The New Right Movement

Essay 2

The 1960s through the 1980s brought about much change in the United States as a new style of thinking changed the landscape of American culture. These changes were the result of a changing world in which a more educated and younger American population differed in ideology than that of the generation before them. Not everybody was happy with the social changes that occurred during this time. A group referred to as the “New Right”, which consisted of conservative business bigwigs, christian leaders and political groups that all claimed that labor and environmental regulations were undermining the American economy in comparison to the gloabl market. This “New Right” movement started to gain traction after the famous Roe vs. Wade
The idea of economic conservatism was nothing new, but the leaders of the “New Right” movement such as Barry Goldwater believed that the policies brought forth in the New Deal should be reversed. The “New Deal” ideology was that America’s big government and bureaucracy were the biggest threat to the liberties of the average American. They believed that welfare and social spending had to be cut in order to reduce the tax burden on American families and citizens. The “New Right” movement believed that the government was failing the population, an excerpt from There are No Children Here provides a great example of this “Lafeyette had grown increasingly cynical. And in a child who has not experienced enough to root his beliefs, such an attitude can create a vast emptiness. He had little to believe in. Everyone and everything was failing him. School. The Public Aid Department. His father. His older brother. The police. And now, in a sense, himself.”(pg 222 Alex Kotlowitz). The ideology was that the federal government regulations were inhibiting personal freedoms as well as economic growth. The backbone of the “New Right” movement was financially backed by big
The “New Right” movement was no different as hate and racial groups joined up and supported the ideologies in a more extreme way. These groups such as the American Nazi Party and the Klu Klux Klan believed in the policies of the “New Right” movement and joined in on the outcry in the moral decline of their version of America. Many of these individuals believed that the American federal government had become too powerful and the people did not have their basic constitutional rights. These groups strongly supported the idea of the right to bear arms as a way to defend themselves from the ever growing government and even started to create their own