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A couple of insights from the redoubtable Aaron Wildavsky\u2019s The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism <\/em> (1991): <\/p>\n He points out that early American individualists saw the central government as the main source of corruption and inequality. That all changed after the Civil War. Wildavsky poses some historical questions that go to the center of contemporary politics: \u201cHow . . . after the Civil War, did the heirs of Jefferson and Jackson slowly alter their heritage so as to give a greater role to government? How was \u2018corruption\u2019 taken from central government and placed on corporate capitalism as the source of inequality? How did \u2018states\u2019 rights\u2019 give way to national power as the preferred mechanism for equalizaton? How did Populists, the heirs of Jackson, shake off his time-honored view of the inherent corruption o goernment and change it into one in which central government became a force for equality? . . . If we knew the answers to these questions, we would know more about how America remained exceptional through depressions and wars.\u201d <\/p>\n And this: \u201cThirty years ago, in the 1950s, there were no homeless people; there were only bums, drunks, psychos, and transients. The difference is that way back then people without homes were characterized in ways that made it clear that they \u2013 and not society \u2013 were responsible for the ills that befell them. In egalitarian parlance, in those days the victims were blamed. \u2018Homeless\u2019 sounds like everybody else was given their fair portion but som, though no fault of their own, got left out. If people are home-less, presumably the remedy is for those who have neglected them to make them home-full \u2013 that is, to provide public housing.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of insights from the redoubtable Aaron Wildavsky\u2019s The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (1991): He points out that early American individualists saw the central government as the main source of corruption and inequality. That all changed after the Civil War. Wildavsky poses some historical questions that go to the center of contemporary politics: \u201cHow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n