Short interpretation: this.
Less short same: When you think about it for just a little bit, it seems that Founding Fathers obsessiveness tells the American story as if the New Deal never happened. And, indeed, FDR's legacy is under assault. But the bigger omission, I think, is that the back-to-basics crowd is actually acting as if the Civil War never happened. More on this later, but I think there's something going on here in the silence about the tremendous expansion of central government power brought on by the Civil War and then Reconstruction.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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2 comments:
Have to agree.
Thanks for stopping by, Grant. My thinking is that people are welcome to make the case for government-as-return-to-Garden-of-Eden, but after the rounds of head-nodding about the virtues of small government, then they should entertain questions about the broader implications of that stance. It's not something I see the Rick Perrys of the world doing; it's all one big victory dance celebrating the obviousness of the obvious. In the case at hand, I ask: did the experience of the Civil War and its aftermath have anything to teach us about the nature of our government, politics, and memory that is any way useful for how we should proceed with our affairs today? If not, why not?
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