Abstract
During the 1968 election, Richard Nixon implied to voters that his domestic policies would be different from that of his liberal predecessors. Although his campaign focused most directly on law and order, he also promised voters the personal freedom to live and work as they chose. Nixon’s remarks implied he planned to punish criminals, restore order, and protect security. For the conservative movement, however, Nixon’s campaign statements offered something more. In the conservative mind there existed a link between the issues of crime, race, and welfare; all three stemmed from the inability of liberalism to meet the needs of society. Conservatives believed it was of the utmost importance to remove the threat of revolution before addressing the social issues. They wanted a tough stand on the law and order question as well as some attempt to address the cause of the country’s problems. Those on the right thought that, under Nixon, liberalism would finally be exposed for what it was—a step toward collectivism.
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Notes
George F. Will, “The Conservative Critique of the Welfare State,” The Alternative 5 (October 1971): 5–8
Smant, How Great the Triumph, 118–119; Will Herberg, “We Are All Guilty: The Great Society and the American Constitution,” Modern Age 11 (Summer 1967): 231–235
L. Brent Bozell, “The Unwritten Constitution,” Did You Ever See a Dream Walking: American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 52–74.
Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 36
Jeffrey Hart, “The Negro in the City,” NR 20 (6/18/1968): 603–606, 623 as cited in Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement, 264; Will Herberg, “America’s ‘Negro Problem’ in Historical Perspective,” The Intercollegiate Review 7 (Summer 1971): 207–214
Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (New York: Random House, 1971), 135–141
Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York: Free Press, 1995), 277–278
Stephen Ambrose as quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 302–303
Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001), 35–36.
Ibid., 115, 122–123. For more information on FAP, see Daniel P. Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan (New York: Random House, 1973).
William F. Buckley, Jr., Cruising Speed: A Documentary (New York: Putnam, 1971), 58–59
Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered, 78–80; Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon, 163; Lawrence J. McAndrews, “The Politics of Principle: Richard Nixon and School Desegregation,” Journal of Negro History 83 (Summer 1998): 188.
“The Fruits of Integration,” NR 22 (2/10/1970): 122; Russell Kirk, “School Mix by Bus Stirs Wide Protest,” Times-Picayune, 9/12/1969, (1) 9; William F Buckley, Jr., Four Reforms: A Guide for the Seventies (New York: Putnam, 1973), 87–88.
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© 2010 Sarah Katherine Mergel
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Mergel, S.K. (2010). Perpetuating the Follies of the Past: Welfare Reform and Race Relations. In: Conservative Intellectuals and Richard Nixon. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230102200_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230102200_6
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