This is a strange description. "public servants, students, activists, and leaders"
So, regular adult citizens are...the bulk of the actual 'public' are part of the problem to be solved by the 4 addressed constituencies?
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Fellow citizens being regarded as problems to be fixed is an attitude of American technocrats going back to the 1920’s and Herbert Croly
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Well yes, in America prior to the progressive movement (Wilson, TR etc) the idea of government planning was largely anathema here from the end of the era of canal building on the early 19th C to the 1910s. Went along with the gold standard, limited executive power & gilded age
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There was a deep suspicion of government charted banks, greenbacks and of government corruption which to be fair, omnipresent due to the spoils system
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that coincided with the city machines era etc right? some sort of power abhors a vacuum effect
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Yes, Tammany Hall was the greatest, earliest one but it was all across the north and western states. Both parties
South with segregation and one-party rule was its own system and was shut out of the presidency by informal agreement made in Compromise of 1877
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So you get either high-minded straussian moral corruption and noble lying or low-minded straightforward grifting and racketeering... pick your poison sorta deal
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It varies. Some states are a lot cleaner than others. Some machines died out in the 30’s and 40’s. Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Nebraska etc different world from NY, Illinois, NJ, Louisiana
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