Sunday, December 28, 2003

Similarities at 70

David W. Livingston, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, looks at political events in the USSR and the US at the age of 70.  The piece is entitled “The Litmus Test for American Conservatism." The concluding paragraph from the short piece.

"The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties.  Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that.  In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory.  There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian.  The latter is Jacobinism by other means.  Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism."

Via George F. Smith at Strike the Root blog.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 07:53 AM
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