The “Lunatic Fringe” -- Barry Goldwater and the Conservative Revolution of the 1960s --

How did conservatives, who had become effectively ostracized by their party following the Great Depression and the societal reforms of the New Deal, regain leverage within the GOP during the 1960s? My hypothesis is two-fold. First, I contend that a small group of conservative activists led by F. Clifton White, in spite of a dearth of resources and manpower, managed to infiltrate Republican infrastructure and “hijack” the delegate- selection process. The distinctly conservative and recalcitrant disposition of the Goldwater delegates demonstrates that these activists succeeded. Second, I argue that in addition to temporarily overpowering the national convention in 1964, conservatives thereafter retained control of the party insofar as subsequent GOP candidates were obliged to garner the support of conservative pockets of the country in order to win the presidential nomination. The resulting rightward shift of the Republican Party following the 1960s is a direct corollary of the conservative takeover outlined in this study.

Socio-cultural Degeneration and State Patronage of the Arts: Mapplethorpe, Cultural Crisis, and the NEA

The goal of this paper is to investigate how the Untied States federal government, specifically through the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA, has acted in the position of an arts patron in the past few decades. Specifically, this paper will focus on the past decade and a half since the 'arts crisis' of the late 1980s and the social and political backlash against the art community in the 1990s, which was only against ‘offensive’ art that was seen as morally and culturally corruptive. I explore the political, social, and economic forms the backlash took, particularly rooted in a perceived fear of degenerative arts as a corruption of and a catalyst for the eventual collapse of American culture and values. Additionally, I analyse the role the federal government played in ‘ameliorating’ the situation. I investigate how state arts patronage has affected and continues to affect both the concepts behind and the manifestations of art, as well as who is encouraged, sanctioned, or neglected in the production of art. To accomplish this, I explore how and why the federal government employs the arts to define and redefine morality and culture, and how does it express/allow the expressions of these through art.