Religious and Secular Conservative Politics in America.
1960 and it's subsequent decades proved to be a remarkable time for the world in general, but very specifically for America. The first Roman Catholic president was elected; the birth control pill was introduced, and we confronted the question of nuclear war. We also saw the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement and the Women's Rights Movement as we learned first-hand and up close and personal about civil disobedience and political assassinations.
During this period, the conservative right was an anti-communist movement that promoted conservatism in government; increased military spending; withdrawal from the United Nations and reducing government funded social programs. They viewed the student demonstrations against the Vietnam War as a communist plot, as were the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement. Conservative Americans called the changes that we sought, and the questions that we asked, "un-American- and "un-patriotic-.
Eisenhower had disappointed the conservative right. William Buckley charged that he had done nothing for the Republican Party and nothing to develop a Conservative Republican philosophy of government and had, in fact, left the "New Deal- policies of FDR intact. The election of Kennedy had been a move away from the status quo of the Eisenhower years. He established the Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt the chair. The Supreme Court issued its ruling banning prayer in public schools. The FDA approved the sell and marketing of the birth control pill. The Equal Pay Act, the first major legislation against sex discrimination was passed and other initiatives for combating sex discrimination were being discussed. The Berlin Wall was build and American pilot Frances Gary Powers was shot down in the U-2 spy plane incident. Perhaps most disturbing of all to the conservative right was the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis.
