Flip Your Whig

"In the era Wilentz describes, far more Americans than today remained outside democracy's boundaries. Yet in some ways, that democratic system was more robust than our own. Voter participation was far greater, popular involvement with political parties and leaders far more intense. Questions then thought to be subject to democratic control--currency and banking policy, public regulation of the economy, how to combat economic inequality--are now off the agenda. Today, only half the eligible population bothers to vote, no one is sure if his or her ballot will be accurately counted and the people's representatives are widely held in disrepute. As in the nineteenth century, we still grapple with the question of what kind of democracy America is and ought to be."

Eric Foner reviews Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy in The Nation, and Wilentz compares current conservatism with the antebellum Whig Party in The New York Times Magazine.