Reading this put a fascinating look on all the things that I learned in Mr. McPartlin’s American History class. This book takes you on a trip through American Political History focusing on political paradigms instead of each change of power. When looked at this way, the shifts in power and policy seem to happen much more gradually and with greater correlation. Although the beginning focuses on events that took place a few hundred years ago, the implications for American political sentiment are clear as the author discusses the fight between Jefferson and Hamilton. Relearning that the idea that permeates liberalism came from the French Revolution was very cool. Even more interesting was the picture of conservatism that was laid out. Conservatism has undergone incredible changes so that today’s Republicans put forth mere shadows of the politics that their for bearers espoused. This isn’t just true for conservatism but, given the very definition of that word, it caught my eye the more I read. The best example of this was finding out that Reagan actually embraced programs like Social Security and Medicare…programs that are certainly under fire as “dangerous government entitlements” these days.

The lasting impression that I got from this book was that over relatively short periods of time, much of what the two major parties have legislated has ended in failure or negative, though unintended, consequences. Today’s neo-liberalism seems to be trying to wed the free market approach espoused in Reaganomics with governmental solutions to human problems of inequality, poverty and civil rights that the market has historically not been able to address.

Food for thought that this book generated in my head. Was the short term benefit of national healing, worth the possible long term consequences in pardoning Richard Nixon? Did the precedent of not wanting an elected US President to spend time behind bars lead to the “above the law” behavior that has become rampant in the executive branch? If there were rather a precedent for paying for your crimes, and being held to the same legal standard as the rest of the population…would our government, well, work better?