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Driving Questions Surrounding The Driving Question Of The Great Society

969 Words4 Pages

Starting in the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson envisioned the Great Society to address long-term social problems, including poverty, economic inequality, and lack of social justice in the United States of America. The central question of the Great Society was ‘What do Americans have to do and what does their government have to do about social and economic inequality’. This essay will be about the questions surrounding the ‘driving question’ of the Great Society, its legislative achievements, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, its comparison with the New Deal, conceived by Franklin Roosevelt, and its impact on the American people and their government. The Great Society emerged at a time when the US …show more content…

Like Roosevelt's New Deal, the Great Society expanded the role of government in promoting the welfare of its citizens (Foner 997). Both presidents believed in the power of government intervention to improve lives and ensure economic stability. President Johnson thought of himself in the vein of his hero, Franklin Roosevelt, when regarding the role of the federal government in addressing social and economic problems (Foner 992). Just as Roosevelt’s New Deal saw a greatly expanded state role in the nation’s economy and society (Foner 997), the Great Society witnessed a similar expansion regarding the role of government in securing the general welfare. Both these presidents believed that government power could rescue lives and protect the economic health of the public. Like Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Great Society emphasized government intervention in social and economic life: they both offered new programs that aimed to provide social benefits to people in need and secure the economy (Foner 999). Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all arrived as a result of the New Deal as well as the Great …show more content…

For it is a legacy of the distinct relationship the American people created with their government, the relationship of social responsibility and social action. The federal government intervention in the public health sphere we find during the COVID-19 pandemic only adds to the government’s ongoing bid for the welfare of its citizens, backed up by mandates to wear masks and vaccines, and an attempt to direct public health conduct by federal fiat and themes that echo the welfare state in the 21st century. The Great Society remains one of the highest documented expressions of the American people’s collective and still vital struggle to mitigate the social and economic forces of inequality. Lyndon Johnson’s broad ambitions, realized in such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, were designed to help his country reach ‘its richest promises of

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