Ideas are not godlings that spring perfect-winged from the head of Jove; they are not flowers that bloom in a walled garden; they are weapons hammere… - Vernon Louis Parrington

There was a vast amount of nosing about to discover bad smells, and to sensitive noses the bad smells seemed to be everywhere. Evidently some hidden cesspool was fouling American life, and as the inquisitive plumbers tested the household drains they came upon the source of infection — not one cesspool but many, under every city hall and beneath every state capitol — dug secretly by politicians in the pay of respectable business men. It was these cesspools that were poisoning the national household, and there would be no health in America till they were filled in and no others dug. It was a dramatic discovery and when the corruption of American politics was laid on the threshold of business — like a bastard on the doorsteps of the father — a tremendous disturbance resulted.

We Americans are a simple and somewhat primitive people. We desire things eagerly like children; and when we are crossed or thwarted, when we encounter those who dissent from our proposals, we strike out assertively. The state of Washington is characteristically American, with the virtues and shortcomings of the old stock set in sharp relief. In what temper our Economics and politics will dwell together in the immediate future, no wise man will endeavor to forecast.

Perhaps the rarest bit of irony in American history is the later custodianship of democracy by the middle class, who while perfecting their tariffs and subsidies, legislating from the bench, exploiting the state and outlawing all political theories but their own, denounce all class consciousness as unpatriotic and all agrarian or proletarian programs as undemocratic. But it was no fault of Andrew Jackson if the final outcome of the great movement of Jacksonian democracy was so untoward; it was rather the fault of the times that were not ripe for democracy. ... One far-reaching result survived the movement, the popularization of the name of democracy and the naive acceptance of the belief that the genius of America was democratic.