• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Making War Their Business: The Short History of Populist Anti-Militarism
  • Beteiligte: Stock, Catherine McNicol
  • Erschienen: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2014
  • Erschienen in: The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 13 (2014) 3, Seite 387-399
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • DOI: 10.1017/s1537781414000255
  • ISSN: 1537-7814; 1943-3557
  • Entstehung:
  • Anmerkungen:
  • Beschreibung: Several historians have recently demonstrated that ideas generated initially by the Populists found their way into Progressive Era reform, New Deal/Great Society liberalism, and even today's Democratic Party politics. The only trouble is that the vast majority of the Populists themselves did not make the journey. Once a bastion of anti-corporatism, support for labor, “women's improvement,” the graduated income tax, and government regulation of the economy, the rural states of the Great Plains and American South became fortresses of what Bethany Moreton has called “Christian Free Enterprise,” with strong anti-statist and socially conservative agendas. A decade ago Thomas Frank noticed this remarkable shift on the Great Plains and wondered “What's the Matter with Kansas?” Despite many new works on the economic impact of the Cold War in rural America, we still do not have a comprehensive answer to his question. In this essay, I examine a contrast that other historians of rural politics have overlooked in large part because it goes beyond economic policy, strictly defined: what Kansans (and residents of other rural, Great Plains states that supported the People's Party) once thought about the role of the United States military and what many believe now. Understanding this striking contrast will lead to understanding more fully the origins of today's “red” state politics. Furthermore, it can highlight more subtle signs that some aspects of Populist anti-militarism may have survived this otherwise fervent shift to the right.