The real point of turn-around in the U.S.A. that enabled the Reagan Revolution and took us from a progressive to a regressive nation was this: The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment that would have guaranteed half the population a full experience of the American Dream. The Equal Rights Amendment would have gone a step further to assure the Civil Rights advancements of the 1960s, because half of the black population is female afterall (so even the racial civil liberties fight cannot be considered complete until it becomes gender inclusive through the Equal Rights Amendment!).
The far right perfected their cheating ways in their fight against the Equal Rights Amendment. The Reactionaries defeated the Equal Rights Amendment by choosing to use low, dishonest means in the form of techniques like obfuscation, lies, fear-mongering and....
....this proved to be their testing ground for the methods the Reactionaries have been USING CONSISTENTLY EVER SINCE with the cocky-air of self-righteousness that disgusts the domestic majority and the world community as well.
By preventing the legal guarantee of equal rights for half the population -- and especially equal pay for women -- the corporate sector was assured its prerogative to control salaries and maintain its mindset of work harems of underpaid labor. I believe nothing so emboldened the corporate sector to push forward to an openly fascistic role as this defeat of half the population's right to work for equal pay based on skill level/education/experience rather than on gender! The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment was a great victory for the corporate subculture.
And the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment was the greatest victory the Reactionaries have known since the Dred Scott Decision. The defeat of the ERA ended the Progressive thrust of the American Dream for half the population of the U.S.A. Since then it's all been backward movement embracing and reanimating the past -- all the way to the point at which we no longer have a President of the United States but only a tyrant self-proclaiming himself the Unitary Executive.
This Unitary Executive George Dubya Bush now DEMANDS that the Houses of Congress give him a blank check for more billions of dollars for the Mideast Sandbox he likes to play in. The U.S. majority does not approve of Bush's Sandbox, so, if the Legislators cave in to Bush's demands, they will be giving into a TYRANT and saying 'yes' to the devolution of human progress in America and the dissolution of democracy.
Note about Bush in the Sandbox: The ultimate goal of the Regressives at large is going back, back, back in their reactionary trajectory is CHILDHOOD, when Somebody made the intelligent decisions for them and all they had to do was play with their toy trucks in the sandbox.
Adults, please take charge and tell Georgie "No more Sandbox. Time to take a nap."