Existing comment:
"The crisis we face is not the... failure of the American spirit; it is a failure of our leaders to establish rational goals and give our people something to order their lives by."
-- Ronald Reagan, November 1979
The Turbulent 1970s:
After the upheavals of the 1960s, the nation suffered through another tumultuous decade in the 1970s. The US military retreated from South Vietnam. A bungled burglary unraveled into the Watergate affair and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Some Americans began to fear that their government and military were inept, or worse, dishonorable.
At home, Americans suffered through factory closures, high energy prices, gas lines, and a ten-year battle with inflation. In 1979, the Soviet Union brutality invaded Afghanistan, and Iranian radicals took 66 Americans hostage. |