US Crash Course: Cold War to Present COLD WAR #37 1. Why is The Cold War referred to as cold? 2. Is The Cold War more of a war or an era? 3. In what ways was the US at an advantage at the end of World War II? 4. Why did Russian create pro-communist states around them? 5. What was the policy of containment? 6. What pledge was made in the Truman Doctrine? 7. What was the Marshall Plan? 8. What happened in 1949? 9. Why was the relationship between The Cold War and consensus in congress? 10. How was the USSR able to build their own nuclear bombs so quickly? 12 11. What was The Red Scare? 12. How did The Cold War encourage loyalty to the state? COLD WAR # 38 1. What war is known as the Forgotten War? 2. Since the Korean War is not technically a war, what was it? 3. Vietnam was a colony to what country? 4. How did the Gulf of Tonkin incident expand the US involvement in Vietnam? 5. First part of Nixon s secret plan was - gradually withdrawing American troops and leaving the fighting to the Vietnamese. 6. The Khmer Rouge represented the absolute worst that Communism had to offer, forcing almost all Cambodians into communes and massacring of the country s population. 7. War Powers Act in 1973, which was supposed to limit the president s ability to send troops overseas without their approval of 8. The war between North and South Vietnam, however, continued until, when the North finally conquered the South and created a single, Vietnam. List important names from this episode: (3 minimum) 1. 2. 3.
Civil Rights and 1950 s #39 1. Between 1946 and 1960 Americans experienced a period of economic expansion that saw standards of living and gross national product more than 2. The 1950s was the era of. The number of homes in the United States doubled during the decade, which had the pleasant side effect of creating lots of. 3. Classic example of suburbanization was in New York, where 10,000 almost identical homes were built and became home to people almost overnight. 4. Most people agreed on the American values:, respect for property, and belief in equal opportunity. 5. You might think the Civil Rights Movement began with and the Montgomery Bus Boycott or else Brown v. Board of Education, but it really started during.but even before that, black Americans had been fighting for civil rights 6. v. Ferguson that required all public facilities to be separate but equal. 7. On December 1,, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and got arrested, kicking off the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted almost a 8. The Bus Boycott also thrust into prominence a young pastor from Atlanta, the 26 year old 9. But there was also widespread systemic inequality and poverty in the decade that shows just how far away we were from living the ideal of opportunity. 1960 s #40 1. So the 1960s saw people organizing and actively working for, both in the social order and in government. This included the student movement, the woman s movement, movements for gay rights, major anti-war movement, and a push by the courts to expand rights in general. 2. Then, in 1961, leaders from the Congress of Equality (CORE) launched "Freedom Rides" to integrate interstate buses. Volunteers rode the buses into the deep South, where they faced, including beatings and a bombing in Aniston, Alabama. 3. Television brought the reality of the Jim Crow South into people's, as images of Bull Connor's police dogs and water cannons being turned on peaceful marchers, many of them children, horrified viewers, and eventually led to endorse the movement's goals. 4. John F. Kennedy was initially cool to civil rights, but to be fair, the Cold War occupied a lot of his time, what with the missile crisis, and the Bay of, and whatnot. But the demonstrations of 1963 pushed John F. Kennedy to support more actively. 5. Civil Act of 1964. The law prohibited discrimination in employment,, hospitals, and privately owned public places, like restaurants and hotels and theaters, and it also banned discrimination on the basis of sex. 6. Voting Rights Act, which gave the federal government the power to oversee in places where
discrimination was practiced. 7. 1964 saw the beginnings of riots in city, for instance, mostly in northern cities. The worst riots were in 1965 in, in southern California. These left 35 people dead, 900 injured, and $30 million in damage. 8., who many white people regarded as an advocate for violence, but who also called for self-reliance. 9. Perhaps the most significant freedom movement, in terms of number of people involved and long-lasting effects, was the American movement. 10. 1968 began with the Offensive in Vietnam, which stirred up the protest. 11. There's one last thing I want to emphasize: All of this wasn't really the result of like a radical revolution. It was the result of a process that had been going on for decades. I mean, arguably, a process that had been going on for of years. Rise of Conservatism #41 1. Now you'll remember from our last episode that we learned that not everyone in the 1960s was a psychedelic, rock listening, war-protesting hippie. In fact there was a strong undercurrent of thinking 2. But both of these strands of conservatism were very hostile toward and also to the idea of government. 3. So in the end Goldwater received a paltry 27 million votes to Johnson's million and democrats racked up huge majorities in both houses of. 4. Nixon won the election, campaigning as the candidate of the of Americans, who weren't anti-war protesters, and who didn't admire free love or the communal ideas of hippies. 5. Conservatives who voted for Nixon, hoping that he would roll back the New Deal, were disappointed. I mean, in some ways the Nixon domestic agenda was just a continuation of LBJ's. 6. University of California v. Bakke. This upheld as a valid governmental interest, although it did strike down the use of strict quotas in university admissions. 7. v established a woman's right to have an abortion in the first trimester of her pregnancy as well as a more limited right as the pregnancy progressed. 8. Watergate was followed by a Senate investigation by the Church Committee, which revealed that Nixon was hardly the first president to have abused his. 9. Church Commission, Watergate, the Pentagon papers, Vietnam, all of these things revealed a government that truly was, and this undermined a fundamental liberal belief that government is a good institution that is supposed to solve problems and promote freedom. Ford, Carter, Economic Malaise #42 1. The big story of the 1970s is, 25 years of broad economic expansion and prosperity came to
a grinding halt in the 1970s, meaning that our party was over. 2. In 1971, for the first time in the 20th century, America experienced an deficit, importing more goods than it exported. 3. So by 1970, competition led employers to either eliminate high-paying manufacturing jobs or else to increase automation or to shift workers to lower-wage regions of the U.S., or even. 4. In 1973, in response to western support of, middle-eastern Arab states suspended oil exports to the, which led to the price of oil quadrupling. 5. This resulted in long lines for, dramatically higher oil prices and Americans deciding to purchase smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, which is to say Japanese cars. Also, prices of everything else went because oil is either used for the production of or transportation of just about. 6. One of Ford's first acts was to pardon, making him immune from prosecution for obstruction of justice. That very unpopular decision probably made it impossible for Ford to win in election. 7. Coincidentally, was the only memorable domestic program that Ford proposed. It stood for "Whip Now" and it was basically a plea for Americans to be better shoppers, spend less and wear "WIN" buttons. 8. Aiming to make human rights a cornerstone of America's foreign policy, Jimmy tried to turn away from the Cold War framework and focus instead on combating third world poverty and reducing the spread of nuclear weapons. 9. When that relationship broke down and we had both high and high, it undermined the entire idea of government intervention. Regan Revolution #43 1. The Reagan Era began, unsurprisingly, with his election to the presidency in. 2. Reagan emphasized his belief in rights, condemned welfare cheats, condemned bussing and action, and won the support of religious conservatives, including the newly formed Moral Majority, by standing for family values, even though in fact he was the first U.S. president to have been divorced. 3. And a big part of Ronald Reagan's version of freedom was economic freedom, which he laid out in his Bill of Rights. It would curtail union power, reduce federal regulation of industry and the environment, and most of all, lower taxes. 4. In 1981, Reagan persuaded Congress to lower the top tax rate from 70% to %. In 1986, Congress went much further with the Reform Act, which lowered the top income tax rate to 28%. 5. So the idea that lower taxes is the best way to spur economic growth is called
Economics, or Down Economics 6. The Reagan Era did see cuts to some programs, but the really expensive items- Social Security, Medicare, Medicade- remained largely intact. And instead of cutting the overall amount of spending, it actually went up considerably because of the Spending Binge, which saw the national debt balloon to 2.7 trillion dollars. 7. And then we have Ronald Reagan's reputation as the man who ended the Cold War. The thinking here goes that Regan spent so much money on Defense that the Soviets themselves trying to compete. 8. The highlight was his proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, aka, which included space based missiles and lasers for shooting Soviet missiles out of the sky. This was a fantastic idea, although it would have violated the 1972 Anti Ballistic Treaty. 9. Reagan was able to negotiate the first reduction in weapons with the new Soviet Premier Mikhail Gordachev in 1986. In fact, the two leaders might have tried to get rid of nuclear weapons all together, but Reagan's unwillingness to give up his Star Wars Initiative made that impossible. 10. Middle Eastern policy played a key role in the biggest controversy of Reagan's presidency: The Scandal. 11. They hatched a plan to sell arms to the government, still technically our enemies, and then funnel some of the profits from those illegal arm sales to the. George HW Bush and END of Cold War #44 1. Bush flew missions in the Pacific during World War II and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for completing a mission in a burning plane before ditching into the sea 2. The end of the Cold War was really a failure on the part of the rather than the result of successful American policies. 3. One positive result of the end of the Cold War was reduction in weapons: under Bush the US and USSR negotiated and implemented the START and START treaties which limited the number of warheads each country could possess to between 3000 and 3500.
4. And then there was the foreign-policy crisis that Bush handled decisively: Saddam Hussein's invasion of in August 1990. Bush brought the issue to the UN and ushered through a Security Council resolution that set a deadline for Saddam to leave Kuwait. 5. When ground troops led by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf finally moved in they were able to defeat the Iraqi army in less than hours 6. So the Gulf War lifted President Bush's approval rating to an unheard-of of %. 7. For better and for worse America didn't really change that much as a result of the end of the Cold War. We're creeping up now on the growth of the which will change the way that Americans and everyone else imagines history and everything else forever. The Clinton Years #45 1. Oslo Accords, when Israel recognized the legitimacy of the Liberation Organization. However, that eventually resulted in the PLO becoming progressively less powerful and as you may have noticed, it didn t ultimately achieve peace in the Middle East. 2. Rwandan genocide, which the Clinton administration did absolutely nothing to prevent, and where people died in less than a month. The Rwandan genocide is probably the international community's greatest n the 2nd half of the 20th century 3. Terrorism also became a bigger issue during Clinton s presidency. The World Center was bombed for the 1st time, the U.S.S. was attacked, but the most destructive terrorist act during Clinton s presidency was of course committed by Americans - Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols who blew up the Murray Federal building in City. 4. Clinton did actually shrink parts of the government with policies like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated 5. In fact, by the time Clinton left office unemployment was below % which hadn t happened since the 1960s. That meant there should have been inflation, but somehow there wasn t, possibly because of increased global competition that kept wages down, and also energy prices that were remarkably low as worldwide production increased. 6. Who wrote this episodes Mystery Document? 7. As had always been the case, most immigrants were attracted by labor opportunities, but now more were highly educated. In fact, % had college educations. 8. So the 90s were a really pivotal decade to the world we live in right now, a globalized, multicultural, instagram-filtered world. But as we became more globally connected political divisions grew within the United States. And this became especially problematic because with the growth of the it was easier than ever to only hear voices that you already know you agree with.
Terrorism, War, and Bush #46 1. The controversy starts with the election. Democratic presidential candidate Al 'I invented the internet' Gore was sitting vice president and he asked Bill Clinton not to campaign much because a lot of voters kind of hated Bill Clinton. 2. Bush also attempted education reform with the No Child Act, which mandated that states implement rigorous standards and regimes to prove that those standards were being met. 3. In the 9/11 attacks Almost people died including almost 400 policemen and firefighters. As Americans rushed to help in the search for survivors and to rebuild a devastated city, a shared sense of trauma and a desire to show resolve really did bring the together. 4. So on October 7th the United States launched its first strikes against Afghanistan, which at the time was ruled by a group of Islamic fundamentalists called the Taliban who were protecting Osama Bin, al Qaeda's leader. 5. The ultimate goal of Doctrine was to make the world safe for freedom and also to spread it and freedom was defined as consisting of political democracy, free expression, religious toleration, free trade and free. 6. The Act gave the government unprecedented law enforcement powers to combat domestic terrorism, including the ability to wiretap and spy on. 7. Then in August 2005 Hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, submerging much of the city, killing nearly people, and leaving thousands stranded without basic services. 8. And then in 2007 the country fell back into recession as a massive housing bubble began to deflate, followed by the near collapse of the American system in 2008 9. Under the leadership of George W. Bush, the United States began a global fight against and for freedom. But as always what we mean by those words is evolving and there is no question that in trying to ensure a certain kind of freedom we have undermined other kinds of freedom. Obamanation #47 1. So when we last left George W. Bush, his approval rating was dropping to the number in President of the United States approval rating history. 2. When banks stop lending, business can't. So the stock market collapsed, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping from about 14,000 to around 8,000, which wiped out $ trillion of shareholder wealth, and the majority of Americans had money invested in the stock
market, much of it into former retirement funds. 3. In the last three months of 2008 and the first three months of 2009, our GDP dropped %. And world trade cratered, and that led to unemployment and misery. 4. In, Obama's election seemed like a political watershed, and not just because he was the first president. He appeared to break Republicans' solid hold on the South. 5. On the other hand, Obama has been criticized internationally for backing of his promise to close the Bay Detention Camp, and he has largely followed the Bush Administration's policies with the War on. 6. The Affordable Act is arguably the most significant piece of social legislation since, and it seeks to move the United States into the ranks of countries with universal health care. A list that includes every industrialized nation on Earth. We're number one!... among countries that don't have universal health care. 7. Obama was reelected president in, the Republicans continued to control the House, the Democrats continued to have the slim majority in the, and now America is facing something of a political crisis. 8. So if you've learned anything this year, I hope it's been that the American story that we find ourselves in now isn't entirely novel. And I think we have much to learn from those who came before us, both from their and from their many, many.