Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV is the virus which causes AIDS. In the 1980s and 1990s, the treatment, prevention, and research AIDS became politicized. The political issues surrounding HIV/AIDS ranged from debates over federal funding for scientific and medical research to arguments over “immoral” behavior being the root cause of the disease’s spread.
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Tag Archives: critical thinking
The Evil Empire
Following a relaxing of Cold War tensions during the 1970s (leading to such things as the Helsinki Agreement, for example), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 reignited fears and forebodings.
President Ronald Reagan, who owed his 1980 election–in part–to the perceived weakness of the Carter Administration in the face of Soviet aggression, gave this speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983.
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Covert Action
During the 1970s, Congressional investigations into government intelligence actions revealed a number of covert (or hidden) operations against foreign powers which flirted with Communism.
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Feminism after the Counterculture
The women’s rights movement–like other civil rights movements–continued beyond the 1960s. In this 1970 piece from the Washington Post, activist Gloria Steinem argues for the continuation of the fight for women’s liberation.
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“No More Miss America!”
The women’s movement, like the African American civil rights movement, took to the streets in the 1960s to demonstrate for their goals. One of these demonstrations, in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1968, protested that year’s Miss America pageant.
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The Protests: A Veteran opposes the War
As the Vietnam war continued, returning soldiers were among those who protested US military action in Southeast Asia.
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Widening the War: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
While American troops had been in South Vietnam providing training and security during the early 1960s, it was the 1964 attack by North Vietnam on the USS Maddox which triggered a wider US military involvement.
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Beyond Voting Rights: Voices of Power
Voting rights and integration were important goals of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, emphasis within the movement began to shift to issues of economic inequality, police brutality, educational inequality, and other issues not easily solved with legislation.
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Integration- North And South
While schools in the American south were often segregated through specific actions–such as forbidding nonwhite students to attend–schools in northern cities were also often segregated as a result of housing inequality. This brief (20 minute) documentary from 1960 reports on integration efforts in both the north and south.
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Nonviolence
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, urged the use of nonviolent means of protest in the fight for recognition of the civil rights of African Americans. In these excerpts from his April 16, 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he defends nonviolent direct action such as marches and sit-ins as the surest means to “open the door to negotiation.”
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