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“In the end, the complex federal polity that the founders had pieced together proved resilient and endured. Citizens given to lamenting the state of present-day American politics, featuring a government that is supposedly ‘gridlocked’ and ‘dysfunctional,’ would do well to recall that the nation has weathered far greater crises in the past.” PIETRO S. NIVOLA (Brookings Institution) and PETER J. KASTOR (Washington University) “The concept of a robust regular army and navy represented to the Republicans of the time what the welfare state is to conservatives now: a budget-busting beast, insatiably devouring higher tax revenues, and potentially imperiling individual liberties.” PIETRO S. NIVOLA “For all that has changed in the technology of war and America’s place among the world’s great military powers, much about the War of 1812 remains strikingly modern with respect to the lessons that it holds for deterrence, preparedness, counterinsurgency strategy, and military professionalism.” STEPHEN BUDIANSKY (author of Perilous Fight) “Jefferson’s Republicans constructed a forceful critique of national power and a boisterous endorsement of state sovereignty and individual rights—positions that anticipated much contemporary rhetoric. Alas, by shrinking the national government, Jefferson and Madison hampered the ability of the United States to wage the War of 1812. Recounting that war offers a cautionary tale of national disaster narrowly averted.” ALAN TAYLOR (author of The Civil War of 1812) “Madison showed remarkable restraint in nearly all respects during the War of 1812, which took place in the country’s infancy, when there was still great conceptual space for robust claims of presidential power to restrain freedom. The war saw dramatically fewer intrusions on civil liberties than did later wars or even earlier episodes short of war in the country’s still-young history.” BENJAMIN WITTES and RITIKA SINGH (Brookings Institution) “Because the War of 1812 is characterized by irony . . . it makes sense that a system of federalism that seemed so ill-equipped for the successful prosecution of war would emerge both vindicated and celebrated by the conflict.” PETER J. KASTOR BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS Washington, D.C. www.brookings.edu WhatSoProudlyWeHailed Highlights from ...

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