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The Revival of Conservatism, 1980...
Summary
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The excesses and bloat of the liberal state brought a backlash that gained a voice first in Richard Nixon and George Wallace but came into full flower under Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut the welfare state, reduced taxes, and was decidedly pro-business and socially conservative. He also capitalized on Cold War rhetoric to increase military spending. Under Reagan and Bush, the gap between rich and poor widened and social reform slowed: civil-rights progress waned, as did gains for women and other minorities as well as the environmental movement. So prevalent was this conservative resurgence that even Democrat Bill Clinton coopted some of its ideas. At the same time, structural changes in the national economy and the diminished role of the U.S. in the world economy led to difficulty balancing budgets and some mild social tensions. America became a post-industrial service economy, throwing traditional industrial workers into transition. Furthering instability was the roller coaster economic shifts of the 1980s and early 1990s, and population changes—Americans continued flocking to the West and South, the affluent abandoned the cities and were replaced by a new wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America, and the population began to grow older. On the world stage, the 1980s saw the end of the Cold War and American involvement in Latin America, covert and otherwise, in a number of countries under varying circumstances.
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