I liked this piece. I wrote a piece about a political typology that tracks with the Hamilton-Jefferson dichotomy you describe. You note that the two sides oppose each other and yet complement each other (sort of a ying-yang). I agree, but did not go with this theme in my political piece since I was trying to establish an analytical framework). It is very true.
Well written But depending on what you're getting at in it, you *may* be inadvertently mischaracterizing the New Deal Era, the USA of the New Deal was still a semi-populist, semi-politically decentralized, semi-economically decentralized, semi-culturally decentralized, and semi-scientifically decentralized system with democratic governance structures built around the old decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The New Deal Era was far from being the centralized technocratic dictatorships most of us have been taught that it was. There are many demonstrative examples, but to take just a few: Many people have the wrong impression of the TVA, it was not a hyper centralized project with a rigid top down command hierarchy, local business and various grass roots organizations often altered its plans, and introduced new ones or even deleted some of its plans, against the wills of its senior management. Banking and Finance is another great example, most people think that Glass Steagall (Banking Act of 1933) and the Banking Act of 1935 were hyper centralizing, technocratic, and fully products of the New Deal, when in fact the core features of the the system they generated were not created by them, they were just maintained as they had been there for the whole history of the country, such as the interstate banking competition and in-general capital flow inhibitors, and these were extremely populist and done against the wills of Big Finance and the centralizing technocrats. The NIRA, which was the pinnacle of the centralizing technocratic actions wasn't just shot down by the supreme court 2 years after its creation, Congress was likely going to destroy it anyways and may have even been held off on doing so to let the court rule provisions of it unconstitutional; either way it was being successfully resisted all across the country and wasn't going to make it. Despite the president having strong majorities in both houses, the 1930s saw more against the will of the president veto proof majority legislation passes than most of the rest of the countries history combined. States and cities still had very significant powers and purviews. This list goes on and on...
I liked this piece. I wrote a piece about a political typology that tracks with the Hamilton-Jefferson dichotomy you describe. You note that the two sides oppose each other and yet complement each other (sort of a ying-yang). I agree, but did not go with this theme in my political piece since I was trying to establish an analytical framework). It is very true.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/an-alternate-american-political-spectrum
Thanks for sharing that post! That's an interesting dichotomy you lay out.
Well written But depending on what you're getting at in it, you *may* be inadvertently mischaracterizing the New Deal Era, the USA of the New Deal was still a semi-populist, semi-politically decentralized, semi-economically decentralized, semi-culturally decentralized, and semi-scientifically decentralized system with democratic governance structures built around the old decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The New Deal Era was far from being the centralized technocratic dictatorships most of us have been taught that it was. There are many demonstrative examples, but to take just a few: Many people have the wrong impression of the TVA, it was not a hyper centralized project with a rigid top down command hierarchy, local business and various grass roots organizations often altered its plans, and introduced new ones or even deleted some of its plans, against the wills of its senior management. Banking and Finance is another great example, most people think that Glass Steagall (Banking Act of 1933) and the Banking Act of 1935 were hyper centralizing, technocratic, and fully products of the New Deal, when in fact the core features of the the system they generated were not created by them, they were just maintained as they had been there for the whole history of the country, such as the interstate banking competition and in-general capital flow inhibitors, and these were extremely populist and done against the wills of Big Finance and the centralizing technocrats. The NIRA, which was the pinnacle of the centralizing technocratic actions wasn't just shot down by the supreme court 2 years after its creation, Congress was likely going to destroy it anyways and may have even been held off on doing so to let the court rule provisions of it unconstitutional; either way it was being successfully resisted all across the country and wasn't going to make it. Despite the president having strong majorities in both houses, the 1930s saw more against the will of the president veto proof majority legislation passes than most of the rest of the countries history combined. States and cities still had very significant powers and purviews. This list goes on and on...