ABSTRACT
The conservative view was announced as early as 1972 when the Republican platform labeled the decade "a nightmarish time in which the torch of free America was virtually snuffed out in a storm of violence and protest", a theme broadcast since by many talk-show hosts. Liberals have often disliked the excesses and violence but have concluded that many changes eventually were beneficial to the nation. The sixties was a political reform era, one of the few in American history: the American Revolution granted liberties and placed democratic ideals into the world's first Constitution; the Jacksonian era expanded those liberties and granted the vote to the common man; the Civil War ended slavery; the Progressive era increased governmental powers to regulate the economy and society, and began to protect nature; and the New Deal introduced the safety net in the form of unemployment compensation and social security.
