Most Significant Events Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Most Significant Events - Essay Example The last half of the twentieth century brought to America many remarkable social, economic and political events. Choosing the five I feel had the most powerful effect on America and the World was no easy task. Each decade held many amazing, newsworthy and notable times. After much consideration the five I have elected to go with are The Cold war, The Vietnam War, Reaganomics, Nixon’s Legacy, and Liberal Reform. Following World War II, there was a significant increase in births. The children born of this era were called, â€Å"The Baby Boom Generation†. This year, 2011, the Baby Boom Generation ranges in age from forty-six to sixty-five and represent about twenty-seven percent of the United States population. This almost twenty-year span saw the largest number of births on U.S. record. The parents of the â€Å"Baby Boomers† were spawned of the â€Å"Great Depression† and the â€Å"Dust Bowl†; children of poverty, deprived of so much. The greatest war in human history, World War II, changed their lives. After World War II the Baby Boomers and their parents experienced that American Dream. Mostly because of the GI Bill of Rights that was passed on June 22nd, 1944. This bill allowed returning GI’s to be able to buy homes and return to school. Jobs were everywhere and easy to find, particularly in the North East and along the coast. Because of the GI Bill, the suburbs were born as a couple after the couple moved their families outside the cities.... This caused a great boost to the economy as new housing developments, new schools and shopping centers sprung up everywhere; a nice safe place for children to grow up. The fifties were a time of innocence, in the beginning, but by the close of the fifties, innocence was lost as suburban moms began to work outside the home and â€Å"Latch Key† kids were born. The Sixties was the divining moment for the â€Å"Baby Boomers†. Their music, social ideas, lifestyles and the Civil Rights movement changed many things. â€Å"Make Love Not War was their motto and they lived for the advice of Timothy Leary’s advice to, â€Å"Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out†. By 1979, lots of â€Å"Boomers† were increasing the divorce rate. The sixties ideals had changed the way people thought, acted and believed. Times had changed and for most, there was no going back. From 1945-1954, President Truman evolved a policy of containment designed to hedge in the U.S.S.R., but even so , the cold war turned hot in Korea. At home, an anti-Communist crusade against suspected subversives subsided only after its reckless leader, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was censured. From 1963-1975, the idea that communism in Southeast Asia threatened vital American interests was argued and debated by many presidents. But it was Lyndon Johnson, who became President after Kennedy’s assignation; who began a massive bombing campaign and sent half a million American troops to intervene in Vietnam’s civil war. In 1974, amid dissent at home, Richard Nixon, then President of the United States, gradually began to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam, signaling limits to America’s influence as a superpower. In 1965, thousands of US