ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the following seven areas: economics, economic and social welfare policy, and labor questions; foreign policy, the military, and espionage; race and Negro civil rights; constitutional and legal developments, relations among the three branches of the federal government, federalism, and the role of government in general. The others are: individual liberties and citizen rights; currents in political and social thought; and sociocultural developments. The end of World War II and America's rapid demobilization—"the habitual American response to victory"—and conversion back to a peacetime economy brought expected problems. The chapter makes the comparison of the economic life and policies of the 1945-1960 period with the Founding Era. The period was especially noted for continuing and furthering the conformist culture that began in the 1930s. At the same time, the battle against fascism in World War II and the challenge of communism in the new Cold War motivated a renewed attention to traditional American political principles and religious commitment.
