484 Chapter 21 | Discontinuities | Period eight 1945 –198 0By 1960, Orange County’s [California] economy and social structure had become
remarkably complex. Rapid growth had deepened and magnified elements of social
strain. Moreover, the community’s very newness meant that its values and mores
were, to some extent, up for grabs—to be determined in the cultural battles that
would be fought in the decade to come. Yet these factors do not, in themselves,
explain how the Right found a home, since many communities shared the region’s
experience of rapid growth, yet few witnessed a conservative mobilization of the
strength and magnitude of that in Orange County during the 1960s. Rather, it was
the convergence of a particular set of social, economic, and political forces within
the region that contributed to the germination of a conservative culture.
The county’s cultural traditions, its conservative regional elite, its mode of
development, and the kinds of migrants who made their home there provided the
ingredients from which the Right would create a movement. First, there were the
“old-timers,” the large ranchers and small farmers, merchants, shop owners, and
middle-class townspeople who had embraced a strong individualism and strict mor-
alism for many years. Added to this older conservatism were the southland’s “cow-
boy capitalists,” the new boom-time entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in the
post–World War II era of affluence and spent their capital and their energy spreading
the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism and an anti-Washington ethos. Together with
ranchers-turned-property-developers, county boosters, and real estate speculators,
they created a built world that affirmed the values of privacy, individualism, and
property rights and weakened a sense of cohesive community, providing an opening
for organizations, churches, and missionary zealots that could provide one. Into this
setting came the homogeneous group of migrants who populated Orange County.
Although they had not necessarily embraced right-wing politics before they came
West, the environment of Orange County reinforced strands of social conservatism
they had brought in their cultural baggage. Finally, the specific economic dynamics
of the Cold War–related industries reinforced the connection between anticommu-
nism and prosperity in the minds of both newcomers and old-time residents.
Taken together, these forces magnified conservative strands of political culture
within the region, creating a fertile ground for right-wing growth. Once catalyzed,
this fermentation developed a dynamic of its own. The conservative ethos of the
county, for example, drew like-minded folk to settle there, making it more likely that
large numbers of Orange Countians would hear the Right’s message and heed its
call.Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 29–30.To answer the prompt, you will need to employ several of the historical thinking skills that
are addressed in previous chapters:•
Historical Causation: Determine the relationship between the primary documents and the
claims made in McGirr’s essay.•
Use of Relevant Evidence: Determine the ways in which different documents both support
and refute the claims in McGirr’s essay.•
Interpretation and Synthesis: Determine the ways in which the combination of the primary
documents agree with, disagree with, or modify the claims in McGirr’s essay.Putting it All together 48522_STA_2012_ch21_473-488.indd 484 06/05/15 6:22 PM