'Old' USA vs 'New' USA

I frequently hear a lot of people talking about how the 'Old' US was superior to the 'New' US in terms of philosophy, society, etc. However, I often see the goalposts of what constitutes the 'Old' and 'New' USs shifted, with some people placing the divide at the US intervention in WWI, some at the start of the Reconstruction Period, and a few even at the beginning of the Jacksonian Age. What do you think the dividing line between the 'Old' and 'New' USs are Veeky Forums? Also, general US history thread I guess

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

There are definitely more than 2 stages no matter how you break it down.

NuAmerica starts in the 60s

Well at some point in its history the U.S was significantly more free and democratic than it is now.

Tocqueville writes quite clearly that certain laws and certain customs that the U.S had in the early 19th century were essential in producing a functioning democratic and egalitarian society.

For example, he mentions that that the U.S had inheritance laws which said that all the property owned by a parent had to be divided equally amongst all the children of a given family; he thought this ensured that there would be no continuous aristocracy like in Europe. Furthermore, he pointed out what he saw as a democratic and civic culture which did encouraged people to join politics, and that this instilled a form of rational patriotism(his words), where people saw themselves as individuals but also party to the creation of a great republic.

There's three major periods in the United States' existence: the first, which is 1783 to the mid-19th century, which is their isolationist period of keeping to themselves and dealing with their own internal issues and trying to stabilize their own political system while expanding their land borders further west, then there's the second stage, which is mid-19th century to the mid 20th century, which is their imperialist, interventionist period of first wanting to be part of the cool kids' group by making getting colonies and then intervening in major overseas wars in attempts to strengthen their own strength and influence over world affairs, and then the final stage, which is the mid-20th century to now, which is the world police stage, where they've achieved global dominance as the world's superpower and now sort of try to keep everyone in check through diplomacy and economics rather than outright war, because their own general public has mostly turned against their so-called "military-industrial complex" or whatever the fuck some world politics major said.

So, when do you believe such trends ended? If I had to make a guess, I'd say they were slowly whittled away during the Industrial Revolution, when the economic and social climate started to favor large groups of people as opposed to the individual.

To me, as an American, the Old America died when the Civil War broke out.

The America that limped through that era died when the Industrial Revolution broke out.

The America that lived through that era died when the hippies took over in the 60's.

Now we're just living on borrowed time, completely disconnected from our past.

The Civil War was the first break.
America was better before it than after, even though I admit the war was about slavery and that slavery is bad and should have been ended.
The shift of power away from the individual states to the Federal government was the end of the Early American experiment in limited decentralized government.

The second break was FDR, the Great Depression, and WW2 culminating in the National Security State. It was also a completion of the path started by the first break in the Civil War. The complete end to any pretense that the U.S. was anything but just another centralized government with the power concentrated in one point to govern the minute frivolities of every citizen across the continent from a single man having the authority to start a nuclear war all the way down to how much wheat you could grow in your own back to feed your own cattle.

The essential philosophic property of the United States is right in the name. It was always meant to be a collection of individual sovereign states that would exert the control they thought was necessary over their own lives at the local state level.
That idea has almost completely disappeared today, and we accept the dictates of a national legislative, judicial, and executive body so removed and unbeholden to the average citizen that the idea of any normal individual influencing it or even making his concerns heard is absolutely unthinkable, unless some inside force gives him a megaphone to further their own interests.

>I'd say they were slowly whittled away during the Industrial Revolution, when the economic and social climate started to favor large groups of people as opposed to the individual.

I'd say you're probably correct about that. Industrialization, among other things, moved people into cities and changed the fundamental economic system of the U.S completely.

The U.S in its early inception followed a "nationalistic" economy system called the Hamiltonian school, which actually wasn't capitalistic at all in the beginning, but during industrialization it slowly turned into what we now know as capitalism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)

If I'm going to guess, at the same time as industrialization occurred, and capitalism became the dominant economic system, the laws on inheritance that Tocqueville thought ensured economic equality over generations slowly disappeared.

I like the answers given here a lot, but my main question now is whether or not the 'First Tier' of American development could have realistically been maintained throughout the modern era.
In other words, even if the Civil War or industrialization didn't eat away at the philosophical foundation of the country, would it still be maintainable in the modern era of highly centralized governments? Could a government so intrinsically 'divided' feasibly compete as other states start to concentrate power in the government? I understand that this is an incredibly hypothetical question and that a lot of Veeky Forumstorians might not be up to discussing it, but I still think its an interesting thought.