Volume 46, Number 18 · November 18, 1999
Just Say No
By Edmund S. Morgan
A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government
by Garry Wills
Simon and Schuster, 365 pp., $25.00
Between 1776 and 1789 Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution. Garry Wills believes 'there is more to this attitude, in our culture, than the normal and universal resistance to authority,' and in A Necessary Evil he sets out to find what the Americans who have resisted or rejected government over two centuries have in common. He discovers it in a set of values, common to all Americans but championed by some at the expense of contrasting values, equally common, which usually act in counterpoise to support legitimate authority.
Review, 3852 words
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