Documenting United States History

520 CHApTEr 22 | a ConSerVatiVe tenor | period nine 1980 to the present working with Secondary Sources^521521

Working WitH SeCondary SourCeS

AP® Short Answer Questions

the new right

PerioD nine

1 980 to the

Present

Is there a point at which the coming together of wealth and leisure can change the nature

of the definition of conservative in America? America’s history defines conservatism as

a belief in the status quo. Now, increasing access to the American Dream offers a new

day in the social and political destinies of American citizens. Historians must consider

whether the promise of this pursuit moves beyond the economic realm into uncharted

waters that would likely confuse the Puritans. Did the fulfillment of a left-wing, populist

approach toward access and equity create a New Right, a new norm, and a new sense of

entitlement and what it means to have fulfilled the Dream? You have already read various

sources that illustrate the differences between liberal and conservative points of view

during this time period. Now read the two passages below and consider the extent to

which the New Right represented a return to the states quo.

The United States became a definitively suburban nation during the final decades

of the twentieth century, with the regional convergence of metropolitan trends

and the reconfiguration of national politics around programs to protect the con-

sumer privileges of affluent white neighborhoods and policies to reproduce the

postindustrial economy of the corporate Sunbelt. Since the rediscovery of Middle

America during the Nixon era, the suburban orientation of the bipartisan battle

for the political center has remained persistently unreceptive to civil rights initia-

tives designed to address the structural disadvantages facing central cities and

impoverished communities. Despite the ritual declarations that the federal courts

would not permit public opposition to influence the enforcement of constitutional

principles, the historical fate of collective integration remedies for educational and

residential segregation demonstrated the responsiveness of the judicial and pol-

icymaking branches to the grassroots protests of affluent suburban families. The

color-blind and class-driven discourse popularized in the Sunbelt South helped

create a suburban blueprint that ultimately resonated from the “conservative”

subdivisions of southern California to the “liberal” townships of New England:

a bipartisan political language of private property values, individual taxpayer

rights, children’s educational privileges, family residential security, and white racial

innocence.

—Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South

(princeton, nJ: princeton University press, 2006).

Although the political activity of the New Right and the threat of AIDS seemed

to augur [predict] a retrenchment [reversal] in the behavior of many Americans,

as the 1980s drew to a close it was not at all clear what the future would bring.

Certainly the outcome of current controversies about sex would have to build

upon the complicated set of sexual meanings that had evolved over genera-

tions. For instance, in seeking a restoration of sexuality to marriage, replete with

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