An American History

CULTURE WARS ★^1101

terminate a pregnancy. The decision
allowed states to enact mandatory
waiting periods and anti- abortion
counseling, but it overturned a
requirement that the husband be
given notification before the proce-
dure was undertaken. “At the heart of
liberty,” said the Court, “is the right
to... make the most intimate and per-
sonal choices” without outside inter-
ference. In effect, Casey repudiated the
centuries- old doctrine that a husband
has a legal claim to control the body of
his wife.

The Antigovernment
Extreme

At the radical fringe of conservatism,
the belief that the federal government
posed a threat to American freedom
led to the creation of private mili-
tias who armed themselves to fend
off oppressive authority. Groups like
Aryan Nation, Posse Comitatus, and
other self- proclaimed “Christian patri-
ots” spread a mixture of racist, anti-
Semitic, and antigovernment ideas.
Private armies, like the Militia of Montana, vowed to resist enforcement of fed-
eral gun control laws. For millions of Americans, owning a gun became a prime
symbol of liberty. “We’re here because we love freedom,” declared a participant
in a 1995 Washington rally against proposed legislation banning semiauto-
matic assault weapons.
Many militia groups employed the symbolism and language of the
American Revolution, sprinkling their appeals with warnings about the
dangers of government tyranny drawn from the writings of Thomas Jef-
ferson, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine. They warned that leaders of both
major parties formed part of a conspiracy to surrender American sover-
eignty to the United Nations, or to some shadowy international conspiracy.
Although such organizations had been growing for years, they burst into the
national spotlight in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh, a member of the militant

FIGURE 27.2 WOMEN IN THE

PAID WORKFORCE, 1940–2010

2008 2050

13%

15%

66%

4%

3%

13%

30%

46%

8%

5%

Non-Hispanic

white Asian

Other

Black

Hispanic

By 2000, women represented nearly half of the

American workforce, and unlike in the nineteenth

century, a majority of women working outside the

home were married.

What cultural conflicts emerged in the 1990s?