"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods."Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, made this comment in regards to his new society. It was created to decrease the amount of poverty and prejudice throughout the 50 states. This new program was very similar to the New Deal program set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt with a few changes in programs and economic situations.Unlike the New Deal the Great Society was set up during a time of success. Incomes were rising, tax cuts were being made, and the economy was growing. Like everything that goes up it must come down and in mid 1960s social crises began to breakout. President Johnson presented his thoughts about this new program to the public in his speech at Michigan University in May of 1964. This is a quote from his speech.“We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”The major programs of the Great Society were as follows; war on poverty, education, Medicare and Medicaid, the environment, national endowment for the arts and the humanities, job corps, and head start. Some of the programs of the Great Society still exist today and other struggled during the Vietnam War. Like I always say the people in our history have definitely make our country the country we are today. Even if something they tried didn’t work they still made a huge impact. That is how I feel about the Great Society. Some of the programs within it may not have worked, but it got our country to where we are today.
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