Still, the Founding dispute over the balance between federal and state powers didn't disappear after the Constitution was narrowly ratified. In particular, Southern states bristled at the imposition of federal authority, leading eventually to the Civil War in 1860. Even after the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, white Southerners continued to resist federal demands for equal treatment of former black slaves and their descendants.
Economic Necessities
The spirit of Washington's and Madison's pragmatism reemerged in the 1930s in the economic sphere. Laissez-faire capitalism had failed, marred by a series of financial panics and recessions through the latter half of the 19 th Century and into the 20 th Century, finally culminating in Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.
At that point, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the broad powers of the Constitution to impose regulations on Wall Street, to organize a national effort to put Americans back to work, to legalize labor unions, and to expand the nation's infrastructure. His New Deal also created a limited safety net for Americans who were unable to work or who lost their jobs due to the vicissitudes of capitalism.
Subsequent presidents built on Roosevelt's reforms, through such measures as the GI Bill, which helped World War II veterans buy houses and return to school, and the Interstate Highway System, which made transportations faster and cheaper. The federally funded Space Program provided a powerful impetus to technological development, and Medicare addressed the problem of families being impoverished to pay for medical treatment of senior citizens.
Overall, the reforms from the 1930s through the 1960s created the Great American Middle Class, which in turn fueled more economic and productivity growth. As Washington and Madison might have appreciated, the pragmatism of their founding document had helped make the United States the envy of the world.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government also began enforcing the legal framework for equality that had been enacted nearly a century earlier after the Civil War. The South's walls of segregation were battered down by a combination of brave civil rights activists and a supportive national government.
That federal intervention, however, revived the old conflicts over states' rights, with many white Southerners furious that they could no longer marginalize, humiliate and terrorize blacks. Under Richard Nixon, the Republicans also spotted an opportunity to peel off Southern states from the Democrats by appealing to these racial antagonisms.
The 1970s marked an important political turning point in the United States with many middle-class Americans having forgotten how they and their parents benefited from the New Deal, with many working-class whites resentful of gains by minorities, and with frustration building over a decline in American dominance in the world. The Vietnam War was lost; oil-producing states were banding together to raise oil prices; inflation soared; foreign competition increased; wages began to stagnate; and the environment became a concern.
The Right -- detecting an opening amid these public resentments -- began to pour vast sums of money into creating a right-wing propaganda system that combined sophisticated think tanks with extensive media outreach to the American people. The overriding message was that Big Government was the problem, interfering with states' rights, corporate autonomy and individual liberty.
The Left inadvertently magnified the success of the Right's new strategy by shutting down many progressive publications, downplaying the importance of information, and refocusing on "local organizing" about local issues. "Think Globally, Act Locally" became the Left's new slogan, even as the Right began waging a national "war of ideas."
The Rise of Reaganism
The stage was set for the former actor Ronald Reagan to emerge as a transformational figure in U.S. politics, playing to white racism with comments about "welfare queens" and ridiculing the work of government with the old joke: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
During Reagan's First Inaugural Address, he declared that "government is the problem," and he soon enacted drastic cuts in the income tax rates for the wealthy. This policy of wealth redistribution to the upper levels was justified by a novel economic theory called "supply-side economics," which held that the rich would then invest in new factories and other businesses, thus creating new jobs and improving productivity.
However, Reaganomics proved terribly flawed. The rich invested relatively little in U.S. manufacturing which continued to decline, while the well-to-do lavished themselves with luxury goods and showed little patriotism in where they did put their money, favoring fast-growth foreign countries, not the United States.
Yet, the Right's propaganda system -- now fueled by the diversion of money to the upper classes -- continued to expand with right-wing media moguls buying up or starting up all sorts of new outlets, from newspapers, magazines and books to radio, TV and eventually the Internet.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
