Ronald Reagan and CONSERVATISM [APUSH Review Unit 9 Topic 2] Period 9: 1980-Present

Well, hey there and welcome back

to Heimler's History and, furthermore,

welcome to the first topic video of Unit

9 of the AP US History curriculum.

[INHALES] Mmm,

we are so close to the end.

Can you smell it?

Anyway, Unit 9 covers the time period

from 1980 to roughly the present.

So, this video is about the resurgence

of conservatism in America,

and the crowning achievement

of that movement was

the election of Ronald Reagan.

So, if you're ready to get them brain cows

milked very conservatively,

then let's get to it.

So, in this video I'm just aiming to do one thing:

explain the causes and effects

of continuing policy debates about the

role of the federal government over time.

And just as a reminder,

as we're getting closer to AP exam time,

you might wanna have a look

at my APUSH Ultimate Review Packet,

which has everything you need to get an A

in your class and a five

on your exam in May.

It is so tasty, it is

so juicy, have a look.

Okay, so this resurgence of conservatism

did not happen in a vacuum because

in nearly all cases, conservatives

of any size cannot fit into a vacuum.

Nailed it.

Anyway, the conservative movement really

began with some of the events we talked

about in the last unit,

starting with the 1964 presidential

campaign of Barry Goldwater who gave

a name to the movement,

namely The New Right.

And thanks to all the sorrows

of the Democratic presidency

of Jimmy Carter, the conservatives

would have an easy time unseating him.

On Carter's watch,

the nation dealt with the economic turmoil

of stagflation and then there was the Iran

hostage crisis, and then the cherry on top

was the longstanding energy crisis due

to Middle Eastern oil exporters

cutting off the supply to the US.

So, in the 1980 election,

here comes Ronald Reagan to save the day.

Reagan was a former actor and, thus, was

very savvy with televised media

and, therefore, came off very likable.

And Reagan was essentially the embodiment

of the three prongs of attack that The

New Right had been developing for years.

First, there was Cold War conservatism

which desired to resist the spread

of communism abroad, and we'll talk

more about this in the next video.

Second, conservatives of the New Right

described themselves as

pro-business economically.

This meant that they wanted to roll back

the regulations that liberal

administrations had put on big businesses

and then decrease corporate taxes

and create an economic environment

in which big business could flourish.

Third was the moral

and religious prong of attack.

As I mentioned in the last unit,

conservatives were pooping their modest

pants over all the cultural upheaval

occurring in the '60s and '70s.

You had the counterculture movement,

women's liberation, Roe versus Wade,

and the gay liberation movement, just

to name a few, and all of this felt

to the conservatives like an attack

on their traditional values.

And so, with Ronald Reagan at their head,

The New Right won a massive

victory in the election of 1980.

Reagan won 489 electoral votes compared

to Carter's 49 electoral votes.

And so, with all the context I've just laid

out for you, it won't be a surprise

for you to hear that many historians

understand the election of Ronald Reagan

as a large-scale rejection of all

the social changes that occurred

in the previous couple of decades.

Now, let's talk about some of Reagan's

policies and how they achieved

the aims of The New Right.

First let's talk about Reaganomics,

and hey, you gotta respect the kind

of chutzpah that drives a man to rename

an entire field of study after himself.

Anyway, the more accurate term

for Reagan's economic policies

was supply side economics.

The idea here is that American prosperity

will be achieved through tax cuts

and decreased federal spending.

If those two things happen,

then the idea is that there would be more

investment in the private sector

which would lead to an increase

in productivity and jobs.

And if you're listening carefully,

you can hear that this is a fundamental

rejection of the more liberal Keynesian

economics which dominated American

economics throughout a big chunk

of the 20th century,

and it argued that prosperity was achieved

through increased government spending.

Reagan argued that if you get

the government out of the economy,

then businesses would flourish

and that prosperity would

trickle down to everyone below.

So, to this end, a conservative Congress

passed the Economic Recovery Act of 1981,

which cut income taxes by 25%

over the next three years.

It also provided for cuts in corporate

income taxes, capital gains taxes,

and inheritance taxes.

And, in case, you don't know what

any of those are, don't worry.

All you really need to know is that these

are taxes that the very

wealthy have to contend with.

And so, it's enough to know

that, in general,

the wealthy disproportionately benefited

from those Reagan-era tax cuts.

And that makes sense

according to Reaganomics.

If the top tier are prosperous, then that

prosperity will trickle down to others.

Before you go canceling Reagan over that,

you should know that such a thing did kind

of happen in the prosperity of the 1920s,

so it's not without precedent.

But I should mention that while Reagan

worked hard to cut federal spending,

it really depends on what kind

of federal spending you're talking about.

His administration did cut federal

spending on welfare programs like food

stamps and public transportation,

and that saved the federal

budget about $40 billion.

But here's where I tell you

that Ronald Reagan did enjoy getting

the federal wallet out and spending metric

butt loads of government money, just as

long as that money was

spent on the US military.

While he saved 40 billion on food stamps,

he simultaneously racked up 150 billion

in military spending over

the course of his two terms.

So, when I say that Reagan wanted

to decrease federal spending,

it really depends on the kind of federal

spending you're talking about.

And with this kind of spending,

the federal budget began running a 200

billion to 300 billion dollar deficit a year.

And with that kind of deficit,

that meant that any new talk about social

programs to aid the welfare of lower-income

Americans was really off the table.

And furthermore, deregulation was a key

tenet in Reagan's economic policy.

Remember, by Reagan's reckoning,

the private sector was king, and anything

he could do to get the stinking

government out of it was a win.

He led the charge on reducing regulations

on the auto industry by lowering standards

of car emissions and safety regulations.

Additionally, Reagan's administration

opened federal lands for coal mining

and lumber extraction and also opened

offshore waters for oil drilling.

Remember, there was a big push

for environmental regulations in the few

decades prior to 1980,

and so Reagan was like,

"[LAUGHTER] Y'all so crazy."

And went ahead and rolled back dang

near every one of those regulations.

It was truly a massive shift in policy.

Okay, now let's look at how the Reagan

administration manifested the moral

and religious aims of the New Right.

One of the key strategies in conservative

groups like the Moral Majority was to have

conservative judges appointed

to the Supreme Court, and oh baby

did Reagan deliver on this one.

He appointed no less than four judges

to the Supreme Court: Sandra Day O'Connor,

William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia,

and Anthony Kennedy.

This major conservative victory led

to the scaling back of that nemesis

of conservatism known as affirmative

action and the state-level restrictions

of abortions, which rolled

back the provisions of Roe v.

Wade, which is why if you ask any

conservative since 1980 what they think

of Ronald Reagan, their response is,

"[CRYING] I love him so much."

Anyway, the point is this: the presidency

of Ronald Reagan was a watershed moment

in the modern history of American politics

because it was a fundamental rejection

of the liberalism that dominated

the '60s and '70s.

Okay, that's what you need to know about

Unit 9 Topic 2 of the

AP US History curriculum.

If you want help getting an A in your

class and a five on your exam in May,

then click right here and grab

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Heimler out.