“More Than a Magazine”

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Carol V. R. George
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Positive Thinking ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
National Geographic ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how Norman Vincent Peale disseminated his gospel using the “Guideposts” magazine, which used the motto, “More than a magazine.” Founded in 1944 by Peale, “Guideposts” gave Pealeism a public identity that was easily understood. Politically, early “Guideposts” found a home for the potentially antinomian message of positive thinking within Cold War conservatism. Its editorial philosophy reflected Peale’s civic and religious priorities, best summarized as the ideas of Americanism, free enterprise, and practical Christianity. The chapter shows how “Guideposts” emerged from Peale’s practical Christianity and political conservatism and how it fared in the 1940s. It also discusses the strategies adopted by Peale to build a new image for “Guideposts” and concludes by explaining how the magazine evolved from a political broadside of the Cold War to achieve a more enduring cultural status along the lines of “The Reader’s Digest” and “National Geographic.”

The 1980s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Rossinow
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
The Cold War

The decade of the 1980s represented a turning point in American history—a crucial era, marked by political conservatism and an individualistic ethos. The 1980s also witnessed a dramatic series of developments in U.S. foreign relations, first an intensification of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and then a sudden relaxation of tensions and the effective end of the Cold War with an American victory. All of these developments were advanced and symbolized in the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), a polarizing figure but a highly successful political leader. Reagan dominates our memories of the 1980s like few other American leaders do other eras. Reagan and the political movement he led—Reaganism—are central to the history of the 1980s. Both their successes and their failures, which became widely acknowledged in the later years of the decade, should be noted. Reaganite conservatives won political victories by rolling back state power in many realms, most of all in terms of taxation and regulation. They also succeeded in putting America at the unquestioned pinnacle of the world order through a victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, although this was unforeseen by America’s Cold Warriors when the 1980s began. The failures of Reaganite conservatism include its handling of rising poverty levels, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and worsening racial tensions, all problems that either Reaganites did little to stem or to which they positively contributed. In foreign affairs, Reaganites pursued a “war on terror” of questionable success, and their approach to Third World arenas of conflict, including Central America, exacted a terrible human toll.

Fun and Facts about American Business: Economic Education and Business Propaganda in an Early Cold War Cartoon Series

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE JACK
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
American Business ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Cold War

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, millions of theatergoers, students, and industrial workers saw one or more animated short films, shot in Technicolor and running eight to nine minutes, that were designed to build public support for the principles and practices of free enterprise. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation quietly funded the production of this series of cartoons, titledFun and Facts about American Business, through multiple grants to industrial animation house John Sutherland Productions via Harding College, an evangelical college in rural Arkansas that would become known nationally for its anti-communist and conservative political activism. This article examines the creation and distribution of theFun and Factsfilms in the years 1946 through 1952 as a notable case of ephemeral film and as an example of the Cold War public relations movement known as “economic education.” Further, the article examines the consequences of economic education as a conceptual category on the production and distribution of Cold War industrial propaganda.

Trade, Tariffs, and the Postwar Economic Order

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-186
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Delton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Tariff Reduction ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
High Degree

This chapter turns to the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) activities during the Cold War. The Cold War impeded full global economic integration, but it also provided an opportunity for free enterprise to show its superiority to state-directed economic systems. Hence, NAM and other international organizations had to conduct a high degree of coordination, standard-setting, and information exchange in order to globalize capitalism. But that work fostered tensions, especially with regard to tariffs. Tariff reduction was key to the postwar trade agenda. Here, NAM was, as usual, divided. But times were changing. The Cold War fight against communism required a commitment to international capitalism and freer trade. State-instigated tariffs were antithetical to postwar, free-market conservatives, a movement influenced by Austrian émigrés and enthusiastically embraced by NAM leaders.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 210-218
Author(s):  
Shane Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Food Crisis ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Consumer Sovereignty ◽  
Food Supply Chains ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Food Economy ◽  
The Cold War

The epilogue centers on the question of how the contemporary world of global agribusiness differs, but also builds upon, the structures of the Cold War Farms Race. A brief discussion of Walmart’s entry into India opens the epilogue, offering an examination of how agricultural development as pursued by multinational corporations has been framed as an apolitical exercise. Yet as a brief discussion of Venezuela’s current food crisis demonstrates, the power exercised in food supply chains means that no such action can be apolitical. A discussion of supermarkets’ penetration into Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War furthermore highlights the ongoing contestation over what counts as “free enterprise” in the global supermarket-driven food economy. Finally the epilogue offers a few words on the paucity of contemporary food politics discourse and the problem of assuming consumer sovereignty.

The Farms Race Begins

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Shane Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Food Distribution ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
World War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Agriculture And Food ◽  
American Agriculture

This chapter explains the conceptual outlines and historical roots of the Cold War Farms Race. Openly violent notions of the anticommunist power of American agriculture and food distribution emerged, making it possible to conceive of American supermarkets as not only products of “free enterprise” but also as “weapons” capable of demolishing communist claims to economic superiority over capitalism. The rhetorical militancy of the Farms Race did not emerge out of thin air during the Cold War, however. The three strands of the Farms Race—a pervasive rhetoric of exceptional American food abundance, a counterrevolutionary ideology of capitalist economic development, and a moral claim to the justifiability of U.S. economic might—emerged from decades of U.S. agricultural and food policies stretching back to the era of World War I. During and immediately after World War II, ideas about development, modernization, and feeding a hungry world merged into formal Cold War policies under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Disagreements about the appropriate role of private enterprise versus formal government action shaped the historical trajectories of such programs as Truman’s Point Four campaign and Eisenhower’s “trade not aid” agenda, but by the mid-1950s the Farms Race was in full swing.

Telstar, the Cold War, and the Origins of Global Communications

Vulcan ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Layne Karafantis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Enterprise System ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
American Government ◽  
Communications Network ◽  
World Opinion ◽  
Global Communications ◽  
The Cold War

Beginning with the launch of Sputnik, the Cold War superpowers engaged in a race not only to control or militarize space, but also to influence world opinion with space-related feats. AT&T exploited American fears that the United States was losing this competition by publicizing its Telstar satellite as a privately designed product, ostensibly proving the superiority of a free enterprise system. AT&T argued that it should be allowed to manage a global communications network, but the American government eventually disagreed with the company’s monopolistic ambitions.

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