America’s Wars on Poverty and the Building of the Welfare State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Torstensson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Weak Center ◽  
Compassionate Conservatism ◽  
The Welfare State

On January 5, 2014—the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty—the New York Times asked a panel of opinion leaders a simple question: “Does the U.S. Need Another War on Poverty?” While the answers varied, all the invited debaters accepted the martial premise of the question—that a war on poverty had been fought and that eliminating poverty was, without a doubt, a “fight,” or a “battle.” Yet the debate over the manner—martial or not—by which the federal government and public policy has dealt with the issue of poverty in the United States is still very much an open-ended one. The evolution and development of the postwar American welfare state is a story not only of a number of “wars,” or individual political initiatives, against poverty, but also about the growth of institutions within and outside government that seek to address, alleviate, and eliminate poverty and its concomitant social ills. It is a complex and at times messy story, interwoven with the wider historical trajectory of this period: civil rights, the rise and fall of a “Cold War consensus,” the emergence of a counterculture, the Vietnam War, the credibility gap, the rise of conservatism, the end of “welfare,” and the emergence of compassionate conservatism. Mirroring the broader organization of the American political system, with a relatively weak center of power and delegated authority and decision-making in fifty states, the welfare model has developed and grown over decades. Policies viewed in one era as unmitigated failures have instead over time evolved and become part of the fabric of the welfare state.

The Role of Religious Value in Political Judgment

1968 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-427
Author(s):  
Quentin L. Quade
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Religious Interventions ◽  
Number Of Citations

In The issues of the New York Times from February, 1965, to November, 1967, religious leaders and groups are reported 185 times commenting on one political issue: Vietnam. If a comparable search were done on an inclusive list of political topics, such as civil rights, the number of citations would be greatly multiplied. Most of these statements are on substantive issues — the United States should do this, do that — rather than on the theoretical questions about religion's role vis à vis politics. Most of these religious interventions presume some connection between religion and politics, whether articulated or not. A similar examination of some leading religious journals, for example, Chrisianity and Crisis, Commonweal, Christian Century, America, produces similar results: in articles and editorials, such publications are deeply immersed in direct commentary on political problems of our time.

Gay Reparations and Their Critics

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Omar G. Encarnación
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Class ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
Long Time

This chapter mentions the publication of the New York Times op-ed that calls for gay reparations in the United States, and it discusses the reactions of social conservatives to the article. It talks about homophobic individuals, who have not accepted homosexuals and gay people as human beings entitled to live their lives and deserving of civil rights, who find gay reparations an abomination. It also refers to televangelist Pat Robertson, who implied that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were godly retaliation for abortion, homosexuality, and secularism in the United States. This chapter examines distinct arguments against gay reparations, such as the claim that it is wrong for gay rights activists to apply today’s values to acts of discrimination against the gay community that took place a long time ago. It also reviews claims that gay reparations are divisive and generate a new class of American victims.

Secrecy, Conspiracy, Cinema and the CIA in the 1970s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Willmetts
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
Polar Opposite ◽  
Second World

This final chapter examines the figuration of the CIA in the wave of paranoid conspiracy films that were made in the 1970s. Still suffering from the reverberations of Watergate and the Vietnam War, in 1975 America faced another season of scandal after the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a series of damning revelations of nefarious CIA and FBI activities in the New York Times. This compounded a culture of suspicion that had already set in, especially in Hollywood, by the beginning of the 1970s. The conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, films like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, were the polar opposite of the semi-documentary films that represented American espionage in the aftermath of the Second World War. Whilst the latter lauded the United States government as the arbiter of historical authenticity, the former perceived state secrecy and deception as nefarious obstacles that prevented citizens from knowing the truth of their history. Secrecy figures as history’s aporia, and few types of film express this better than the paranoid conspiracy thriller.

Notes from the Editors, July-August 2016

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
The Editors
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Neoclassical Economist ◽  
Secular Stagnation ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The U.S

buy this issueCommenting in the January 1973 issue of Monthly Review on the declining condition of the U.S. economy, Paul Sweezy brought back the question of "secular stagnation," first advanced by Keynes's leading follower Alvin Hansen in the late 1930s. "The U.S. economy," Sweezy wrote, in an article entitled "Notes on the U.S. Situation at the End of 1972," "is experiencing at one and the same time a cyclical boom and secular stagnation." The resurfacing of stagnation, he suggested, was the product in part of the U.S. attempt to unwind from the Vietnam War, which had previously been lifting the economy.… A couple of months after the publication of Sweezy's article, in March 1973, the New York Times, seeking to quiet the widening anti-capitalist protests, ran a series of articles on its op-ed page under the general heading of "Capitalism, for Better or Worse." The series concentrated on the two phenomena of the weakening of economic prosperity and the decline of military spending resulting from the drawing down of the Vietnam War. One of these articles, misleadingly entitled "Taking Stock of War," appearing on March 14, was written by Paul Samuelson, then considered to be the leading neoclassical economist in the United States. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

From the River to the Sea to Every Mountain Top: Solidarity as Worldmaking

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin D. G. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Intellectuals ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
Angela Davis ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Transnational Solidarity

This essay questions a key takeaway from the Ferguson/Gaza convergence that catalyzed the current wave of Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity: the idea that “equivalence,” or a politics of analogy based on racial or national identity, or racialized or colonial experience, is the sole or primary grounds for solidarity. By revisiting three recent spectacular moments involving Black intellectuals advocating for Palestine—Michelle Alexander's op-ed in the New York Times criticizing Israeli policies, CNN's firing of Marc Lamont Hill, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's initial decision to deny Angela Davis its highest honor—this paper suggests that their controversial positions must be traced back to the post-1967 moment. The convergence of Black urban rebellions and the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war birthed the first significant wave of Black-Palestinian solidarity; at the same time, solidarities rooted in anti-imperialism and Left internationalism rivaled the “Black-Jewish alliance,” founded on analogy of oppression rather than shared principles of liberation. Third World insurgencies and anti-imperialist movements, not just events in the United States and Palestine, created the conditions for radically reordering political alliances: rather than adopting a politics of analogy or identity, the Black and Palestinian Left embraced a vision of “worldmaking” that was a catalyst for imagining revolution as opposed to plotting coalition.

Pourquoi l'État libéral? - T.R. Marmor, J.L. Mashaw, P.L. Harvey. America's Misunderstood Welfare State. New York: Basic Books, 1990.

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-410
Author(s):  
Martine Bungener
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTThere has been a long-running debate over the welfare state between its opponents and protagonists for decades, not only in the United States, but in all advanced western democracies. The authors of this publication simultaneously defend the positive effects of the welfare state and offer an analysis of the reasons for the suspicion of public opinion on the subject. But the debate over the welfare state crisis can best be analysed, in light ofF. Ewald's work, not as an avatar, but as representing an episode in the system's very means of reproduction.

Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 448-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewey M. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Issue Framing ◽  
Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) has arisen as a social movement in response to the numerous killings of unarmed African Americans. It has been criticized by some as too confrontational and divisive. The purpose of this study is to undertake a comparative analysis of the BLM Movement and the civil rights movement (1954-1965). As social movements, both have evolved out of the need to continue the Black liberation struggle for freedom. I have conducted a content analysis of the New York Times newspaper during a 2-year period for both social movements to examine the issue framing of each. I argue that the civil rights movement framed its issues in a more inclusive manner than BLM. BLM should take a lesson from the civil rights movement by boldly taking on an issue like police brutality of African Americans and expanding the boundaries of something that is politically unacceptable to being acceptable.

Mobilized by Injustice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah L. Walker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Depth Interviews

Springing from decades of abuse by law enforcement and an excessive criminal justice system, members of over-policed communities lead the current movement for civil rights in the United States. Activated by injustice, individuals protested police brutality in Ferguson, campaigned to end stop-and-frisk in New York City, and advocated for restorative justice in Washington, D.C. Yet, scholars focused on the negative impact of punitive policy on material resources, and trust in government did not predict these pockets of resistance, arguing instead that marginalizing and demeaning policy teaches individuals to acquiesce and withdraw. Mobilized by Injustice excavates conditions under which, despite otherwise negative outcomes, negative criminal justice experiences catalyze political action. This book argues that when understood as resulting from a system that targets people based on race, class, or other group identifiers, contact can politically mobilize. Negative experiences with democratic institutions predicated on equality under the law, when connected to a larger, group-based struggle, can provoke action from anger. Evidence from several surveys and in-depth interviews reveals that mobilization as result of negative criminal justice experiences is broad, crosses racial boundaries, and extends to the loved ones of custodial citizens. When over half of Blacks and Latinos and a plurality of Whites know someone with personal contact, the mobilizing effect of a sense of injustice promises to have important consequences for American politics.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document