Outsiders locking in
In the United States something very odd happened during the period of time from the middle of the 1950's up to the impact of the crisis of the 1960's. For once in the storied history of the United States a majority of Americans accepted the same system of assumptions. This shared system of assumptions is known as the liberal consensus. The main reason there was such a thing as liberal consensus was because of the extreme economic growth we experienced in the U.S. during the post World War II era. However, the consensus didn't apply to one important group of people. These were the combat soldiers it the Vietnam War. Their experiences at home and abroad suggest that they were outsiders to the ideology that Godfrey Hodgson outlines in his book America In Our Time and that they were not motivated by the promises and values of the liberal consensus. To understand what makes these soldiers outsiders we must first understand what the liberal consensus was. Hogson argues that the social and intellectual world view of the 1950's and early 1960's was based on the ideology that "capitalism was a revolutionary force for social change, that economic growth was supremely good because it obviated the need
Next, he feels that the key to this potential is production and economic growth. This economic growth creates incremental resources, therefore eliminating social conflict between classes. With an absence of realistic alternatives, they believed that by volunteering that would be able to have more control over their assignments. To further understand the situation of Vietnam soldiers we must look at the U. Now that the war was in full swing, things on the home front were not much better for working class members of society. policy makers still felt they could not lose Vietnam because they saw it as a crucial aspect in the long-term effort to contain communism. It was beginning to become quite obvious that the liberal consensus was not a "Big Tent" in which most members of society were under. However, this belief was unfortunately untrue because all of the good assignments were either placed out of reach for most members of the working class or given out earlier to more educated, well off members of society. Next, by government enlightened in social sciences they can apply inputs to the problem solving, such as money and resources. It began to be clear to them that we were fighting a war we could not win. This option most working-class families could not afford. At this time Vietnam was a pawn in geopolitical strategy for growth for many countries including France, Great Britain, China, and the U. The only decent option the working class had was to enlist in the Navy or Airforce, which required a three or four year commitment, unlike the Army which required two, but could greatly reduce the chances that they would end up on the battle field.
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