American Whigs
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Some Thoughts on Election Day
Whatever happens this week in the midterm elections, it won't be decisive. The stalemate will continue regardless whether the Red or Blue team gets the upper hand. America has always had a split personality: One part Jeffersonian/Jacksonian, mostly premodern in its outlook, wanting to stay close to the land and keep to the old ways,
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The Archetypal American Divide: Andrew Jackson v. John Quincy Adams
Although Andrew Jackson defended his own authority with resolute determination, he did not manifest a general respect for the authority of the law when it got in the way of the policies he chose to pursue. This character trait, already apparent in his military career, continued to manifest itself during his years in the White
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Some Random Thoughts on the American Character
I never quite grasped why Jefferson and Adams were so discouraged by the way the country had democratized by the 1820s. Wasn't that what they, especially Jefferson, had hoped for? I tended to dismiss their concerns as a snooty elitism. But I understand it differently now, especially in light of Trump’s ascendancy. Reading Wood, Howe,
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The Puritan Mind
Several years ago I did a series of posts on the Puritan Mind trying to understand both its dark and light sides. The positive side I called Whiggery. Whiggery, I argued, was the spirit of the abolitionist movement and the settlement house movement, but also the Yankee spirit of innovation and love of money, growth, expansion. The
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Liberalism 5.0?
The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them. But even as the failures of the old
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The Sacred Polity
"Was anybody else offended by…can you put your hand on your heart?" Beck said. "It's the national anthem!" He said he had shushed his son and told him to put his hand on his heart when Christina Aguilera was singing the song. "I was really offended by the sports players that were just hanging on
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Worst-Case; Best Case
I've started several posts in the last couple of weeks, but I've not finished them. They didn't really seem to add much, or they seem to be my repeating things I've written about so often. In any event, I'm swearing off getting frustrated with Obama or the Democrats. They are what they are, and regardless
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Deneen’s Two Cents
I came across this recent talk entitled “Sensus Communis and Nature’s Law: Why Communities Know Natural Law Better Than Philosophers” given by Patrick Deneen at a conference at Princeton. It supports Mike McG's dissent to my posts about the perils of allowing our social lattices to disintegrate and why kids' attitudes, and those of society
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The Down Side of High Mindedness
Digby reposted a piece she put up in 2004 about the difference between conservatives and liberals and it reinforces my recent trope that we are still fighting battles from the 19th Century. She quotes the blog Steamboats Are Ruining Everything who in turn quote an1820 essay by William Hazlitt: Conservatives and liberals play the game