On Warfare State

This is an excellent study of the wartime expansion of the United States federal government. The general subject—how the federal state became the one we know today—is well trodden, and its origins are usually pinned on the New Deal or the Second World War. Here, Sparrow argues that the New Deal was a weak, liberal thing that had little affect on the expansion of the federal government (from the standpoint of today, it was a large growth according to someone standing in 1940).

However, Sparrow’s more sophisticated and important argument is that, unlike World War I, the United States federal government was able to garner the legitimacy in the eyes of the American people. Critics existed during the 1940s, as they do today, of federal expansion during the fight against fascism globally. Yet, the federal state was able to garner its legitimacy through the use of language of rights and Americanism—American officials in the 1940s would say that this was not expansion of “European-style” despotism along lines experienced by the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or even liberal France/UK. Instead, this was an expansion of rights for all Americans, giving them further opportunities and embedding them in the making of American citizenship. Really great stuff—the GI Bill seems particularly important here, and it doesn’t quite receive the coverage that I think it deserves, it really should have a full chapter to itself.