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Edited on Mon Nov-24-03 03:16 AM by BadFaith
It wasn't a myth, because much of the Jeffersonian Ideal did in fact exist. Not entirely, of course, but it's worth remembering that the anti-Federalists had completely obliterated the Federalist Party by 1824. Jefferson's election, as well as the "Virginia Dynasty" (Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe) brought about an alliance between Southern agrarians and Northern city dwellers, an alliance that grew to be the dominating coalition of the Democratic Republican Party (in 1828 the Democratic Party). And because up until the 1860s the DP was for all intents and purposes the ONLY political party with any power, that coalition was itself the dominant interest in American politics. In an ironic twist, after the Democratic Party was torn apart at the seams over slavery, it was Lincoln who took up the mantle of Jefferson's political ideals.
It wasn't until the rise of "corporate personhood" (that is, corprations were given the same rights as citizens) that Jeffersonian Democracy started to wane. By the time of the McKinley Adminstration corporate interests had a firm hold on the Presidency, and the role of corporations in our society was a hotly contested issue of that day. So much so that Theodore Roosevelt, who was McKinley's VP and successor after the assassination, left the Republicans to form the Bull Moose Party essentially because the Republican Party had abandoned its Jeffersonian roots. It wasn't really until FDR and the triumph of the Trade Union movement that Jeffersonian Democracy started making its slow comeback.
I don't follow the technology argument, as that implies there is a labor cieling in agriculture. Frankly, I'm not sure if there is or if there isn't, but the same argument was made concerning manufacturing automation, implying a labor cieling, and the predictions didn't materialize.
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