Its second founding would be the 1830s. The results of the Civil War did lead to some centralizations, but not anywhere as much as we're taught they and did and more importantly the basic institutional designs and systemic-paradigm of the group of groups knowns as the jacksonians persisted in the NE, Mid West, and West persisted until after WW2 and didnt go away over night (in fact, we retain much of it, its just largely nullified)
When you write "That government must be truly representative of the people, in all their diversity of beliefs and interests."
Yes. this is true. And it requires, among other things, substantial legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, even down to the local level. We used to have it and theres no reason we cant today. China has actually had since the early 1980s (Xi and Co have been trying hard to undo this and centralize things, we’ll see if they succeed, pushback seems to be forming)
As late as the 1930s both the Democratic and Republican Parties were still decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors, the economy was still one structurally biased towards being one dominated by geographically dispersed and redundant diversified mid sized firms, banking/finance was still structurally locally anchored and relative to today quite pluralized, education was decentralized, etc.
This didnt end over night, there was a multidecadal transformation phase following WW2. And now we've reached, and have for decades at this point, a place where are relatively deeply centralized, standardized, and our governmental-corporate-financial institutional spaces are quite decision making exclusionary
People who don't really understand politics invariably look to the wrong bits of the foundational texts. The true core of the American experiment is found in the statement defining the absolute role of the state: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
In other words, the sole moral function of government is to protect individual rights and any government that's destructive to those ends loses its legitimacy and should be altered. The tragedy today is that we don't have any mainstream voices who understands, let alone supports, a rights-protecting state.
Politics isn't about "consensus" or empty slogans about "building something better." Politics is strictly about the protection of rights, which automatically mandates a capitalist economic system. Until we've got mainstream voices explicitly advocating for this, our slide toward dictatorship and third-world poverty will continue.
I admit when I saw the teaser in my mail inbox, I approached this piece with some measure of cynicism, but I was rewarded notwithstanding my lack of faith. ;-) This is well worth the read, as are the transcripts of the podcasts [I'm a reader, not an audio listener, so thanks for the transcripts]. Good food for thought. And as a libertarian, I appreciate the implicit distinction between libertarian principles and real-world fantasies.
Great article. Only quibble is this line: "That government must be truly representative of the people, in all their diversity of beliefs and interests."
This sentiment may be fine at local/state levels of governance, but a federal government that has the purpose of serving the greater good of the country (needs of the people) cannot also serve the will of the people (wants of the people).
We are too large and diverse of a country to have full representation of everybody's interest vested in a single, centralized authority. A government of this nature that tries to serve everybody's interests will end up serving nobody and be in constant conflict.
Its second founding would be the 1830s. The results of the Civil War did lead to some centralizations, but not anywhere as much as we're taught they and did and more importantly the basic institutional designs and systemic-paradigm of the group of groups knowns as the jacksonians persisted in the NE, Mid West, and West persisted until after WW2 and didnt go away over night (in fact, we retain much of it, its just largely nullified)
When you write "That government must be truly representative of the people, in all their diversity of beliefs and interests."
Yes. this is true. And it requires, among other things, substantial legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, even down to the local level. We used to have it and theres no reason we cant today. China has actually had since the early 1980s (Xi and Co have been trying hard to undo this and centralize things, we’ll see if they succeed, pushback seems to be forming)
As late as the 1930s both the Democratic and Republican Parties were still decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors, the economy was still one structurally biased towards being one dominated by geographically dispersed and redundant diversified mid sized firms, banking/finance was still structurally locally anchored and relative to today quite pluralized, education was decentralized, etc.
This didnt end over night, there was a multidecadal transformation phase following WW2. And now we've reached, and have for decades at this point, a place where are relatively deeply centralized, standardized, and our governmental-corporate-financial institutional spaces are quite decision making exclusionary
People who don't really understand politics invariably look to the wrong bits of the foundational texts. The true core of the American experiment is found in the statement defining the absolute role of the state: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
In other words, the sole moral function of government is to protect individual rights and any government that's destructive to those ends loses its legitimacy and should be altered. The tragedy today is that we don't have any mainstream voices who understands, let alone supports, a rights-protecting state.
Politics isn't about "consensus" or empty slogans about "building something better." Politics is strictly about the protection of rights, which automatically mandates a capitalist economic system. Until we've got mainstream voices explicitly advocating for this, our slide toward dictatorship and third-world poverty will continue.
I admit when I saw the teaser in my mail inbox, I approached this piece with some measure of cynicism, but I was rewarded notwithstanding my lack of faith. ;-) This is well worth the read, as are the transcripts of the podcasts [I'm a reader, not an audio listener, so thanks for the transcripts]. Good food for thought. And as a libertarian, I appreciate the implicit distinction between libertarian principles and real-world fantasies.
Modern version of resisting tyranny
https://tinyurl.com/bloomberg-minnesota
Great article. Only quibble is this line: "That government must be truly representative of the people, in all their diversity of beliefs and interests."
This sentiment may be fine at local/state levels of governance, but a federal government that has the purpose of serving the greater good of the country (needs of the people) cannot also serve the will of the people (wants of the people).
We are too large and diverse of a country to have full representation of everybody's interest vested in a single, centralized authority. A government of this nature that tries to serve everybody's interests will end up serving nobody and be in constant conflict.