In looking for ways to start this review over the book In The Shadow Of The Garrison State, I ran across and excerpt of a review by the publisher of the book a professor with the Princeton University Press in which he states "War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly a!
vailable archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist rival: the Soviet Uni
. . .
These principles lead to a feeling by the public to remain isolated and stay out of foreign affairs. Ultimately I feel that the death of Stalin was in essences the beginning of the end for communism and this so called Cold War. To control there daily lives is what cause fear in many Americans lives. With out these fears in the American public we as a nation, I think needed a new enemy and found that not with the communist*s but with the Russians. Higher taxes, which a complete no brainer to see why people obviously do not like this. We have fought many wars and had many battles based on this one principle. Ultimately I feel that they went bankrupt and could not continue to match us any longer in their attempt to establish the greater nation. Examples being from our own civil war, the notion of states rights and popular sovereignty where primary concerns of many southerners which lead to there succession. However it never really takes into account feelings of pass. Also through out our nations history many of our forefathers to the constitution which many of whom became president, preached this very notion. Never the less this did not change us to an Iso!
lationist state. I think that Friedberg would agree that the popular opinion of the time was to not get involved until the anti-communist sentiments were at there heights and people were all about blaming or advocating the fight and ultimate end to communism.
Approximate Word count =
1669
Approximate Pages =
7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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