Read & Marking History A-level Essay on American Dream

It's pretty good but I think you have perhaps missed off some important points.

When weighing up the significance of anti-communist thinking in the US you must make reference to the Truman doctrine. This underpinned almost all US foreign policy for the next 50 years so examples would be the direct intervention in places like Korea, Cuba and most importantly, Vietnam all of which were done specifically because of the fear that Communism would spread across the world, as well as the proxy wars the US fought all around the world. So a proxy war is where they are not directly doing the fighting but the US is either proving funding and munitions to those who are, or at a minimum the US was deliberately stoking up unrest to try to overthrow a communist backed regime. They did this a lot in the 1960s -1980s in South America, funding rebel groups to overthrow regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. You've tended to focus on anti-communism inside America and quite rightly mention the obsession in the late 40s and early 50s with the Mcarthyite purges and also correctly identify that this shone brightly for a few years but then fizzled out but when you say 'The influence of anti-communism may be seen as temporary and exaggerated' you may be right about this domestically but as the notes above suggest, US foreign policy was entirely governed by this fear throughout the whole period under discussion. So perhaps a particularly nuanced answer would be to argue that anti-communism dominated US foreign policy, but not necessarily US domestic policy and then layer on top of that, that it went in cycles gradually accelerating in intensity after WW2.

I would also make reference to the US civil rights movement. This dominated domestic political debate in the 1950s and 1960s so must be referenced to give a balanced analysis.

I would also be careful in your use of terminology. Laissez-faire is really a political concept relating to the economy. It really refers to the government not intervening in the economy which is quite different from the American policy of international isolation followed in the 1920s and 1930s. The two were mostly unrelated but your essay suggests you are conflating them. I think you are going in the right direction but perhaps Laissez-faire is the wrong term to use. I think better would be something like 'limited government' as laissez faire really focuses on economic interviention - tarrifs, subsidies, sales taxes, regulations, setting of minimum wage levels. There has been, across the capitalist west, a debate about the extent to which government should intervene to promote fairness and equality so I would add to your third paragraph about how the New Deal became emblematic of the debate that continues to this day about the appropriate role for government in the US. The strong libertarian tradition that has underpinned much of Republic thinking and 'small government' is to be contrasted with Democrat approach (Roosevelt was a Democrat) which has promoted a much more active role in all aspects of society.....not just economics. So think the Civil Rights movement, environmentalism, regulating big tech companies.......so the Democrats see the government as a force for good in creating a fairer America, Republicans have traditionally distrustrusted alot of government intervention. Reagan famously (and probably wrongly) said '"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." He said this in his inaugural address in 1981.

So this is spot on......'as it changed the relationship between the government and citizens.' but you need to draw it out more with reference to the way that domestic political activity was shaped by whichever party was in power and the wider debate about how much the government should do.

Does that help?