among the unite the right rally in charlottesville, virginia though they changed their name after one of their members murdered heather heyer with his car. of course, their extremist views and ridiculous plastic shields earn them lots and lots of mockery this weekend when several were awkwardly left stranded at the arlington memorial bridge because their u haul wasn t large enough to carry them all home. they look really stupid and it easy to laugh at them, but to do so is to under estimate them and millions like them whose radical ideas are on the asent in this country. let not forget, the many that laughed at donald trump back in 2016 and even after he was elected, thanks to four years of trump, this is a backsliding democracy thanks to an international think tank. that s no joke. the truth is this country doesn t have a great track record of recognizing authoritarians for what they are, at least not until its too late. a darling of the american press and american papers cr
call dictators political dictator toes were not only popular in their own countries, but were also admired by numerous highly educated and idealistic westerners. the object of this political hero worship included benito mussolini, adolf hitler, mao mao tse-tung, and more recently, hugo chavez. few people remember it today, but the original lyrics from cole porter s immensely popular musical anything goes originally read you are the top, you are mussolini, you are the top, you are mrs. sweeney. [laughter] today, of course, it reads you are the top, you are an o neill drama, you are the top, you are whistler s mama. so some progress there. [laughter] and whereas few people today openly praise hitler or mussolini, it is not uncommon to see young men and women in our nation s capital wearing che guevara t-shirts and to see american entertainers like michael moore and intellectuals like noam chomsky praise the castro brothers and hugo chavez. paul hollander spent decades trying
increasing divorce rates drug use and crime. from the american historical association s annual meeting last month in new york city this is two hours. welcome, everybody, to today s panel on the crises of the 1970s. so we have a great panel today and i i m going to just start out by talking a little bit about what we thought how we kind of framed this panel and what we are kind of hoping to accomplish. one of the things we have set this up as a round table intentionally. all of us were going to speak for maybe about ten minutes, so kind of making a few brief remarks about the literature on the 1970s and thinking you about the 1970s, what this unique time means to us today and then we would like to open it up and have a lot of time for conversation, both among both with each other and most importantly, with the audience. so we are going to be sticking to a pretty, you know pretty tight time and hopefully having a lot of time for conversation. so, one of the things that
so, one of the things that we were thinking about in setting up this panel is the central role of the idea of crisis in thinking you about the 1970s, both in the contemporary political imagination of the time and also in historical scholarship. from water bait to the energy crisis, the urban crisis the fiscal crisis, the rhetoric of the era is infused with this sense of danger and awareness of historical change. and histories of the decade, too, often treat it in these kind of heightened terms. there s as many people have observed, the period of 1970s has gone from being easily dismissed historical footnote or a kind of punchline of some sort to being sort of interesting the 1960s, 1980s to being seen as in some ways a moment when many of the things that were most aware of in our own present world really came into existence. history such as nixon land the invisible bridge laura kalman s right star rising, no direction home jeff cowy s staying alive, michael foley s front porc
in the early 1970s and i think one of our challenges to think about what some of the consequences of those are and as kim said whether or not these are connected to each other. so, between about 1971 and 1976 and 1977 we first of all, get millions of new voters in this country, right? so you get a constitutional amendment that makes the voting age 18 instead of 21, so that s early in the 1970s. you also get a transformation of the primary system in this country, right? prior to the 1970s, you had primary systems they were not binding primary systems so the primary system that we all experience that at times has caused the last five or ten years crises of its own, that is also birthed in the early 1970s. you begin to get a transformation that had already started in the 1960s, but comes to true you wigs wigs in the 1970s of the ways in which congressional committees are structureded. you get the break down of the old congressional committee structure, dominated largely by south