To many, the years of the Johnson and Nixon administrations were filled with so much turbulence that the entire social order of the United States appeared to be unraveling. Explain why so many Americans believed that social disorder and the fragmentation of society seemed to be in ascendance.

DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: The factors that you can cite in your essay include the following:

The protests against the war in Vietnam. They led many to fear the collapse of social order in the country. Examples of such demonstrations worthy of discussion include the clashes at the Democratic Party’s 1968 nominating convention and the confrontations that followed the invasion of Cambodia in 1970.
The era’s violence against political leaders. The assassination of Robert Kennedy occurred during the Johnson presidency, approximately five years after his brother’s death.
The movement for women’s rights. Inspired by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, this movement stressed more than an end to discrimination against women. Arguing that the usual role of homemaker was a form of servitude, members of the movement advocated new roles for women and rejected traditional definitions of feminine beauty and sexuality. All this, of course, explicitly challenged long-established norms of what constituted the proper place for women in a well-ordered society.
The movements among Mexican Americans and Native Americans for equal rights and equal opportunity. Like women, Chicanos and American Indians organized and began to confront discrimination and second-class treatment. To many Americans, it appeared as if no part of the established social order was going unchallenged, inasmuch as protests were being mounted at the same time by African Americans and by young people who expressed themselves in the counterculture. (See the material in Chapter 30 for the last two groups.)