ANOTHER "GOLDEN AGE " MYTH DEBUNKED

Baggers and other conservatives claim that in the "old days," things were much better in America but how far back the days are varies with the group and person.  Mark Levin apparently wants to go back before the New Deal and Glenda Beck may want to go back to the late 18th Century.  In the latter case, Forrest McDonald has some bad news (pp. 178-79):

A bitter lesson emerged from the disruptions in New England, one that was reinforced elsewhere by corruption, demagoguery, and the refusal or inability of Congress and the several states to honor their obligations. The lesson, as some were candid enough to put it, was that the American public did not possess a sufficient stock of virtue to sustain a republic, as republics had traditionally been conceived. Man did not have such virtue naturally, nor did he obtain it by laboring in the earth, nor did many men acquire it through religious instruction.