`Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare:' A Prescription that Progressives Should Fill
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Brian H Balogh
The state has consistently been displaced by individual initiative and market mechanisms in personal and collective memory and, more often than not, scholarly interpretations as well. Progressives, however, would do well to embrace rather than deride this pattern. More importantly, they should design legislation that capitalizes upon the long-standing preference of Americans for government that is hidden in plain sight. This article explores that history. It identifies the ways in which Americans learned to govern less visibly during the nineteenth century and the ways in which these patterns were reinforced during the twentieth. In the process, it also addresses the prevailing assumption that Americans did not govern at all for much of their history. Indeed, it is that mythical "stateless" past that those who have already secured their state-subsidized benefits deployed in order to deny prospective public support to others.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Why Can't Americans See the State?
- The Winds of Congressional Change
- `Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare:' A Prescription that Progressives Should Fill
- The Case of the Missing Spymaster
- Bankruptcies, Bailouts and the Banking Bureaucracy: The Bush Agenda and the Capacity for Crisis
- Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System
- The Politics Measurement Makes: Performance Management in the Obama Era
- Overhead Agencies and Permanent Government: The Office of Management and Budget in the Obama Administration
- The Evolving American State: The Trust Challenge
- Politicians Do Pander: Mass Opinion, Polarization, and Law Making
- Review
- Review of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
- Review of No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Why Can't Americans See the State?
- The Winds of Congressional Change
- `Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare:' A Prescription that Progressives Should Fill
- The Case of the Missing Spymaster
- Bankruptcies, Bailouts and the Banking Bureaucracy: The Bush Agenda and the Capacity for Crisis
- Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System
- The Politics Measurement Makes: Performance Management in the Obama Era
- Overhead Agencies and Permanent Government: The Office of Management and Budget in the Obama Administration
- The Evolving American State: The Trust Challenge
- Politicians Do Pander: Mass Opinion, Polarization, and Law Making
- Review
- Review of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
- Review of No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures
