Great Society

Reducing Child Poverty Is a No-Brainer even Without Brain Science

by Mical Raz

Reducing child poverty is a good in itself; justifying policies to reduce poverty in terms of improvements in measures of cognition or IQ scores makes such programs vulnerable to backlash and risks validating racist and eugenicist arguments about race and intelligence.

Adulation for Today's Space Race is Misplaced. So is Nostalgia for the First One

by Catherine Devlin

It is impossible not to compare today’s billionaire space race to the iconic celestial competition of the 1960’s. But what if neither is worthy of adulation?

Dems Worry Not Passing Biden Agenda Will Kill Them in the Midterms. Does Legislation Actually Matter?

Ronald Brownstein, with help from Julian Zelizer, explains that even big wins for presidential priorities seldom save the party in power from a big beating in the midterms, a "second year curse" of modern presidencies.

A House Still Divided (Part 1)

by Walter G. Moss

The core of our polarization is a disagreement about what kind of country we will be – one dominated by Christian white men or one, in Frederick Douglass's words, "of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds." 

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

by John Stoehr

Comparing the recent COVID relief bill to the 2009 bailout of the subprime crisis shows a rapid turn away from the Republican and New Democratic consensus that social welfare assistance must be tied to work and limited to people who are "deserving."

George Floyd’s Death Is a Failure of Generations of Leadership

by Elizabeth Hinton

To begin to dismantle the socioeconomic conditions that led to Mr. Floyd’s premature death, we can look to the principles of community representation and grass-roots empowerment that steered the early development of Johnson’s domestic program.

America's New Nihilism

The Deputy Editor of the WSJ Editorial Page blames decades of failed urban policy, not "systemic racism" for problems plaguing urban communities of color.

States Are in Crisis. Why Won’t Trump Help?

by Lizabeth Cohen

The abandonment of a federalist system where states are accountable to Washington and residents everywhere can expect equitable treatment is recasting the United States of America to favor States over United. 

Work Requirements are Catastrophic in a Pandemic

by Elisa Minoff

Instead, we should be implementing policies that support people’s work in the wage labor force and make it possible for working families to make ends meet.

Realistic Ambitions

by Michael Kazin

Can today’s liberals hope to match the achievements of LBJ’s presidency?

What Everyone Gets Wrong About LBJ’s Great Society

by Joshua Zeitz

It wasn't some radical left-wing pipedream. It was moderate; and it worked.

Trump Tears Down LBJ’s Great Society Piece by Piece

by Christina Greer

How the Trump election commission could corrode our civil rights from within.

The Real Legacy in Jeopardy Under the New Congress? LBJ’s.

by Josh Zeitz

The GOP has plans to take apart many of Johnson’s Great Society reforms. Will Trump let them succeed?

Fifty Years Later, the Immigration Bill That Changed America

It was back in 1965, during the depths of the Cold War and the peak of the civil rights movement, that the United States overhauled its immigration laws.

UC Santa Barbara History Department featuring a series on the Great Society at 50

“Basically, we’re trying to connect the past and the present because a lot of these Great Society programs that were implemented in the 60’s still exist in some form, but a lot of them are under attack now.”

How Obama and the Democrats Can Build a Twenty-First Century Supermajority

by Mac McCorkle

Credit: Wiki Commons.The virtues and vices of 1960s liberalism are on striking display in Bancroft-Prize winning historian James Patterson’s The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America. And as Patterson deftly shows, the extremes were fused into the presidential administration as well as personal character of Lyndon Baines Johnson.“These are the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem,” declared LBJ in lighting the National Christmas Tree on December 18, 1964. “Today -- as never before -- man has in his possession the capacities to end war and preserve peace, to eradicate poverty and share abundance, to overcome the diseases that have afflicted the human race and permit all mankind to enjoy their promise in life on this earth.”