The Great Society is the collection of programs that came out of
Lyndon B. Johnson's first (and only) full term as President. Some of these are:
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities
- the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
- Food Stamps (the concept had existed as a New Deal program as well, but was canceled in 1943.)
It also gave rise to the "War on Poverty."
EditSpeech Relevance
The name 'Great Society' hadn't been coined until roughly 5 months before the broadcast of Reagan's '
A Time For Choosing' speech, so there is little
direct connection between Johnson's designs and Reagan's speech. Indirectly, however, Reagan railed against the ideas of a socialized medical system in both '
A Time For Choosing' and '
Encroaching Control' and against the "War on Poverty" in '
A Time For Choosing'.
Reagan also recorded a speech specifically about the dangers of
socialized medicine.
In 1966, before he formally announced his joining the race for California governor, Reagan spoke to a rally at the Patton Center in the Bronx borough of New York. This speech is labelled as "
The Great Myth of the Great Society".
Edit Source Links
Great Society (Wikipedia)