Comments on: History Questions

By: Mario

Mario — Mon, 08 May 2006 04:52:35 +0000

I would say the Total Force Policy is the only enacted policy that fits your request.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Sat, 06 May 2006 16:33:56 +0000

For totally pie-in-the-sky initiatives that became disasters, it’s hard to beat the rightwingers.

Just in the past century, we see the unregulated capitalism of the 20s, Prohibition, Isolationism, and the War on Drugs.

At the time, they were proud to be Prohibitionists or Isolationists, or, best of all, tycoons. They left their fingerprints all over the trainwreck.

And these were unabashedly big mistakes. Anyone who’s been in the country long has a relative affected in a major way by at least one of them.

By: Z

Sat, 06 May 2006 14:49:26 +0000

Interestingly, the revival of interest in Tocqueville in the US (which I think is genuine) was followed (but later) by a revival of interest in France (maybe starting in the late 70s). That fact entails peculiar consequences, not the least funny being that studying Tocqueville in France today is distinctly associated with an American approach to social science. Alexis himself might have been proud.

By: anon

anon — Fri, 05 May 2006 22:02:08 +0000

Don’t agree re Sandburg. Have you read the Hurt article? Have you read Sandburg?

By: joel turnipseed

joel turnipseed — Fri, 05 May 2006 20:55:20 +0000

Well, I think I agree w/you 62.4% of the time (or is it 37.6%?), abb1, so it’s not worth marking on the calendar—but absolutely, Abe’s bones are spinning at high rpms that the current government is acting in his name.

As to Sandburg: Money quote is Wilson’s “The corn is getting high, indeed!” when panning it in Patriotic Gore as the worst thing to befall Lincoln since John Wilkes Booth.

By: SamChevre

SamChevre — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:59:24 +0000

OK, mark it on the calendar—I entire ly agree with abb1.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:50:51 +0000

Yes, good question, but I thought the most impressive power grab by the feds happened under certain Republican president, the oxymoronically honest railroad lawyer guy. I guess he never asked himself and couldn’t even imagine that his enemies the Southerners will be controlling all branches of the federal government one day.

By: digamma

digamma — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:35:57 +0000

1) The increasing power of the federal government relative to the states. In 1920 it took a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, in 1940 it took only a law to ban marijuana.
The question Democrats never asked themselves at the time was, “What do we do if Republicans get control of this omnipotent government we’ve created?”

By: anon

anon — Fri, 05 May 2006 16:46:26 +0000

Carl Sandburg references de Tocqueville in The Prairie Years, published in 1927. See James Hurt's discussion of Sandburg's biography as a work of American civil religion for why this is interesting as a part of the revival of interest in de Tocqueville, irrespective of your views on Sandburg's work.

By: LowLife

LowLife — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:33:01 +0000

There’s the designated hitter rule. Though somewhat workable I’m sure Burke wouldn’t think it was Cricket.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:21:22 +0000

Oh. My. God. Brett. It’s alive!

Yes, Merging Of Corporate Power And State Power.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:15:54 +0000

“You mean like airplane manufacturers?”

That would be a fair comparison, IF airplane manufacturers were limited to selling a short list of government designed aircraft, homebuilts were a crime, and aircraft mechanics were all drafted.

Airplane manufacturers are in bed with the government, but they’re not quite as under the thumb as Hillary intended everyone in the health care industry (Including us customers) to be. Still, you do have a point: The left’s fondness for “no sparrow shall fall” levels of regulatory oversight, combined with the right’s habit of financial support for industry, is pushing us in the direction of genuine fascism.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 05 May 2006 07:02:05 +0000

Oh, Ben Alpers already mentioned fdr’s ‘economic bill of rights’. Sorry, I didn’t see it yesterday, it was late here.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Fri, 05 May 2006 06:57:48 +0000

I’m not exactly a Democrat, but the more intellectual sectors of the granola left view a lot of environmental engineering as “ambitiously unworkable”. The Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to control major rivers, massive dam projects like Glen Canyon, the New Orleans levees – those sorts of things are seen as having been too ambitious and unworkable and having very negative unexpected consequences. They are, to be sure, not specially Democrat issues, but large scale environmental engineering is often seen as analogous to large scale social engineering.

By: josh

josh — Fri, 05 May 2006 04:59:31 +0000

In response to #58: I’m also a non-quantitative person, so have no idea what I’m talking about; but it occurs to me that one possible approach would be to look at the number of articles on Tocqueville in relation to the number of articles on several other thinkers. This of course wouldn’t control for any changes in the prominence/popularity/academic coverage of those other thinkers, but it might at least suggest whether there was a steady increase in the number of articles dealing with political thinkers generally—due to the larger number of journals and articles generally—or if mentions/discussions of Tocqueville increased more significantly relative to (some) other thinkers.