The 1970s were a tumultuous time. In some ways, the decade was a continuation of the 1960s. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians and other marginalized people continued their fight for equality, and many Americans joined the protest against the ongoing war in Vietnam. In other ways, however, the decade was a repudiation of the 1960s. A “New Right” mobilized in defense of political conservatism and traditional family roles, and the behavior of President Richard Nixon undermined many people’s faith in the good intentions of the federal government. By the end of the decade, these divisions and disappointments had set a tone for public life that many would argue is still with us today.This silent majority swept President Richard Nixon into office in 1968. Almost immediately, Nixon began to dismantle the welfare state that had fostered such resentment. He abolished as many parts of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty as he could, and he made a show of his resistance to mandatory school desegregation plans such as busing. On the other hand, some of Nixon’s domestic policies seem remarkably liberal today: For instance, he proposed a Family Assistance Plan that would have guaranteed every American family an income of $1,600 a year (about $10,000 in today’s money), and he urged Congress to pass a Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan that would have guaranteed affordable health care to all Americans. In general, though, Nixon’s policies favored the interests of the middle class people who felt slighted by the Great Society of the 1960s.As the 1970s continued, some of these people helped shape a new political movement known as the “New Right.” This movement, rooted in the suburban Sun Belt, celebrated the free market and lamented the decline of “traditional” social values and roles. New Right conservatives resented and resisted what they saw as government meddling. For example, they fought against high taxes, environmental regulations, highway speed limits, national park policies in the West (the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion”) and affirmative action and school desegregation plans. (Their anti-taxism emerged most notably in California in 1978, when the Proposition 13 referendum–“a primal scream by The People against Big Government,” said The New York Times–tried to limit the size of government by restricting the amount of property tax that the state could collect from individual homeowners.