Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, what changed in next 50 years to completely change the attitudes? The answer is that the American system of law and government has been slowly but steadily destroyed, and replaced with a related, but ultimately different legal and political regime. What you describe is a consequence of another, more-nuanced phenomenon at work: Over time, the population of the U.S. has increased, and the political demographics h…
> What you describe is a consequence of another, more-nuanced phenomenon at work: Over time, the political demographics of the U.S. have changed I agree, but in my view the relevant demographic change was mass immigration from continental European countries outside the Anglo legal tradition, which resulted in the election of a President that threatened the Supreme Court until it relented and effectively rewrote the C…
You're referring, of course, to the "conservative" Supreme Court majority that, in the mid-1930s, kept invalidating the emergency legislation enacted by FDR and a Democratic Congress to cope with the global disaster of the Great Depression, and to FDR's (ultimately-abortive) effort to pack the Court in response.
Dealing effectively with the Great Depression was evidently less important to the SCOTUS conservatives than was fidelity to a cramped interpretation of the Constitution and of the role of the federal government. That interpretation had hamstrung the Hoover government from dealing with the crisis; state governments weren't getting the job done either (and couldn't).
In 1930-32, Hoover and the GOP seemed to be fixated on conforming to that "conservative" view of the role of government. It got them tossed out of office on their asses and losing political power for decades.
In contrast, FDR and the Democrats took an expansive view of the role of government. They gave priority to trying to fix the problems affecting so many. Voters rewarded that thinking by keeping the Dems in power for decades.
One can conjecture that FDR's landslide victory in 1936 was because many people know comparatively little about "the Constitution." To many, "the law" is something for others to concern themselves with; what matters to them is whether the government is getting results, helping to mitigate people's problems while not interfering unduly in their lives. FDR recognized that; Hoover, the GOP, and the conservative SCOTUS majority seemed not to.
(In a similar vein: There's a piece in today's NY Times about how Hamas is gaining support in the West Bank because of releases of Palestinians held prisoner by the Israelis. [0] As my late dad used to say: If your rain dance doesn't produce rain, people aren't likely to care that you faithfully followed the prescribed dance steps — what they care about is results.)
Short-sighted thinking? Maybe. But it's a brute fact: Many, many people view the world in that way; they get to vote — or to take up arms ....
Doubtless you know the saying about the Supreme Court's collective change of heart in the late 1930s: "A switch in time saved Nine." That switch conceivably saved the country from revolution — possibly even of the kind that led to catastrophe for Germany in 1933, in Italy in 1922, and Russia in 1917.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/world/middleeast/west-ban...