Johnson administration

The Johnson administration lasted from November 22, 1963 – January 20, 1969.

Civil rights

Democrat Leader Lyndon Johnson told Sen. Richard Russell,

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

War on Poverty

The War on Poverty was a set of programs instituted by President Johnson and its associated legislation passed by Congress in an effort to supposedly combat poverty. It was criticized extensively by conservatives because it expanded the welfare system and increased citizen dependency on the government. It was also reputed to have destroyed the Black family unit.

Michael Harrington is credited with inspiring the War on Poverty with his 1962 book "The Other America".

Like the Vietnam war, the Democratic party led America to another defeat in the War on Poverty. The big government spending binge of the 1960s culminated in the stagflation hangover of the 1970s and the Reaganomic reforms of the 1980s.

Vietnam war

Max Boot wrote:

Numerous bits of conventional wisdom have accreted around the Vietnam War. It is commonly held that Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese nationalist above all, not a true communist, and that his victory was inevitable. That Ngo Dinh Diem was an unpopular and repressive reactionary. That the United States had no vital strategic interest in defending South Vietnam. That the ‘domino theory’ was a myth. That the U.S. was right not to invade North Vietnam or Laos for fear of triggering Chinese intervention. Mark Moyar, a young, bold, and iconoclastic historian, takes a sledge hammer to these hoary beliefs. [His book] is ‘revisionist’ in the best sense of the word.” [1]

Jeffrey Record contends that the military was relegated, as a result of its constitutional position, to the role of an accomplice in what Records states was the most strategically reckless American enterprise of the 20th century. He charge President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara with harshly suppressing their military advisers, with Johnson believing that his hawkish Joint Chiefs of Staff were out to destroy his Great Society by their wild-eyed schemes.

Many politically correct "history books" make the My Lai Massacre into an important event of the war. In March 1968 in the hamlet of My Lai, approximately 400 civilians were killed by American troops under the command of 2nd Lt. William Calley. Many troops present that day protested and did not take part in the event. After the event, the U.S. Army conducted an investigation and concluded there had been poor training in the Laws and Rules of Engagement, poor discipline and poor leadership up to the brigade commander. Atrocities on some level occur in every war. Since the 19th century, the U.S. is one of the few nations who prosecute its soldiers for such acts when they happen. The enemy in Viet Nam "conveniently" overlooked their far more numerous acts of atrocities and used this event for propaganda. This does not justify the massacre, but 3 to 5,000 civilians were killed and found in mass graves after the retaking of Hue following the Tet Offensive, a point not often noted. Other atrocities are listed in other sections of this article.

Largely because of media bias during the war as well as the anti-war movement, various returning veterans in Vietnam were treated horribly by the anti-war crowd, where they often were spat upon and denounced as "baby killers" (ironically, many of the anti-war protestors tended to support abortion).