The more things change, the more they stay the same - unless they
change, which sometimes happens. Consider Republicans, for instance
. . . Americans, even the nonexceptionalists, tend to think that
their nation is a young thing. "But the reality of our public life
is very different," writes emeritus professor Keller
(History/Brandeis Univ.) "Our Constitution, only occasionally
amended, is getting on to a quarter of a millennium. Our political
parties are among the most venerable anywhere." In the spirit of
more fluent work by Kevin Phillips (The Cousins' Wars: Religion,
Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America) and David Hackett
Fischer (Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America), Keller
offers a long-view approach of that quarter-millennium span,
asserting that American history falls into three broad periods: the
"deferential and republican," marked by both a "mix of radical
thought and moderate-to-conservative action" and a sense that the
European way of doing things was likely best; the "party and
democratic," running from the 1830s to the 1930s, in which an
America-first mentality collided with international realities and
the growth of the big state; and the "bureaucratic and populist,"
in which that big state came into its own even as conservatives
denounced it. Keller's parsing needs some fine-tuning, but the idea
that history works in broad patterns is instructive. So too is his
observation that once one cycle has been run, the next is likely to
be very different. Thus, for instance, "today the GOP stands in
opposition to most of what defined it from the 1850s to the 1930s,"
more international than isolationist but also whiter and poorer.
Even so, Keller observes, the old tropes are likely to last a while
longer, so that the Iraq mess will likely further cleave the two
parties into "war" and "peace" camps even as the electorate hold to
a long-standing general ratio of more or less equal division into
Democrats, Republicans and the nonaffiliated.For students of
American history, a thesis worth exploring. (Kirkus Reviews)
When historians take the long view, they look at "ages" or "eras"
(the Age of Jackson, the Progressive Era). But these time spans
last no longer than a decade or so. In this groundbreaking new
book, Morton Keller divides our nation's history into three
regimes, each of which lasts many, many decades, allowing us to
appreciate, as never before, the slow steady evolution of American
public life. Americans like to think of our society as eternally
young and effervescent. But the reality is very different. A proper
history of America must be as much about continuity, persistence,
and evolution as about transformation and revolution. To provide
this proper history, Keller groups America's past into three long
regimes--Deferential and Republican, from the colonial period to
the 1820s; Party and Democratic, from the 1830s to the 1930s; and
Populist and Bureaucratic, from the 1930s to the present. This
approach yields many new insights. We discover, for instance, that
the history of colonial America, the Revolution, and the Early
Republic is a more unified story than usually assumed. The Civil
War, industrialization, and the Progressive era did relatively
little to alter the character of the democratic-party regime that
lasted from the 1830s to the 1930s. And the populist-bureaucratic
regime in which we live today has seen changes in politics,
government, and law as profound as those that occurred in the late
18th and early 19th centuries. As Keller underscores the sheer
staying power of America's public institutions, he sheds light on
current concerns as well: in particular, will the current political
polarization continue or will more moderate forces prevail. Here
then is a major contribution to United States history--an entirely
new way to look at our past, our present, and our future--packed
with provocative and original observations about American public
life.
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