After his death, the nation under President Johnson vastly increased the number of American troops in the Southeast Asian country of Vietnam. Johnson did this in order to prevent the Vietnamese communists from taking control of the country. He believed that communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia if it succeeded in Vietnam. By 1966, the struggle in Vietnam had become d major American war

Most Americans agreed with the action. But even so, there was stronger opposition to the Vietnam War than to any previous American war in the twentieth century. Most of the opponents of the war attacked it as immoral. They believed it was immoral for the United States to try to determine the future of a distant country by means of war. Many opponents of the Vietnam War also attacked the nation's basic values as corrupt. Some of the harshest criticism of the United States and its values by American ci as heard during this period of protest against the war.

most Americans stron^y rejected this harsh criddsm of their nation’s values, some observers believe chat the anti-war movement made many Americans io supported the war more doubtfiil about thcir beliefs. An even greater blow to the majority who supported the war was the fact that the United States Eailed in its objective.

In 1975 North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam. The result was discouraging to all Americans. The opponents of the war continued to feel that the nation had done something terribly immoral. The people who had supported the war were discouraged by its outcome. Most Americans had been brought up believing that the United States had never lost a war. Now it seemed that for the first time, this had happened. Was the nation losing its strength? If it was, was this because it was losing faith in its basic values? These were the kinds of troubling questions Vietnam raised in the minds of many Americans.

Before the Vietnam War was ended，the Watergate scandals involving the next President，Richard Nixon, dealt a second m^or blow to the confidence Americans had in their nation and its values. Because the President of the United States is supposed to be an outstanding example of the nation’s values, the scandaU tended to weaken the faith of many Americans in these values. President Nixon was forced to resign from office in 1974. Three aspects of the affair made it the most serious scandal in American history. First, illegal sabotage and espionage activities on a large scale were carried out by agents and associates of the President against his leading political opponents in the United States. Men paid by President Nixon’s reelecdon committee were arrested for breaking into the national headquarters of the opposition Democratic party (in the Watergate building)in order to place illegal listening devices on the telephones and to photograph party documents. Second, the President used all the powers of his office to keep law enforcement officials from finding out the truth about these activities. Third, he repeatedly lied to the American people, claiming to be innocent of all wrongdoing even after the American people had ceased to believe him.

Before the Watergate scandal, American Presidents，even unpopular ones, were thought to be basically honest, law-abiding men. President Nixon’s conduct in office weakened the faith and respect Americans held for their presidents. Faith in American values was also weakened because of the belief that the President is the nation’s first ddzcn and the most important defender of its values. “If you can’t trust the President, who can you trust?” was the question on the minds of many.

The failure of the Vietnam War effort and the resignation of President Nixon in disgrace did not destroy the faith of Americans in their values，but the faith seems to have been weakened by these events. After Vietnam and Watergate, a third development appeared which threatened to weaken the faith even further. This was the possibility that for the first dme since the Great Depression of the 1930s the standard of living of the American people mi^it decline significantly. The material abundance of the United States has served as a kind of sustaining food which has kept American values alive and strong. Americans have considered their high standard of living a reward for practicing thdr basic beliefs in individual freedom, competidon，and other values. The possibility of a significant decline in living standard^ during the 1980s and beyond, therefore, could present a danger to the continuing strength of these values.

In the late 1970s Americans became aware that the era of cheap and abundant energy was ending. In the 1980s Americans also began to discover that the nation’s water supplies were declining at a rapid rate and that the amount of land available for farming was also, declining as more and more farmland was changed into business and residential nei^hiborhoods. These and other facts pointed to a decline in the foundations of material abundance that the United States had enjoyed throu^iout its history.

Political events such as Vietnam and Watergate, and probably even more important, the fear that the nation’s material abundance may be declining，seem to have made Americans less optimistic about the future of thcir country. Two experts on American public opinion, Daniel Yankelovich and Bernard Lefkowitz, came to this conclusion after studying the results of American public opinion polls dating back to the 1950s. They observed that during the decade of the 1970s a significant change had taken place “from an optimistic faith in an open unlimited future to a fear of instability and a new sense of limits”.