NOVEMBER 4:
"SEE DK CURRENT POST ":
RE edited now,
"Re aristocracies.
He points out, quite correctly, that we have now had two for some time. I agree with that.
One has to qualify the term aristocracy, however, and acknowledge that the country was founded in part on repudiating them.
What he calls aristocracies are not the aristocracies of old. Not at all. That, after all, is part of their problem.
I know that some historians, perhaps DK, see our constitution as a species of continued aristocracy, but without the old formalities.
He seems to see it as a more or less economically and socially leveled democracy, after the so called aristocratic Federalist decline, until as he says about a hundred years ago, when aristocracy re emerged here.
I tend to disagree with that interpretation, for a variety of reasons.
Another issue that lurks here is that there were perhaps always two faux aristocracies here, but they weren't called that at the time, and some among each would have bitterly repudiated the inference.
Their orientation followed, to some extent, the old distinction between town and country."
NOVEMBER 7
RE AMERICAN SO CALLED ARISTOCRACY OF GENTLEMEN (SEE THAT POST)
Rereading Palmer's Struggle passage, p 341, he makes this town versus country point I had mentioned above: "...the mercantile community was predominantly Federalist and pro-British (in the 1790s), and it was among small farmers and landed gentry, remote from the cities, that one found sympathy for Republicanism and for France."
DK discusses Tocqueville's observations of relative equality of income, and of active grass roots revolutionary democracy at work in America... He mentions Federalism as the only so called aristocratic movement, formerly in America in 1776, that had ostensibly died out by Tocqueville's time, in DK's brief account here.
Palmer contrasts the situation in America with that of Europe:
The wider European revolution was primarily, though hardly exclusively, a bourgeois revolution, not a peasant or lower gentry one.
The lower classes, urban or rural, had little active involvement with the democratic movements anywhere except Ireland, and even in France after 1795, were not actively involved in the revolutions around them.
He points out, quite correctly, that we have now had two for some time. I agree with that.
One has to qualify the term aristocracy, however, and acknowledge that the country was founded in part on repudiating them.
What he calls aristocracies are not the aristocracies of old. Not at all. That, after all, is part of their problem.
I know that some historians, perhaps DK, see our constitution as a species of continued aristocracy, but without the old formalities.
He seems to see it as a more or less economically and socially leveled democracy, after the so called aristocratic Federalist decline, until as he says about a hundred years ago, when aristocracy re emerged here.
I tend to disagree with that interpretation, for a variety of reasons.
Another issue that lurks here is that there were perhaps always two faux aristocracies here, but they weren't called that at the time, and some among each would have bitterly repudiated the inference.
Their orientation followed, to some extent, the old distinction between town and country."
NOVEMBER 7
RE AMERICAN SO CALLED ARISTOCRACY OF GENTLEMEN (SEE THAT POST)
Rereading Palmer's Struggle passage, p 341, he makes this town versus country point I had mentioned above: "...the mercantile community was predominantly Federalist and pro-British (in the 1790s), and it was among small farmers and landed gentry, remote from the cities, that one found sympathy for Republicanism and for France."
DK discusses Tocqueville's observations of relative equality of income, and of active grass roots revolutionary democracy at work in America... He mentions Federalism as the only so called aristocratic movement, formerly in America in 1776, that had ostensibly died out by Tocqueville's time, in DK's brief account here.
Palmer contrasts the situation in America with that of Europe:
The wider European revolution was primarily, though hardly exclusively, a bourgeois revolution, not a peasant or lower gentry one.
The lower classes, urban or rural, had little active involvement with the democratic movements anywhere except Ireland, and even in France after 1795, were not actively involved in the revolutions around them.
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