This study will argue that between 1960 and 1974 the United States was an effective champion of progress at home, but did little to promote it abroad. Specifically, with respect to progress at home, political and social leaders and activists advanced the cause of civil rights during this period. The civil rights movement affected for the better the lives of blacks and other minorities and women, groups which had been restricted in their freedoms and rights in the past. The reason for the lack of the promotion of progress abroad was that the United States was fixated in those years on the Cold War. Foreign policy was based not on the desire to help the people of other nations politically, socially or economically, but rather to fight the communists, particularly the dreaded Soviet Union, and to fight them specifically in the poor nations of the Third World. Those nations were the very nations that needed help the most, that needed progress the most, but instead of helping them, the United States (and the Soviet Union) engaged in a struggle which drained the energies of all involved--the United States, the Soviet Union, and the poor Third World nations. The example from this period which encapsulates this Cold War obsession and the emphasis on war rather than progress was Vietnam.
The year of 1960 marked the seminal election which brought John Kennedy into the White House. The end of the Eisenhower era was also the beginning of a sense that a new and dynamic leadership and set of policies were about to be institutionalized in the government under the young new President. This change did in fact take place with respect to civil rights under Kennedy, and then the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson. Johnson pushed a number of social programs for progress through Congress after the assassination of Kennedy, arguing that the passage of legislation installing such programs would honor the memory of Kennedy who had begun them. The Great So...