CONSENSUS AND CHANGE
The United States dominated glob- al affairs in the years immediately after World War II . Victorious in that great struggle, its homeland undamaged from the ravages of war, the nation was confident of its mission at home and abroad . U .S . leaders wanted to maintain the dem- ocratic structure they had defended at tremendous cost and to share the benefits of prosperity as widely as possible . For them, as for publisher Henry Luce of Time magazine, this was the “American Century .”
For 20 years most Americans re- mained sure of this confident ap- proach . They accepted the need for a strong stance against the So- viet Union in the Cold War that unfolded after 1945 . They endorsed
the growth of government author- ity and accepted the outlines of the rudimentary welfare state first for- mulated during the New Deal . They enjoyed a postwar prosperity that created new levels of affluence .
But gradually some began to question dominant assumptions . Challenges on a variety of fronts shattered the consensus . In the 1950s, African Americans launched a crusade, joined later by other mi- nority groups and women, for a larg- er share of the American dream . In the 1960s, politically active students protested the nation’s role abroad, particularly in the corrosive war in Vietnam . A youth counterculture emerged to challenge the status quo . Americans from many walks of life sought to establish a new social and political equilibrium .
CHAPTER 12: POSTWAR AMERICA
“We must build a new world, a far better world —
one in which the eternal dignity of man
is respected.”
President Harry S. Truman, 1945