{"id":692,"date":"2008-12-09T11:36:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T19:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=692"},"modified":"2008-12-09T11:52:58","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T19:52:58","slug":"the-fall-of-the-first-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-fall-of-the-first-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"The fall of the first republic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m reading Sean Wilentz&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0393058204\/\/geneexpressio-20\">The Rise of American Democracy<\/a>.  I&#8217;m only about 1\/4 of the way through, so on page 200 or so.  I&#8217;m not surprised by the narrative so far, the rise of mass democratic populism and the fading away of the partisans of the original oligarchic republic vision as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0316773433\/geneexpressio-20\">Age of Jackson<\/a> dawns. \u00a0But there are a few details which are striking in a contemporary context. \u00a0New England was the last redoubt of the Federalist vision of hierarchical conservatism, from limited \u00a0white male suffrage to established churches. \u00a0Additionally, the rise to the fore of what during the Enlightenment would be termed <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Enthusiasm#Historical_usage\">&#8220;Enthusiasm&#8221;<\/a> is notable, as democratic politics turns into a quadrennial performance. \u00a0In religious terms there was\u00a0\u00a0an alliance at both ends of the theological spectrum; Free Thinkers &amp; Deists in Philadelphia made common cause with Baptist &#8220;Back Country&#8221; farmers and nominally Episcopalian &#8220;Low Country&#8221; planters against the urbane Congregationalist ascendancy of New England. \u00a0The historical reality of the rise of democratic populism, and something of an amnesia about the nature of the republic during its early years (when democracy was something of a term of insult), leads to the peculiarities of the American Right, which is in many measures a descendant of classical liberalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m reading Sean Wilentz&#8217;s The Rise of American Democracy. I&#8217;m only about 1\/4 of the way through, so on page 200 or so. I&#8217;m not surprised by the narrative so far, the rise of mass democratic populism and the fading &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-fall-of-the-first-republic\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[90],"tags":[1134,1131,94],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}