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 um 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 just as a reminder as we're getting closer to ap exam time you might want to 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 long-standing energy crisis due to middle eastern oil exporters cutting off the supply to the u.s 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 describe 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 decreased 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 rights 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's 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 but 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 tenant 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 how 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 conservatives since 1980 what they think of ronald reagan their response is i love him 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 u.s history curriculum if you want help getting an a in your class and a 5 on your exam in may then click right here review packet if you want me to keep making these videos then by all means let me know that by subscribing heimblerout