Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

Many of these angry whites could hardly be called "conservative" in a traditional sense. They included millions of struggling, often class-conscious people who raged with almost equal fervor at what they perceived as the special privileges of corporate elites, Establishment priests and ministers, wealthy medical practitioners, liberal school boards, permissive bureaucrats and judges, and "experts" in general. They displayed a mounting unease with much that was "modern," including the teaching of Darwinian theories in the schools, and with much that "know-it-all" social engineers told them to believe. They were disturbed by feminists, sexual liberation, radicals, and anti-war demonstrators, and they were outraged by the "idolatrous" and "criminal-coddling" Warren Court. Many perceived a conspiracy that was masterminded by an eastern Establishment. Threatened by the insouciance of the younger generation, they especially resented the contempt that they received from more secular Americans. By 1966 they were beginning to take part in politics as never before, especially in the South and the Southwest, where population growth was explosive. Reagan was but the best-known of the anti-liberal office-holders who actively politicized their concerns and benefited from what became identified in the 1970s as a new and powerful Religious Right.