[60 years ago this month, President Lyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it in his 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a number of Great Society laws, leading up to this post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]
Honestly I
think I said a good bit throughout this series about what we can, should, and
must learn from both individual Great Society laws and programs and the overarching,
progressive emphases of this administration and moment. So I’m simply gonna add
one follow-up thought here, courtesy of Honest
Abe himself:
“Now we
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”
Am I
saying we are currently engaged in a civil war? Not exactly, although I think our
moment qualifies at least as one of profound civil conflict (that’s only likely
to deepen in the coming years). And in any case, I believe Lincoln’s more central
point was about the nation’s ideals being put to the test. I would argue, and I
hope have argued throughout this series in fact, that the Great Society both
exemplified and amplified many of those ideals. And I know that 2025 and beyond
will test the Great Society and our ideals alike in all kinds of ways. I’m out
of the predicting business, but I know I’m proud to be in that fight with y’all.
Spring
semester previews start tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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