In Elaine Taylor May’S Article, Security Against Democracy

In Elaine Taylor May’s article, Security against Democracy: The Legacy of the Cold War at Home, written in 2011, she argued that people were willing to forgo personal freedoms for national security. She provided the example of during the nuclear age of the cold war; Americans were more interested in protection rather than concern for the common good. However, as the cold war continued and domestic issues formed, the tight knit social order that was created in the early years was falling apart. She pointed to the start of the civil rights movement, the counterculture, the women’s movement, and the antiwar movement, started to challenge the social order and led to changes in society. The political campaigns shifted from stopping the†¦show more content†¦Prados argument is that the actions by the CIA were taken to the extreme to protect democracy, but in the long run resulted in opposition in America and from the world. He supported his argument with plausib le deniability and the disgust with America by other countries throughout the world. Prados pointed out that starting with Harry Truman it was okay to not tell the American people the whole truth and sight it as a reason for national security. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took it to the extreme and took over the 40 committee. Here Kissinger was the chair and basically took complete control over the committee and by the end of the Vietnam War, the CIA director reported only 5 percent of the agency’s budget was spent for covert action. This proved the true intentions of the CIA and formed a break in the American government system. Eventually, it reached to the American people with the release of the Pentagon papers and then the Watergate scandal by Nixon. The strengths of Pardos argument is the hard facts he presented in his book and the way he presented the information. The weakness in his book is the newness of the information presented on the CIA and the result it had on the cold war and therefore is hard to analyze the overall effect. However, Prados and Schulman can be connected because of the failed attempts of the CIA and the American government, it demanded aShow MoreRelatedThe Cold War On American Society1993 Words   |  8 Pagestransitioned into the modern world, while rebelling against previous policies of the past decades. The cold war era was shaped by activism by women, mishaps by the government and its agencies, and a change in leadership that rebelled against previous leaders of the cold war. Resulting in historical analysis of how modern American developed and the threat of communism disappeared. Through the decades of the cold war historians have analyzed the democracy that existed in America and the society i n it