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The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New American Nation Series)

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A very good review of the most turbulent decade in the 20th Century. Matusow encapsulates all of the major policy areas that the government dealt with, showing successes and failures as well as his analysis of the situation. For the book's second part, he writes about the left's reactions to these moves and how the various radical groups took certain aspects and focused their discontent upon them. Overall, well-written, very readable, and gives enough detail to satisfy most basic questions the reader might have regarding the issues he covers.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

The theme of Allen Matusow's book "The Unraveling of America" is as the title implies. Beginning in 1960 with the ascendancy of John F. Kennedy to the presidency, Matusow contends this was the beginning of a vast and sweeping liberalism that overtook the country, and tried to promote positives changes. However, it was this initially promising liberalism, and its subsequent fragments, divisions and internal oppositions that eventually lead to the "unraveling" of American society.

(Failure of Liberalism) Matusow's intent is to prove how liberalism failed to achieve its purposes, how the efforts of liberalism began to alienate many of its adherents, and ultimately, how liberalism, while well meaning, actually fractured America. He wants to prove how liberalism, when taken to extremes, led to ghetto riots and black militancy, reluctant politicians who promised big programs but produced little change, massive drug use, crime, apathetic hippies, lack of discipline among restless and spoiled teens, all of this, is what Matusow terms: the unraveling of America. In summation, his purpose is to show the destructive and crippling effects of the liberalism that gripped the country from 1960-1968.

(Kennedy and Johnson) Matusow deals mainly with liberalism from the years 1960, with the ascension of the liberal John F. Kennedy to the presidency, until the 1968 election, which saw the election of Richard Nixon. The early sixties were a time of far reaching aspirations for many, they were a time of change, and it was Kennedy who embodied that change. Kennedy galvanized the youth into action. Matusow illustrates that how above all else, Kennedy became a symbol to American, specifically the youth. After the stuffy years of the Eisenhower presidency, after the humiliation of Sputnik, and as an anathema to the growing racial fragmentation, Kennedy appeared to be the savior. But instead of a savior, Matusow claims America got just another politician. After Kennedy's assassination and Johnson's accession to the presidency, the " unraveling "
became exacerbated. In essence, he uses Lyndon B. Johnson as an allegory of this slow decline. In the beginning of his presidency, there was great faith in him. Many rallied to his programs. The Great Society, the War on Poverty and Johnsons stand on civil rights seemed to embody the liberal platform. However, after the failure of many of his programs and the Vietnam, by the end of his presidency, his approval rating was a dismal
35%.

(War on Poverty) LBJ's assault on poverty, while seemingly progressive, did not achieve much in the long run, and in some instances, actually retarded genuine attempts at reducing poverty. Many programs degenerated into a massive bureaucracy that did not aid the people it was meant for. Civil rights, while starting as a non-violent protest after the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, had degenerated into violent ghetto riots and armed bands of angry black man like the Black Panthers patrolling the streets. Another peculiar occurrence during LBJ's administration was the rise of the counter culture, or "hippies." This apathetic sect grew to ridicule both left and right values; ultimately they wanted an escape from their affluent society. Yet, the counter-culture movement degenerated into an orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Theft, rape and robbery, which culminated in
Charles Manson, replaced their benign intentions of free love and equality.

(Vietnam) Matusow contends that the Vietnam War dealt the deathblow to Johnson, at home and abroad. It destroyed his credibility. Initially, liberals had been in favor of the cold war, and of Vietnam, but their devotion grew stale, and the war became wildly unpopular. Thus, Matusow believes that the war ruined Johnson, and ultimately eroded the democrats and the liberal platform. Yet, it also united the opposition in America. Blacks began to view their plight as similar to the Vietnamese; they began to see themselves as an oppressed colony within the United States. Hippies, Yippies and a slew of anti-war protestors rose up to challenge the administration. The war had rocked Johnson and shaken the governments' -specifically the liberals-platform.

(The New Left) Matusow also discusses the rise of the "new left," which did not fight for society through politics as compared to the older liberals, but rather who fought for the self. Organizations such as SDS (Students for Democratic society) and FSM (Free Speech Movement) lobbied for free speech, student rights, and they lobbied against "totalitarian" America. Ultimately, the adherence to authority waned as people united
against what many came to believe was an immoral society. The new left, while beginning with positive intentions to bring about change through government, actually became an individualist, disconnected movement which aimed to "drop out" of society rather than change it. The former unity and drive of the left was gone, and replaced with apathy, drug use, individualism and a lack of responsibility and civic duty.

(Liberalism and unraveling) Thus, this was the "unraveling" of America. Matusow tracks liberalism in all its forms and illustrated how despite initially being progressive, the movement degenerated into chaos. LBJ easily won the 1964 election, but by 1968, the country had grown sick of change. In the 1968 election, Johnson's party, the democrats, lost 12 million votes. Matusow believes that the majority of Americans were sick of change, sick of the "unraveling," that they had been alienated. Matusow believed that the failure of liberalism and the unraveling of society led to the republican revolution of the seventies and eighties. The contribution bf Matusows book is far reaching, yet misleading at the same time. Matusow gives a detailed account of many (but not all) of the major liberal movements of the 1960s. He shows how many initially started out well and enjoyed
relative success, but ultimately floundered. Even though I disagree with his argument, I nonetheless feel that his book forces the reader to evaluate modem American society as a product of the liberal 1960s in conjunction with the reaction to it.

While I do not argue the validity of Matusow's points, I do take objection to the points that he omits from his argument, which would undoubtedly hurt the credibility of his argument. He neglects to mention the woman's liberation movement. If Matusow is correct, and America truly unraveled due to liberal change, then how does the woman's liberation movement fit into his thesis? I believe many would label the woman's movement as a positive change, ultimately elevating woman to a much higher status in society, and it is a change has greatly affected modem society. It is a change that did not unravel America, but forced it to be more tolerant.

While I do concede that many of the civil rights movements did go astray and degenerate into semi-terrorist organizations, I do not believe that one cannot attribute them to unraveling America. The civil rights movement, at least in its early stages, radically and positively transformed America, similar to the woman's movement. With a combination of legislation and education, America began to integrate, even if begrudgingly. Minorities began to be able to feel their long awaited equality afforded to them by the constitution.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history.

Reading this book about the sixties is like listening to the Beatles catalog from beginning to end; it starts out nice and sunny in the beginning and keeps getting stranger and more drugsy towards the end.

Beginning with the Kennedy Camelot era, liberalism was defined as a moderate corporate liberalism that worked with the establishment to make reforms. Corporations were considered basically good by liberals because they produced wealth for most people. The blacks, however, had 51% of the wealth of white people and were largely shut out from the economic and political mainstream. Civil rights legislation began to develop during the Kennedy years and Kennedy responded in the typically foxy way of politicians trying to please two opposing camps so as to get re-elected.

After Kennedy died, Johnson passed the civil rights legislation and it seemed like liberalism's greatest triumph of the decade. Johnson presided over the war on poverty, a program that he tried to make sure did not upset those who were in power by giving more power to poor people to make decisions about how they should get out of poverty. Any attempts to give power to the people were eventually worn down by the inertia of bureaucracy. The author Allen Matusow seems to have favored some form of radical wealth redistribution, instead of the conventional bureaucratic programs.

There is also some discussion about economic policy of those years in the book--the mundane but important issues about how much to tax, how much to spend, how to avoid economic slumps or even collapses, and whether to listen to the economist Keynes or to Friedman.

The rest of the book is an engrossing account of people going crazy with drugs, violence, sex, music, and insurrections. The roots of the counterculture are explained from the black jazz hipsters of the 30s, to the beatniks of the 50s, and to the hippies of the 60s. In the final decadent years, the radical communist left took over the political culture and intensely protested the moderate corporate liberalism of the Johnson era along with his prolongation of the war in Vietnam. The left saw itself as a movement allied with the non-white oppressed against the rich white men who controlled the world through imperialism. It is not discussed in the book whether there was any validity to the claims of such imperialism.

I disagreed with the author's desire to have wealth redistribution, that old concept of giving unearned money to people to spend on whatever. It doesn't address the problem of killing the work incentive, the ablility to handle money wisely, and the innate ability or lack thereof to earn money. I thought that the black nationalism of the era had the better idea of giving blacks their own nation to live in, minus all the violent talk and actions. In fact, Lincoln had planned to give blacks their own nation after Emancipation but it was never fully accomplished. I think it would reduce infighting among groups with divergent self-interests. But politics is based on short-sidedness and selfishness, such radical visions are dismissed as impractical even though integration can also be said to impractical.

The "unraveling of america" was by far the most illrepresented mind jarble i have ever read. The authors uncanny ability to misconstrue the facts dealing with the Great Society was so incrediable it actually made me laugh out loud in mid sentence. For all of you considering to by this book my best advise would be to instead purchase a copy of charles murray's book "losing ground".