Between 1888 and 1964 the US was involved in the Spanish-American, WW I, WW II, Korea and Vietnam wars. Our country morphed from an agrarian to an industrialized society. Corporations changed from being primarily small, local enterprises to behemoths employing thousands. Labor unions exerted their force across the country. The cold war against the Soviet Union took center stage, as briefly did the American Communist Party. Radio, telephones, television, interstate highways and jetliners made communication and travel easy. Oh, and we can't forget that our nation suffered through a Great Depression, too.
If you wanted to write a script leading to political gridlock and partisanship, you would be hard pressed to find a better recipe than to dream up those events. What this country experienced in the years since 1964 seems tame by comparison. Our flash points have been largely self-created, rather than being the result of profound, systemic change.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
There were forty-six Supreme Court appointees during the 76 years between 1888 and 1964. Forty five were approved by the Senate. That's 45 to 1. Only two percent of presidential appointees were turned down. During one of the most tumultuous periods this country has experienced.
For the years between 1965 and 2010, there were twenty-four supreme court appointees to the Supreme Court. Seventeen were approved. Seven, a forty-one thirty percent ratio, were rejected by the Senate. Why the sudden change in approval rate during a period of our history that is comparatively calm? Something to ponder during the coming months as the next Supreme Court appointment will be revealed.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. … But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. ~Thomas Jefferson
FWIW, here is some information that I found interesting. A Timeline of US Military Operations. I had no idea we had engaged in so many battles. Compare that with the total number of Declarations of War by the United States.