It’s the big reveal. To honor our own 50 year anniversary, we’re unveiling our list of the 10 historic events of the last five decades that most shaped how government operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first glance the list \u2013 which we published in chronological order, each with an article and film \u2013 looks like a lot of lists of important moments in U.S. history. We start with the Vietnam War and the moon landing, for example, and end with Hurricane Katrina and the Manning\/Snowden leaks. Of course they’re important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what makes these events significant to the general public, or even politics or federal law, is not necessarily what makes them significant to how government functions. Though those reasons might be a factor. For the sake of this list, these events matter not just because of what they represented in that particular moment in time, but for what came afterward \u2013 for what they inspired or enabled, what they set in motion. In many cases, most cases even, government is still experiencing the trickle down today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consider Vietnam. It traumatized America in a sense, filtering troubling images into living rooms, spurring nationwide protest and inspiring decades’ long debates about what constitutes a justified war. All of that is important. But for government, it also redefined combat for the Pentagon, and forced the administration to provide the public with rationalization for military operations, after decades of owning the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\t