following years. The same should remain true for his plans of societal progress
through governmental support.
The reforms included in the ‘Great Society’ had the same problems as his
civil rights legislation – for the one side, it was too much, and for the other it was
not nearly enough. For the Republicans and America’s right-wing politicians in
general, these extensive programs represented their arch nemesis, big
government. They used this concept to play with people’s fears about the
government controlling too many aspects of their lives in order to gain votes in
the upcoming election. George Wallace, for example, blamed people’s
discontent on Johnson’s legislation: “There’s a backlash against big government
in this country” (qtd. in Nelson, 2014, p. 134). The New Left criticised it because
for them, the Vietnam War and America’s racist system were intertwined (Grace,
2016, p. 80), making it impossible to commend Johnson’s civil rights legislation
while the war in Vietnam continued. Leaders of the civil rights movement
critiqued America’s involvement as well, including Martin Luther King, who
positioned himself as dissenter, citing the “very obvious and almost facile
connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have
been waging in America” (qtd. in Bloom & Breines, 2011, p. 206).
The great financial burden of the Vietnam War also played a role in the
inadequate performance of the new progressive legislation because it left the
new programmes underfunded (Brown-Collier, 1998, p. 265). And even the
economic improvements could not gloss over the civil unrest of the times and
the discontent with the reforms. A contemporary study on the economic impact
by Kermit Gordon drew the conclusion that “we are a nation which sees itself as
wracked and divided” (qtd. in Brown-Collier, 1998, p. 264). Even though the
study finds successes in many of the policies when measured in unemployment
numbers or the general growth of the economy, it still acknowledges the
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