Along these lines (and without disagreeing with most of the grandparent post), I think it's good to look outside US borders as well as within them.
For example, a frequent objection to the government of today is its willingness to engage in drone strikes. It's true that these represent a significant change in battle, since US is risking only some flying hardware but no longer a pilot. It's also true that whenever we attack someone elsewhere we risk creating a new enemy who wishes to avenge the first target.
On the other hand, this has to be viewed in the context of diminishing casualties over time. Drone strikes are far more discriminating than cruise missile attacks, which were the preferred means of retaliation 20-30 years ago; and cruise missile strikes are in turn more discriminating than tactics like carpet bombing of 40-50 years ago. It's instructive to compare this with America's first outing on the international stage, the Spanish-American war (1895-98), which was rapidly followed by the Philippine-American war (1899-1902), when the newly-acquired territory of the Philippines promptly rebelled. The latter conflict was truly horrific, with the US engaging in what would be indisputably classed as genocide today. Moral low points of the 'war on terror' have involved US soldiers photographed in mocking poses with prisoners of war or dead bodies. Back then, veterans were proud to pose atop the massed bones of thousands, in scenes as gruesome as anything from WW2. If you can overlook the messy design and are interested in the history, this is about the most comprehensive resource online: http://moviephilippines.blogspot.com/2013/04/documentary-phi... ...but given that these events took place over a century ago, books are still a better resource (which was how I learned about it).
My point here is not to say there's 'nothing to see here,' but to warn against a kind of historical revisionism that paints the past in idealistic terms as some sort of Eden from which we have since fallen, because appeals to the idea of a noble past to which we must turn back can be leveraged to resurrect injustice as easily as ideals.
I strongly recommend looking for the Penguin Classics edition of the Federalist Papers, which contains an outstanding introduction of ~70 pages by historian Isaac Kramnick which delineates the factors and factions that gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The actual positions of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists still echo through American politics today, and it's worth remembering that the (many) opponents of the Constitution considered it a tyrannical imposition on what had up to then been a confederacy of free States. Whether that change in the form of government made Americans more or less free remains a matter of intense dispute.
For example, a frequent objection to the government of today is its willingness to engage in drone strikes. It's true that these represent a significant change in battle, since US is risking only some flying hardware but no longer a pilot. It's also true that whenever we attack someone elsewhere we risk creating a new enemy who wishes to avenge the first target.
On the other hand, this has to be viewed in the context of diminishing casualties over time. Drone strikes are far more discriminating than cruise missile attacks, which were the preferred means of retaliation 20-30 years ago; and cruise missile strikes are in turn more discriminating than tactics like carpet bombing of 40-50 years ago. It's instructive to compare this with America's first outing on the international stage, the Spanish-American war (1895-98), which was rapidly followed by the Philippine-American war (1899-1902), when the newly-acquired territory of the Philippines promptly rebelled. The latter conflict was truly horrific, with the US engaging in what would be indisputably classed as genocide today. Moral low points of the 'war on terror' have involved US soldiers photographed in mocking poses with prisoners of war or dead bodies. Back then, veterans were proud to pose atop the massed bones of thousands, in scenes as gruesome as anything from WW2. If you can overlook the messy design and are interested in the history, this is about the most comprehensive resource online: http://moviephilippines.blogspot.com/2013/04/documentary-phi... ...but given that these events took place over a century ago, books are still a better resource (which was how I learned about it).
My point here is not to say there's 'nothing to see here,' but to warn against a kind of historical revisionism that paints the past in idealistic terms as some sort of Eden from which we have since fallen, because appeals to the idea of a noble past to which we must turn back can be leveraged to resurrect injustice as easily as ideals.
I strongly recommend looking for the Penguin Classics edition of the Federalist Papers, which contains an outstanding introduction of ~70 pages by historian Isaac Kramnick which delineates the factors and factions that gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The actual positions of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists still echo through American politics today, and it's worth remembering that the (many) opponents of the Constitution considered it a tyrannical imposition on what had up to then been a confederacy of free States. Whether that change in the form of government made Americans more or less free remains a matter of intense dispute.