THE GREAT SOCIETY AND THE GREAT FORGETTING

The great constitutional confrontation of the New Deal—FDR and his allies’ clash with the courts and their conservative patrons over the direction of the nation’s political economy—proved to be the last of its kind, so far, in American history. The struggle over constitutional political economy continued outside the courts, in Congress and in public debate, during the conservative counterrevolution of the 1940s. After that, the democracy-of-opportunity tradition seemed to go into eclipse. This chapter thus marks a major turn in our narrative. It is an effort to untangle the story of how and why this eclipse occurred. (Chapter