Class Warfare

[bvar22]

8. Nice Essay!

Well written,
and thought provoking.

I disagree with only one statement:
"LBJ would try to update the New Deal with his Great Society programs, but folded under the pressure from the war machine in Vietnam."

LBJ didn't "fold".
Despite the VietNam War, he was still able to get a National, Single Payer, Publicly Owned, Government Administered Health Care Program (Medicare) enacted, and most of the Great Society & War on Poverty Programs enacted too.

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.

Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society

It is sad to realize that that crusty old WarMonger was the most Liberal President of the last 1/2 Century.



"The Johnson Treatment".
http://thejohnsonpost.blogspot.com/2009/08/johnson-treatment.html