The Great Society of President Johnson

The role of the U.S. Government is to distribute resources in a manner that improves the everyday lives of Americans. Taxes are collected and should be spent on improving U.S. infrastructure, creating jobs, and providing opportunities for upward mobility. However, President Johnson's "Great Society" was an unwise and deleterious policy that sought to create equality of conditions in America, but the policy initiatives encompassed by it eroded the freedoms of ordinary Americans without meeting its goals.

In May 1964, speaking at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon B. Johnson maintained, "In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society" (Johnson 1964, 704). Johnson's "Great Society" was described as one wherein men are "more concerned with the quality of their lives than the quantity of their goods" (Schultz 1999, 4). However, the gains proposed by such a policy initiative came at the expense of the middle-class. The U.S. Constitution guarantees certain inalienable rights, among them the right to property. By devising such an initiative, Johnson's policy deprived others of their hard earned goods to redistribute them to the poor, to refurbish inner cities, and for education initiatives.

Johnson's "Great Society" had three main themes:

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Category: Government - T