How the 1970s Built Today’s Tumult, According to Jason Burke
Jason Burke’s new study argues that many of the crises we see today trace back to choices made in the 1970s. That decade was a hinge point where economic, cultural, and foreign-policy shifts set long-term patterns. Conservatives should be paying attention to its lessons.
The economic picture in the 1970s was dramatic: oil shocks, rising inflation, and policy responses that often felt improvised. Those shocks peeled back public confidence in institutions and opened the door to a politics focused on short-term fixes. Burke points to these economic strains as one of several root causes of our present unrest.
On culture, the 1970s amplified new social movements and questioned long-standing norms. Some of those changes were liberating, but others weakened community bonds that once held neighborhoods and families together. From a conservative lens, that unmooring made society more volatile and easier to manipulate by partisan forces.
In foreign policy, the end of Vietnam, détente with the Soviet Union, and shifting alliances created uncertainty about American leadership. Those years also saw the beginnings of geopolitical realignments that later metastasized into long-term instability. Burke traces how these late-20th-century foreign-policy choices left a legacy of tangled commitments and confused messaging.
Government expansion in the 1970s, in both scope and ambition, reshaped expectations about the role of the federal state. When people come to rely on centralized solutions for broad social problems, political polarization tends to grow as different groups fight over resource distribution. Burke’s study highlights how those expectations hardened into the modern fault lines we now argue over.
Education changes from that era also deserve attention: curricula, campus activism, and institutional reforms shifted how new generations view authority and truth. The resulting cultural shifts influenced attitudes toward civic duty and national identity. Conservatives see a clear line from those campus debates to today’s battles over speech and history.
Energy policy and regulatory decisions in the 1970s had practical effects that lasted decades. Price controls, shortages, and mandates pushed markets into unfamiliar territory and fed public frustration. Burke uses these technical shifts to show how policy choices can cascade into broader social disorder.
Immigration and demographic changes accelerated after mid-century policy reforms, and their social impact became more visible in the 1970s. Rapid change without strong integrative institutions made adaptation harder for many communities. For a GOP audience, the lesson is that orderly integration and shared civic frameworks matter.
The media environment also began to change in that decade, with new outlets and evolving norms about objectivity and advocacy. As information channels multiplied, so did opportunities for tribal narratives to take hold. Burke notes that fractured information ecosystems create fertile ground for grievance and radicalization.
Policy debates since the 1970s often ignored how cultural and economic consequences interact, treating them as separate problems. Burke’s study stitches those threads together and shows how a series of partial fixes produced compound risks. Republicans should find in that history a case for restoring competence, local authority, and clear national purpose.
Understanding the 1970s is not about nostalgia; it’s about learning where reforms failed and where durable strength can be rebuilt. Burke gives readers a map of the structural changes that still shape our politics and institutions. The stakes are straightforward: if we want stability, we need policies that rebuild trust, strengthen families, and restore clear national priorities.