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President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed a utopian new imaginative and prescient for the United States underneath a vastly expanded federal authorities, which he dubbed the Great Society, on this day in historical past, Jan. 4, 1965.
“We seek to establish a harmony between man and society, which will allow each of us to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate the quality of our civilization. This is the search that we begin tonight,” the president declared to the nation in his State of the Union address.
It was the first televised State of the Union, delivered in primetime on to the American folks, not simply to each chambers of Congress as the Constitution requires.
“The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed,” the president added, whereas imploring all Americans to motion.
The Great Society “will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents,” he additionally stated.
President Lyndon B. Johnson delivering a State of the Union message to a joint session of Congress. LBJ outlined his imaginative and prescient of a “Great Society” in the address on Jan. 4, 1965. (Getty Images)
Johnson’s imaginative and prescient provided a serving to hand to Americans most in want, proponents of the Great Society have argued over the years.
His imaginative and prescient failed dramatically by any empirical measure and succeeded solely in increasing the measurement and inefficiency of the federal paperwork and in institutionalizing generational poverty, its critics have famous.
Johnson assumed the Oval Office following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.
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LBJ was elected to the workplace a yr later, soundly defeating Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater (486 to 52 votes in the Electoral College), simply 9 weeks earlier than the State of the Union.
“The Great Society will not be the gift of government. It will require of every American … to make the journey.” — President Lyndon B. Johnson
He used his overwhelming victory as a mandate in the State of the Union to defend the want for enhanced U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and to suggest the federal authorities as a solution to an unlimited array of human ills and societal issues.
“We are [in Vietnam] first,” he stated, “because a friendly nation has asked us for help against the communist aggression… To ignore aggression now would only increase the danger of a much larger war,” he added.
Peace demonstrators show an indication referring to the president as a warfare prison throughout an enormous anti-Vietnam warfare protest at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
He then issued 9 direct proposals, the basis of the Great Society, to deal with all the pieces from training and crime to the setting and concrete renewal.
His challenges included extra obtuse targets, too.
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“I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency,” Johnson said in announcing his federal government wish list.
Johnson introduced the term “Great Society” on the campaign trail in 1964, a phrase coined by speechwriter Richard N. Goodwin.
His 1965 State of the Union was followed by an intense flurry of legislative activity from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who were in the midst of a 26-year period of controlling both chambers of Congress (1955-81).
In the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) takes the oath of office to become the 36th president. He was sworn in by U.S. Judge Sarah T. Hughes (1896-1985) on Air Force One in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, as Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy stood beside him. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
“The 1965 State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the White House Conference on Natural Beauty,” writes History.com.
“Johnson also signed the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.”
“The War on Poverty was destined to be one of the great failures of 20th-century liberalism.” — Allen J. Matusow, historian
The Great Society was, at its core, an effort to attack poverty in America and the challenges to education, health and opportunity that come with it.
Johnson had introduced the “war on poverty” in his State of the Union a year earlier.
In this central goal — to reduce or even eliminate poverty — the Great Society has been a boondoggle by any empirical measure.
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“The War on Poverty was destined to be one of the great failures of 20-century liberalism,” stated historian and Rice University professor Allen J. Matusow, based on the Foundation for Economic Freedom.
Homeless folks stand with their belongings in entrance of an outpatient psychological well being clinic in Los Angeles, California, on Dec. 6, 2022. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP by way of Getty Images)
“Those who most directly benefited,” he continued, “were the middle-class doctors, teachers, social workers, builders and bankers who provided federally subsidized goods and services of sometimes suspect value.”
The basis added, citing poverty researcher Michael D. Tanner of the Cato Institute: “Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. Instead, government programs have torn at the social fabric of the country and been a significant factor in increasing out-of-wedlock births with all of their attendant problems.”
“Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient.” — Michael D. Tanner, Cato Institute
It continued, “Most tragically of all, the pathologies they engender have been passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation.”
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The high quality of public training in America, in the meantime, has declined throughout all demographics and sectors of society since the Sixties, whereas the hole between the academic achievement of Black and White youngsters is bigger than ever, based on quite a few academic research.
President Lyndon B. Johnson palms a pen to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the signing of the Voting Rights Act in Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 1965. (Washington Bureau/Getty Images)
The Great Society has succeeded in turning the federal authorities into an insatiable leviathan.
The federal finances ballooned from $118.2 billion, when Johnson got here to workplace in 1963, to $195.6 billion when he left in 1969, based on the American Presidency Project at University of California Santa Barbara. That’s a rise of 65.5%.
The federal finances final yr was $6 trillion with a $1.8 trillion deficit, based on the similar report.
“The hopes and promises articulated by Johnson were grandiose, and inevitably raised expectations (bringing an end to poverty and racism for example) that no president could realistically hope to achieve,” George Washington University historian and professor of political administration Matthew Dallek wrote in 2015.
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“Though many of Johnson’s programs remain in place today,” writes History.com, “his legacy of a Great Society has been largely overshadowed by his decision to involve greater numbers of American soldiers in the controversial Vietnam War.”
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