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During the 1920s to the new millennium, Americans had experienced the Great Depression that changed many people’s perspective about the economy. The massive lay off to the workers had increased government’s action to take care of many struggled citizens. It then took almost a decade for the American economy to vitalize when the war began to demand large scale productions of war technologies. But as the pace of the economic recovery went up, the societal growth did not result in equal racial and gender rights. Many women and blacks in the American society after the war were still unemployed. And the consumer culture has also transformed the American society into a culture of conformity. Furthermore, the wide concern of the polarized political ideologies in foreign affairs had brought up anxiety among several U.S. presidents and politicians, which ultimately stirred up conflicts such as the Vietnam War and the Korean War. Under those circumstances, the American had experienced dramatic outcomes to their lives. War, foreign policy, economics, and civil rights movement had continued to play a defining characteristic in shaping American’s definition of freedom.

The U.S. had entered an uprising economy in the early 1920s despite that forty percent of wage labors were considered poor, and five percent of the top Americans have more wealth than the other bottom sixty. Not only automobiles had begun swirling on the streets, but also radio had become popularized among Americans. What is more, the movie viewership had doubled, which embraced a culture of celebrity, and pushed the entertainers to the status as public figures. At the time, the definition of freedom was determined by an individual’s ability to consume.

Yet, what undermine...

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...nium, the drastic change in economy has changed many facets of the life of Americans. Hoover’s reputation plunged while he was determined to hold the idea of free-market, and Roosevelt’s New Deal had proven that government’s action had been futile in resolving the economic problems. The World War II saved the economy and brought back people from the verge of poverty by providing jobs in manufacturing wartime goods, but it had also produced contradictions as many people were poorly paid, and treated badly. Although the Civil right movements combined with the Great Society had changed what Americans expected from their government after the war, the government’s close tie to the Cold War had limited its impact. Last, as the Cold War ended, the Globalization that spread the U.S. ideologies was shadowed by the increasing wealth gap to people both at home and abroad.