the Family rethinks an entire era. Self opens his narrative with the Great Society and its assumption of a white, patriotic, heterosexual man at the head of each family. Soon enough, civil rights activists, feminists, and gay rights activists, animated by broader visions of citizenship, began to fight for equal rights, protections, and opportunities. Led by Pauli Murray, Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, and Shirley Chisholm, among many others, they achieved lasting successes, including Roe v. Wade, antidiscrimination protections in the workplace, and a more inclusive idea of the American family. Yet the establishment of new rights and the visibility of alternative families provoked, beginning in the 1970s, a furious conservative backlash. Politicians and activists on the right, most notably George Wallace, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and Jerry Falwell, built a political movement based on the perceived moral threat to the traditional family. Self writes that "family values" conservatives in fact "paved the way" for fiscal conservatives, who shared a belief in liberalism's invasiveness but lacked a populist message. Reagan's presidency united the two constituencies, which remain, even in these tumultuous times, the base of the Republican Party. All in the Family, an erudite, passionate, and persuasive explanation of our current political situation and how we arrived in it, will allow us to think anew about the last fifty years of American politics"--Front and back flaps

In the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty legislation promised an array of federal programs to assist millions of American families. In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan declared Republicans the party of traditional family values and promised to keep the federal government out of American lives. Again and again, historians have sought to explain the nation’s profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, four decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right.

 

The award-winning historian Robert O. Self is the first to recognize that the many separate threads of that realignment—from civil rights to women’s rights, from the antiwar movement to the silent majority, from the abortion wars to gay marriage, from health care to welfare reform—all ran through the politicized modern American family.

 

All in the Family is a synthetic history of the last half of the American century. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of sources, Self shows how movements on the liberal left that demanded equal rights and greater government protection inadvertently elicited conservative activism that sought to restore the nuclear family under the rubric of “family values,” a political idea that is as influential now as it has ever been.

 

All in the Family is an urgent, ambitious, and important work that will help us think anew about the legacy of the 1960s.

This is a man's world, 1964-1973 Are you man enough? Sixties breadwinner liberalism Last man to die: Vietnam and the citizen soldier Homosexual tendencies: gay men and sexual citizenship The subjection of women, 1964-1976 The working mother has no wife: the dilemmas of market and motherhood Bodies on trial: the politics of reproduction American sappho: the lesbian political imagination The permissive society, 1968-1980 Wild before the fire: the sexual politics of an erotic revolution No steelworkers and no plumbers: liberalism in trouble A strange but righteous power: the breadwinner conservatism of forgotten Americans A process of coming out: from liberation to gay politics Family values, 1973-2011 The price of liberty: antifeminism and the crisis of the family Go ye into all the world: god, family, and country in the fourth great awakening Ancient roots: the Reagan Revolution's gender and sexual politics Epilogue: neoliberalism and the making of the culture war. Historians have sought to explain the nation's profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, five decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right. Self argues that the separate threads of that realignment-- from civil rights to women's rights, from abortion wars to gay marriage-- all ran through the politicized American family. This establishment of new rights and the visibility of alternative families provoked, beginning in the 1970s, a furious conservative backlash. Self provides a passionate explanation of our current political situation and how we arrived in it, allowing us to think anew about the last fifty years of American politics.