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ConClusIon The Possibility of a New and Traditional American Political Order The self-conception, worldview, and behavior of the American people underwent a great change by the turn of the twentieth century. The change, while radical, was piecemeal and sometimes slow; it proceeded nearly imperceptibly . The story is one of gradual differentiation from colonial times into the nineteenth century. But then, a crisis. The wounds of the Civil War required bandages not previously known because the war presented a problem—real disunion—that we had not encountered before. To solve this new problem, a new solution was ventured; we came to be bound up together in a radically new way. This new binding has had a lasting effect both on the way we think of ourselves and on the way we conduct ourselves at home and abroad. Who we are as a people, a question originally settled and unified in the central documents and symbols of the American political tradition, became an open question because the original symbols and documents were stretched beyond their limits. In the Progressive Era there was no single consensus on Americans’ selfconception . Great debates were waged on the floor of the Senate chamber between more imperial Republicans like Albert Beveridge and humblerminded Democrats like Richard Kenney. Approaching midcentury, the arguments remained largely the same, though the parties switched sides; the Beveridge strand became more and more operative. This great change—from more humble, local, and inwardly focused to more brazenly imperial and centralized—saw manifestations throughout the twentieth century in the New Deal and Great Society. From midcentury and up until recent decades, the more centralizing and outwardly directed tendencies seemed to have been confined to the Democratic Party. As has now long been obvious, this more imperial cast of mind holds great sway on both sides of the political aisle and in virtually all corners of society. Most now think about politics in terms of a highly centralized govern145 146 Twilight of the Republic ment, highly centralized solutions, and what America can do by itself and to its own advantage on the international stage. There is a large and increasingly settled consensus on a more imperial self-conception and operation in American politics—a consensus nearly opposite to our original and most basic symbols. Vast amounts of natural resources, capital, and human lives are allocated accordingly and put in service of an imperial worldview under which, despite ourselves, we still sometimes chafe. The day may come when Americans are completely at home in this imperial worldview, but even if we are not wholly so today, only a shrinking minority are willing or able to contradict the operative majority. Even then, the current minority, in tune with the traditional American position, are today completely out of tune with the principles of the tradition. Their nearly hollow accounts betray the great interruption of principle and symbol articulated in this book. If there is any hope to be gleaned from this troubling state of affairs, it lies in the fact that a consensus may still be possible. The possibility of a new and more traditional American politics—which despite appearances is anything but a contradiction in terms, given the understanding of tradition advanced in these pages—may yet come to pass, because despite the fraying of the tradition there does seem to be a growing consensus of some kind, wrongheaded though it may be. If consensus is possible at all, then a change in its content is also possible. There is no impersonal and irresistible force behind this change. We citizens have done it together. We can undo it. But how did it come about? Though I have so far mainly concentrated on what has happened—an imperial shift—a brief indication of how is also in order and will help answer the question, What now? The relatively new imperial American exceptionalism has gained ground due in large part to a particular group operating within the confines of party politics in the last decades, namely the group often called “neoconservatives.” The group’s particular ideology, its origin, or the causes of its ascendency are not my concern here. Books about this have been written; this is not one of them. Though the neoconservatives’ influence on the trajectory of American politics has been considerable, some of their arguments have actually closely resembled those voiced by Beveridge a century ago. Arguments by Beveridge and his allies in Congress and the administration that “self-government is no cheap boon, to...

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