While reading chapters 14-16 of Wilentz, the belief that history is to repeat itself kept popping into my head. These chapters seemed to echo all of the American history I have read about and am living. The idea of manipulative political parties fighting each other, whether it is Whigs and Jacksonian-democrats or democrats and republicans, is not foreign to us. Nor is the fight for race relations. At the time of Jackson, Van Buren, Calhoun, etc. the fight was over slavery, but race issues stood flood our computers and television sets daily. William Lloyd Garrison even brings women into the equation, which is a conflict that pervades every aspect of politics today.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Whig party struggles with Van Buren dominating the polls with his popularity. ALKAROUT mentions this through democratization by saying, \u201cThe party\u2019s attempts at democratization demonstrate that the party was more or less obligated to reshape itself if they desired to maintain political relevance.\u201d I would say this is true for today\u2019s politics as well. I believe we are left with two parties, one who is popular and the other realizing that it will not win an election without changing some views.<\/p>\n

Then, of course, there is this economic debate over banks and money. At the time, Jackson was still shutting down most of the popularly approved ideas regarding the banks and any money relations. We see at this time a large debate over the use of gold vs. paper money and the gold standard. As gold and silver ran low, there was an issue over money and many politicians of the time referenced paper money as a solution. Many other politicians saw the threat of inflation through paper money, something that has been considered since we picked up the dollar. \u00a0A shipment of gold from Britain would quell their uneasiness for a short time, but as we now, the shift to paper money would occur eventually.<\/p>\n

From the economic crisis of months and years past to the on going disagreement and refusing to settle between the democratic and republican parties, I would not go as far as to say that we are mirroring the past, or repeating it, but it important to note that we are still fighting the same things. Process of great strides has been made but the issues still remain. My question is whether or not we will ever move past these issues. My answer- in a democracy, I am not sure we ever will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While reading chapters 14-16 of Wilentz, the belief that history is to repeat itself kept popping into my head. These chapters seemed to echo all of the American history I have read about and am living. The idea of manipulative political parties fighting each other, whether it is Whigs and Jacksonian-democrats or democrats and republicans, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “We Can’t Stop, We Won’t Stop”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96,232,245,326],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-democracy","tag-political-parties","tag-race","tag-wilentz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}