Excess Of Democracy
“People no longer felt the same obligation to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents.”
Samuel Huntington was a part of the group called “The Trilateral Commission” and contributed by writing about problems he has noticed in America, discussing the topic, “The 1960’s witnessed a dramatic upsurge of democratic fervor in America.” Samuel Huntington was a very intelligent man who was a political science professor at Harvard University and a long-time consultant to the White House on the war in Vietnam.
Huntington observed how there was a huge growth of civil participation, however overtime there has been a drastic decrease of government authority, which worried him deeply. Howard Zinn mentions this because during this time, the President needed the public in order to win the election. Meanwhile, the authority of the President was decreasing. Huntington made brave statements about how the position and role of the President wasn’t as strong since many other cooperated and incorporated their ideas, therefore the United States was being governed by anyone. During this time period, there was an extension of democracy. Samuel Huntington even suggested “desirable limits to the extension of political democracy.”
This was very important because throughout the 1960’s, the authority of government continued to drecrease. “The great demands in the sixties for equality had transformed the federal budget.” The fact that the population was spending more and more on foreign affairs as time went by concerned Huntington.
Throughout the 1960s, there was a democratic wave. This effected the power of people who influence others. The authority of the government was at stake. The democratic surge played a role in different forms effecting families, the business world, public and private associations, the governmental bureaucracy, and the military services.
During this time period, Huntington served as a primary force of assistance to bringing back the authority that the government needed to have. He tried several ways in order to create a more powerful force, and attempted to create change in many ways. He made a brilliant point of how bringing non-partisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his force would help. He also got assistance from Eisenhower and Kennedy who also tried teaming up and getting in touch with similar authority figures.The proper solution, according to the Trilateral Commission, was that a tie between the relations of United States, Europe and Japan was necessary.
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