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A couple of insights from the redoubtable Aaron Wildavsky's The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (1991):
He points out that early American individualists saw the central government as the main source of corruption and inequality. That all changed after the Civil War. Wildavsky poses some historical questions that go to the center of contemporary politics: "How . . . after the Civil War, did the heirs of Jefferson and Jackson slowly alter their heritage so as to give a greater role to government? How was 'corruption' taken from central government and placed on corporate capitalism as the source of inequality? How did 'states' rights' give way to national power as the preferred mechanism for equalizaton? How did Populists, the heirs of Jackson, shake off his time-honored view of the inherent corruption o goernment and change it into one in which central government became a force for equality? . . . If we knew the answers to these questions, we would know more about how America remained exceptional through depressions and wars."
And this: "Thirty years ago, in the 1950s, there were no homeless people; there were only bums, drunks, psychos, and transients. The difference is that way back then people without homes were characterized in ways that made it clear that they - and not society - were responsible for the ills that befell them. In egalitarian parlance, in those days the victims were blamed. 'Homeless' sounds like everybody else was given their fair portion but som, though no fault of their own, got left out. If people are home-less, presumably the remedy is for those who have neglected them to make them home-full - that is, to provide public housing."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, July 02, 2005 at 09:32 PM
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