George F. Will
Considered one of the most influential journalists since World War II, George F. Will is a syndicated columnist, a television news analyst, and the author of several books, most recently One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (2008). Aside from his writings on politics and public policy, Will has also published several books on baseball. This essay has been adapted from the foreword to Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy, a collection of essays to be published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Articles by this Contributor
October 1996
Everyone knows it was a radical decade—but not who its real radicals were

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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.




