Thursday, March 31, 2011

American Founding and Conservatism's Radical Roots

In Isaiah 43, God commands, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" These challenging words have often led me to wonder about the conservative's cultural task, especially given the paradoxical relationship between today's conservatives and the American founding.

What is conservatism? 

First, conservatism is not progressivism. Progressives seek authority in modernity, science, utility, and the idea of progress. Since there is much betterment yet to achieve, they have a preferential option for change over continuity. By contrast, conservatives affirm the authority of Judeo-Christian religions, Greco-Roman classics, and Western, Anglo, American norms. Because people today stand on the shoulders of giants, conservatives usually counsel continuity over change.

Second, as a cohesive body of thought, conservatism is the child of the very unconservative modern age. It contends against the anti-conservative forces of modernity, intentionally biting the hand that feeds it. This is a good, if paradoxical, thing. In a time of tumult marked by revolutions and the cult of change, civilization needs a counter-force that questions change, slows it down, and demands to know what of permanent value is being diminished or lost. If there had been no modernity -- if there had been no French Revolution or Industrial Revolution -- there would have been no need for conservatism to set itself against all the ideologies and other "isms" of the last two centuries: liberalism, capitalism, progressivism, radicalism, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, anarchism, syndicalism, Stalinism, Maoism, relativism, libertarianism -- on and on the list goes.

Third, in the face of these "isms," conservatives champion certain first principles in response to the fragmenting forces of modernity. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke articulated a just, humane order to counter the “armed doctrines” of French revolutionaries. In the twentieth, Russell Kirk opposed galloping statism and rapacious totalitarianism. These avatars set down principles that are drawn from the tested wisdom of the species. What T. S. Eliot called the "Permanent Things" provide a compass, anchor, and rudder for Homo viator – man the pilgrim – in his difficult voyage over rough seas. 

Fourth, religion -- the source of the cult of the culture -- has a special place in the conservative order. Eric Voegelin and Christopher Dawson warned that when the ideologue seeks to relegate traditional religions to the private sphere, what emerges in the public sphere is not necessarily self-enlightened human beings dedicated to civic humanism, but defenders of the guillotine, gulag, and death camp. The reality of these historical tragedies demonstrates that there are unintended consequences when branching too far away from our civilizational roots in Jerusalem and Rome.  

Fifth, the American founding has become the touchstone for many of today's conservatives. On the one hand, this linkage is understandable because the American Revolution did not turn the world upside down. It established a nation based on ordered liberty and the rule of law. It was primarily a political, not a social, reordering, establishing a federated polity for citizens who valued the freedom and rights of 18th century Englishmen. On the other hand, the linkage is paradoxical for a number of reasons.

Paradox #1: What the Most Conservative Western Institution Thought of the American Founding

Arguably the most conservative institution in the Western world at the time of the American founding was the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Pius VI (reigned from 1775-1799) struggled to come to grips with the creation of the United States because personally he was on good terms with King George III, while philosophically he favored monarchies over republics. He was also aware of the attitude of most Americans in a nation in which less than two percent of the population was Roman Catholic. John Adams wrote on August 4, 1776, to the president of the Continental Congress:
Prominent Roman Catholics in Great Britain also set their faces against American independence. "An Address of the Roman Catholic Peers and Commons of Great Britain” to King George III, dated May 2, 1776, and published in the London Gazette, expresses appreciation for the constitution and Catholics' loyalty to it. For years “their conduct has been irreproachable,” and they are going to stand by the king in “public danger,” and are “perfectly ready, on every occasion, to give proofs of our fidelity.” The address further says:

In the 19th century, Church teaching also condemned a major "ism" -- "Americanism" -- because it stood for separating church and state and, at its most extreme, shrinking religion's impact to the private sphere while treating religion indifferently in the public square.

Paradox #2: Post-War American Conservatives Are More Connected to Radical Thought Than They Realize

Another paradox of conservatism is often overlooked by its champions. It's that most of conservatism’s first principles are derived from history’s greatest radicals. The paradox is hardly illogical when we consider that our word "radical" comes from the Latin radix, meaning "root." So etymologically, both conservatives and radicals look to the roots of things for their first principles.

This insight is what Russell Kirk was getting at when he wrote, in Program for Conservatives, that, "The thinking conservative, in truth, must take on some of the outward characteristics of the radical." When we explore the roots of conservatism's first principles, it is a perfectly reasonable thought.

Consider briefly the radical roots of conservatism's most cherished beliefs:

(1) The belief in a transcendent moral order came not from the conservatives but the revolutionaries of their day. The Hebrews – led first by Abraham, and then by Moses and Aaron – launched the radical idea of transcendent monotheism amid numerous nature deities. Such innovative ideas as linear time, a people’s covenant with God, the separation of the Creator from creation, the ethical critique of rulers, the moral evaluation of history, and the end of human sacrifice are all notions we take for granted today, yet they were dramatic departures from the norm between 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.

(2) Sitting in our comfortable pews on Sunday, we also tend to forget that Christianity was once the most radical spiritual force on earth. (It likely still is.) In the first chapter of Mark, Jesus is seen inaugurating his ministry with "a new teaching -- one with authority." Many have argued over whether Jesus or St. Paul was the real founder of the new religion. What is beyond argument is that they both alienated their conservative Jewish elders even more than their imperial Roman masters. Both Sadducees and Pharisees were offended and threatened. The early church from Antioch forward had a tough time of it, and the blood of the martyrs testifies to the gospel’s departure from the status quo. Centuries later, Edward Gibbon would lay the blame for the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the feet of Christians who preached the counter-cultural beatitudes and proclaimed a new creation under Christ’s dominion.

(3) The idea of popular sovereignty under the rule of law traces back not to conservatives but to revolutionaries in the ancient Mediterranean world. Both in democratic Athens and republican Rome, it was radicals who asserted the audacious idea of self-government in a world already grown old with semi-divine monarchs and militant dictators.

(4) Our ideals of liberal education and free inquiry came not from the conservatives but the radicals of ancient Greece. Thales of Miletus, Socrates, and Pyrrhus – to name just three – were skeptics and innovators who would provide enduring methods of inquiry esteemed by later generations of conservatives.

(5) Language is inherently conservative, yet many significant conventions of English usage derive not from a language conservator but a linguistic radical. Shakespeare stretched English more than any writer before or since. To cite just one expression of his innovation, the Bard of Avon was the master of the neologism, penning more than 1,700 new words in his sonnets and plays.

(6) The long-held notion in the West of the sanctity of private property was most powerfully buttressed during the era of the American Revolution, again, not by conservatives but by radicals. The conservatives in eighteenth-century Europe were either commercial mercantilists or aristocratic holdovers of the feudal age. The radicals of the era wanted to broaden property holding. They were also the capitalists in Holland, France, England, Scotland, and America who, following Adam Smith, championed the division of labor and accumulation of capital that would soon transform material life around the globe. In diverse and substantial ways, the new economics and the Industrial Revolution it fueled would usher in the very un-conservative modern age.

(7) America's founders are identified nowadays with American conservatism. A most ironic paradox for such conservatives – whether one appends tea party, neo, compassionate, traditionalist, paleo, cultural, populist, or imaginative to the pedigree – is the reflexive tendency to make America's founding fathers icons of conservative thought when many of them were anything but conservative. (This is what 19th-century Catholic leadership recognized when they condemned the "Americanism" noted above.)

Paradox #3: Most of America's Leading Founders Were Not Conservative


Now we come to the nub of the paradox that finds so many American conservatives looking to the American founding for their touchstone. In surveys that ask historians to rank the most important founding fathers, the top five who usually make the cut include (in no particular order) Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson. I find it difficult to discern a consistent, self-conscious conservatism in any of these five titans of the revolutionary generation. More accurately, I would say that they are innovative republicans. And make no mistake: innovative here connotes radical.

--Alexander Hamilton: Radical Framer


Take Alexander Hamilton, who exercised a profound influence on George Washington’s thought. Even though Hamilton is often invoked by populist conservatives, he was neither conservative nor a conservative when it came to nation building. Indeed, consider five ways that Hamilton was no status-quo conservative either in his day or ours. (1) He was a devotee of one of the most revolutionary thinkers of his day, Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations helped launch the permanent revolution that a later economist would famously characterize as “creative destruction.” (2) Moreover, Hamilton’s early opposition to slavery was a relative novelty in its day: he was on the side of the innovators, not the conservators, when it came to abolishing the peculiar institution. (3) It was also Hamilton’s idea to hold an extra-constitutional convention that would brazenly disregard the Confederation Congress’s instructions to the delegates to amend the Articles; Hamilton argued for throwing out America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and writing an entirely new charter. (4) Hamilton wanted to locate the lion’s share of power in the national government. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton asserted that the states should be reduced to provinces of the national government. (5) And in the Federalist essays 30 and 31 that followed, he argued forcefully to empower the new national government to raise taxes without limit, if necessary, on citizens. (How many tea-party conservatives are aware of this fact?)

What, pray tell, would be considered necessary? Hamilton provides a tough-minded hint when, in Federalist Paper 30, he writes, “I believe it may be regarded as a position, warranted by the history of mankind, that in the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation, in every stage of its existence, will be found at least equal to its resources." Commenting on this passage, the Straussian Thomas Pangle observes that “whatever power a government has it will use and find a good reason for using…. The more power a government has, the more need it will find for its power” [Pangle, The Great Debate, p. 67]. Combine this thought with Hamilton’s argument for the authority of the national government to raise taxes without limit on all citizens, and you have the irresistible temptation to empire.

Hamilton, we know, was underwhelmed by the principles and examples of classical republicanism. In truth, he represents a radical break from the classical republican tradition so admired by the majority of his contemporaries. In Federalist 9 he opines, “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust….” And in Federalist 23 he argues, “There is an absolute necessity for an entire change in the first principles” by which to govern the United States, for classical republican principles were not up to the task. Not the writing of a conservative, this.

--James Madison: Champion of a New Republic


Like Hamilton, Madison was neither conservative nor a conservative when it came to framing the new constitution. He was downright radical in his new formulation of the republic, and his Federalist Paper 37 argued forcefully for innovation: “The novelty of the undertaking [of founding the United States on the principles of a new constitution] immediately strikes us. It has been shown, in the course of these papers, that the other confederacies which could be consulted as precedents, have been vitiated by erroneous principles, and can therefore furnish no light than that of beacons, which give warning of the course to be shunned, without pointing out that which ought to be pursued.”

It is also worth pointing out, while dwelling on the Father of the Constitution, that of the 18 congressional powers enumerated in Article I, section 8, only half deal with foreign affairs and defense. The other half invite congressional domination over the states in many matters that the states believed they were competent to handle. The possibility of congressional domination over the states is what so vexed and frightened the Anti-Federalists when they pondered the implications of the Federalists’ work in Philadelphia.

--George Washington: Radical in His Conservative Way


The other titans of the American founding also present problems for conservatives. Many see in Washington the temperament of a conservative. To be sure his personal virtue and his love of Addison’s Cato were signs of his regard for classical republicanism. But anti-imperial conservatives sometimes overlook that Washington championed the idea of American empire. His ambition to unite the Potomac watershed with that of the Ohio with a sophisticated transportation network addressed both the nation’s eagerness to expand westward and his personal ambitions to carve out an empire of real estate. Nor would he brook any challenge to the national government, as his forceful response to the Whiskey Rebellion demonstrates. Many Libertarians hold his reaction to the Whiskey Rebellion against Washington to this day.

--Benjamin Franklin: Superstar of the French Salon


Then consider Franklin -- hardly the model conservative. A man of the secular Enlightenment, he was a skeptic or deist for most of his life. While it made him popular in the salons of France, his faith in reason hardly commended him to Burke or later cultural conservatives. Franklin was “progressive” in other ways as well. He wanted to do away with classical studies as a dominant presence in the curriculum. And like Hamilton, he subscribed to the then-radical notion that slavery ought to be abolished.

--Sage of Monticello: Hero or Antihero?


Thomas Jefferson is more complicated. He is rarely credited with being a forerunner of post-war conservative thought as defined and reclaimed by Russell Kirk. One must turn to conservatives of a more libertarian cast of mind -- for example, Albert Jay Nock and Clyde Wilson -- to read apologia for the Sage of Monticello. Although Jefferson has been roundly attacked by traditionalist, cultural conservatives, he actually had many ideas to commend him to conservative thinkers today. To cite just two examples, his skepticism of the money men rings truer than ever after the criminal behavior in recent years on Wall Street. Further, his defense (if not practice) of the strict construction of the U.S. Constitution counters the loose interpretation upon which conservatives often heap scorn.

Fractious Founders
 


Not only were many of the founders not conservative; they were also deeply divided among themselves. There is the unfortunate tendency among populist conservatives to see the founders as a relatively unified bloc of thinkers who championed a unitary set of principles. This is incorrect. There is no way John Adams and Tom Paine will ever be reconciled. Adams, with his dark view of human nature and history, championed the traditional ideal of balanced republicanism that subsumed monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements in one constitution. Paine, with his cheerfulness toward progress, emphasized the "democratical" element to the exclusion of the other two. No bridge is long enough to span the chasm between these two differing political philosophies.

Their animus was also personal. Adams said of Paine's Common Sense, "What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass." Paine later repaid the compliment with sarcasm of his own: "Some people talk of impeaching John Adams, but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun of."

Not even the Father of His Country was universally liked. Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, compared our first president to Oliver Cromwell, who had been ritually (i.e., posthumously) executed, and King Louis XVI, who was beheaded -- hardly fawning treatment.

H. W. Brands paints a memorable scene involving Washington in the company of two other prominent founders. "At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 the convivial Gouverneur Morris boasted that he could soften up the austere general. Hamilton dared him to try, saying that if he would clap Washington on the shoulder and make companionable small talk, Hamilton would buy dinner for Morris and friends. Morris accepted the challenge, and greeted Washington like an old drinking partner. Washington instantly grew stiffer than usual; he icily removed Morris's arm from his shoulder, stepped away in disgust, and drove Morris from the room with an ominous glower. 'I have won the bet,' Morris said at the promised dinner, 'but paid dearly for it, and nothing could induce me to repeat it.'"

Personality conflicts divided the founders, as did deeper philosophical, political, and procedural differences, especially when they began debating the extremely innovative Constitution. Consider Luther Martin. In a 1787 speech to the Maryland House of Delegates, he assailed the Constitutional Convention in which he had recently taken part. Violating the pledge of secrecy he and other framers had vowed, Martin informed Maryland lawmakers that the framers had broken faith with their states. They deliberately and systematically violated their charge to revise the Articles of Confederation, instead creating an altogether new constitution. That is not what they had been sent to Philadelphia to do. Is it not ironic that individuals espousing the rule of law would have so utterly disregarded -- the rule of law?

Not surprisingly, of the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787, 16 refused to sign the document. A number of state delegations were divided. For example, Alexander Hamilton was the only delegate from New York who supported the new frame of government. Most historians speculate that had the Constitution been presented for a simple up-or-down vote among citizens in the 13 states in October 1787, it would not have been ratified.

Bulletin: the drafting of the new Constitution of the United States was not authorized by any legal body. And it did not represent the conservative-leaning climate of opinion following the War for Independence. It would take the herculean efforts of a faction of elites to move public opinion to support the new frame of government. Few Americans seem to be aware of this very un-conservative storyline.

Implications

What are the implications of not knowing the story well?

One is the continuing widespread ignorance of what the Founders really believed and argued. Isn't our culture already dumbed down enough? Isn't it a scandal when presidential candidates and political servants do not know even the basics of the American Revolution (demonstrated recently on the campaign trail by Tea Party leader Rep. Michele Bachmann, who claimed that Lexington, Concord, and "the shot heard 'round the world" were all in New Hampshire)?

Second, there is the danger of falling into the historical fallacy of presentism, in which the past is judged by today's standards and from today's perspective, without reference to the historically available options to the Founding generation. Presentism desensitizes Americans to how shockingly original much of the thinking of the Founding generation was.

A third implication to overlooking conservatism's radical roots is that conservatives lapse into using shorthand words like “republic,” “empire,” “culture,” and “founding principles” in sloppy, ill-defined ways. What really does it mean “to restore the Republic?” (Whose republic do you have in mind -- Cicero's or Montesquieu's or Jefferson's or Hamilton's?) To which principles do you recur? (Those of the older civic republican tradition or those of the more modern commercial republican tradition?)

A True Conservative among the Founders

If you seek a true conservative among America's founders, look no further than John Dickinson, the statesman who steadfastly opposed a total break with London. He possessed political talents equal to those of his more famous colleagues, but because he was not enthusiastic about revolution, he is relegated to the back bench. Few conservatives today grapple with his opposition to revolution. Yet they should. Endowed with the virtue of prudence and enlightened by the lamp of experience, Dickinson posed excellent questions to the other founders in 1776:

(1) Why sign and publish the Declaration of Independence when reconciliation with London might still be possible?
(2) Weren't there still influential friends back in England whom we did not want to alienate?
(3) Are Americans in 13 disparate colonies united enough on key issues to make a coherent argument for independence?
(4) Does anybody think that the Continental army and navy are prepared to duke it out with the most powerful nation on earth? Throughout the autumn of 1776, Washington's army was losing battles and in headlong retreat: the number of men under his command dropped from 19,000 to 5,000.* The military prognosis could not be more bleak.
(5) Given the bleak military picture in the autumn of 1776, could Americans assume that France would come to the new republic's assistance?
(6) Would the Americans who wanted the war have the will to prosecute the war to the end?
Good questions, all. Prudent questions enlightened by the experience and wisdom of the species. Yet how many conservatives remember and honor John Dickinson today? Is there irony in the fact that so few do?

Is it not paradoxical that today's conservatives look back to John Adams for their hero, when it was Adams who could not stand the true conservative of the day, John Dickinson?

Imperial Republicans or Republican Imperialists?


Back to the Big Five -- Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson. What all five iconic founders had in common was the ambition to make the United States not just an empire, but the greatest republican empire the world had ever seen. To some degree each agreed with Thomas Paine that the revolution was not a unique regional occurrence, but of universal significance to human destiny.

In some ways, as my good friend Winston Elliott put it after two whiskey sours, these innovative republicans may have been the original neocons. However much populist conservatives draw from this pedigree, the imperial ambitions of America's Founders cannot sit well with conservatives in the tradition of Robert Taft or Russell Kirk. Many cultural conservatives follow in the footsteps of the great Anti-Federalists – George Mason, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Edmund Randolph, Mercy Otis Warren, Luther Martin, and others. Do conservatives seek to “restore” their idea of the republic – paradoxically, a republic that never existed?


_______________________


*Peter C. Mancall, Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2006), lecture 26.


An earlier version of this essay appeared, along with a lively discussion thread, in August 2010 at http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/ (posted by Winston Elliott).


To learn more, visit http://www.hauensteincenter.org/

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

American Founding (9): Revolutionary or Reactionary?

Interpreting America's beginnings: revolutionary or reactionary?

Around the world during the 19th century, American revolutionaries vied with French revolutionaries for the minds of utopians and the hearts of the oppressed. In Latin America and elsewhere, the generation of 1776 was regarded as a liberating force for human betterment. The American experience taught colonial peoples how to break away from a mother country that had become a tyrant. Women looked to the Declaration of Independence as they did to Mary Wollstonecraft for a manifesto of empowerment. Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, Washington, Sam Adams -- these were heroes around the world, freedom fighters who championed human dignity and rights. In a similar way, the French Revolution encouraged Third Estates everywhere to reject an absurdly privileged monarchy, aristocracy, and church. The spirit of 1789 filled men and women with the desire for a new social order.

Where you stand depends on where you sit. Following the First World War and the unfortunate settlement at Versailles, the U.S. became increasingly associated with reaction. After 1919 it was Bolsheviks and Trotskyists who began appealing to revolutionaries throughout the West and developing world. About the same time, Charles Beard and a generation of progressive historians reevaluated the American founding. They argued that the framers had acted primarily out of self- and class-interest when forming the new government. Thus the U.S. was not really an asylum for those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free. Rather it was seen as a safe house for capitalists and imperialists preoccupied with filthy lucre. A half-century later, when the U.S. was withdrawing from Southeast Asia, scorn for the U.S. reached an all-time high. For many, it was guilt by association: Our nation's founders carried the stink that attached to Cold War operatives.

The zigs and zags of history have a way of confounding even the smartest people. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, much of the world once again turned bullish on the American founding -- but not necessarily the Thomas Paine and Sam Adams rendition of it. For the American founding did not involve the utter destruction that characterized other modern revolutions. The French, Russians, and Chinese all experienced violent social upheaval that accompanied the political tumult -- resulting in mass carnage. The Americans did not. Our founding was more about political change than social transformation. By the early 1990s, the American "model" of revolution was gaining renewed respect. For it had resulted in a nation that proved to be historically resilient and relevant to solving the most fundamental problems in the human condition. Outlasting the Soviet experiment, it presented itself as the world's strongest nation ever -- militarily, economically, politically, and philanthropically.

Quiz: Is America a revolutionary nation or a reactionary one?

Answer: Yes!

American Founding (8): Conservatives or Radicals?

Were America's leading founders conservative or radical?

Ideology seems to infect all schools of interpretation, and for my next example I turn to the reluctance among American conservatives today – whether one appends tea party, neo, compassionate, traditionalist, paleo, cultural, populist, or imaginative to the pedigree – to concede that most of America's leading founders were not politically conservative, as that term is used nowadays.

In surveys that ask historians to rank the most important founding fathers, the top five who usually make the cut include (in no particular order) Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. I find it difficult to discern a consistent, self-conscious conservatism in any of these five titans of the revolutionary generation. More accurately, I would say that they are innovative republicans. And make no mistake: innovative here connotes radical.

Take Alexander Hamilton, who exercised a profound influence on George Washington’s thought. Even though Hamilton is often invoked by populist conservatives, he was neither conservative nor a conservative when it came to nation building. Indeed, consider five ways that Hamilton was not conservative either in his day or ours. (1) He was a devotee of one of the most revolutionary thinkers of his day, Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations helped launch the permanent revolution that a later economist would famously characterize as “creative destruction.” (2) Moreover, Hamilton’s early opposition to slavery was a relative novelty in its day: he was on the side of the innovators, not the conservators, when it came to abolishing the peculiar institution. (3) It was also Hamilton’s idea to hold an extra-constitutional convention that would brazenly disregard the Confederation Congress’s instructions to the delegates, throw out America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and write an entirely new charter. (4) Hamilton was "America's apostle of ultra-nationalism," notes Donald D'Elia. He wanted to locate the lion’s share of power in the national government. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he asserted that the states should be reduced to provinces -- mere administrative arms of the national government. Tellingly, Hamilton's first articles in defense of the Constitution were submitted under the name of Caesar. (5) In the Federalist essays 30 and 31 that followed, he argued forcefully to empower the new national government to raise taxes without limit, if necessary, on citizens. (How many tea-party conservatives are aware of this fact?)

What, pray tell, would be considered necessary? Hamilton provides a tough-minded hint when, in Federalist Paper 30, he writes, “I believe it may be regarded as a position, warranted by the history of mankind, that in the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation, in every stage of its existence, will be found at least equal to its resources” [Hamilton’s emphasis]. Commenting on this passage, the Straussian Thomas Pangle observes that “whatever power a government has it will use and find a good reason for using…. The more power a government has, the more need it will find for its power” [Pangle, The Great Debate, p. 67]. Combine this thought with Hamilton’s argument for the authority of the national government to raise taxes without limit on all citizens, and you have the irresistible temptation to empire.

Hamilton, we know, was underwhelmed by the principles and examples of classical republicanism. In truth, he represents a radical break from the classical republican tradition so admired by the majority of his contemporaries. In Federalist 9 he opines, “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust….” And in Federalist 23 he writes, “There is an absolute necessity for an entire change in the first principles” by which to govern the United States, for classical republican principles were not up to the task. Not the writing of a conservative, this.

Like Hamilton, James Madison was neither conservative nor a conservative when it came to framing the new constitution. He was downright radical in his new formulation of the republic, and his Federalist Paper 37 argued forcefully for innovation: “The novelty of the undertaking [of founding the United States on the principles of a new constitution] immediately strikes us. It has been shown, in the course of these papers, that the other confederacies which could be consulted as precedents, have been vitiated by erroneous principles, and can therefore furnish no light than that of beacons, which give warning of the course to be shunned, without pointing out that which ought to be pursued.”

It is also worth pointing out, while dwelling on the Father of the Constitution, that of the 18 congressional powers enumerated in Article I, section 8, only half deal with foreign affairs and defense. The other half invite congressional domination over the states in many matters that the states believed they were competent to handle. This, among other things, is what so vexed and frightened the Anti-Federalists about the Federalists’ work in Philadelphia.

The other titans of the American founding also present problems for conservatives. Many see in George Washington the temperament of a conservative. To be sure his personal virtue and his love of Addison’s Cato were signs of his regard for classical republicanism. But anti-imperial conservatives sometimes overlook that Washington championed the idea of American empire. His ambition to unite the Potomac watershed with that of the Ohio with a sophisticated transportation network addressed both the nation’s eagerness to expand westward and his personal ambitions to carve out an empire of real estate. Nor would he brook any challenge to the national government, as his forceful response to the Whiskey Rebellion demonstrates.

Then consider Benjamin Franklin. This celebrity of the French salons is hardly the model conservative. A man of the secular Enlightenment, he was a skeptic or deist for most of his life. While it made him popular in the salons of France, his faith in reason hardly commended him to Burke or later cultural conservatives. Franklin was “progressive” in other ways as well. He wanted to do away with classical studies as a dominant presence in the curriculum. And like Hamilton, he subscribed to the then-radical notion that slavery ought to be abolished.

Thomas Jefferson is more complicated. He is rarely credited with being a forerunner of post-war conservative thought as defined and reclaimed by Russell Kirk. One must turn to a more libertarian cast of mind -- for example, to Albert Jay Nock and Clyde Wilson -- to read apologia for the Sage of Monticello. Although Jefferson has been roundly attacked by traditionalists, especially because of his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, he actually had many ideas to commend him to conservative thinkers today. To cite just two examples, his skepticism of the money men rings truer than ever after the criminal behavior in recent years on Wall Street. Further, his defense (if not practice) of the strict construction of the U.S. Constitution counters the loose interpretation upon which conservatives heap scorn.

Not only were many of the most prominent founders not conservative; they were also deeply divided among themselves. There is the unfortunate tendency among populist conservative ideologues to see the founders as a relatively unified bloc of thinkers who championed a unitary set of principles. This is not at all true. They were not all carbon copies of that hotheaded brewer, Sam Adams, or that intemperate pamphleteer, Thomas Paine. It surprises many to learn that John Adams sought to reclaim what was best in the then-best constitution on earth -- that of the British.

Other Patriots were reluctant revolutionaries. Consider John Dickinson. In 1776 Dickinson differed with most of the Second Continental Congress over the Declaration of Independence. Hopeful that there could be a reconciliation with the king, he steadfastly opposed the break with London, refused to sign the Declaration, yet volunteered to fight in the war.

Dickinson possessed great political talent -- easily the equal of that of his more illustrious colleagues. Known as the "Penman of the Revolution," he wrote the influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania and was a principal author of the Articles of Confederation. Notably, he was one of only five Americans who signed both the Articles and the Constitution. When Jefferson learned of Dickinson's death he said, "A more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us. Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last [to be] the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government, and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution."

Yet because Dickinson was not enthusiastic about revolution, he is nowadays relegated to the back bench. Few conservatives today honor him for his opposition to revolution. This neglect is unfortunate because, endowed with the virtue of prudence and enlightened by the lamp of experience, Dickinson posed excellent questions to the generation of 1776:
(1) Why sign and publish the Declaration of Independence when reconciliation with London might still be possible?
(2) Weren't there friends back in England whom we did not want to alienate?
(3) Are Americans in 13 disparate colonies united enough on key issues to wage a war and form a new government?
(4) Does anybody think that the Continental army and navy are prepared to duke it out with the most powerful nation on earth? Throughout the autumn of 1776, Washington's army was losing battles, and the number of men under his command dropped from 19,000 to 5,000.* The military prognosis could not be more bleak.
(5) Given the bleak military picture in the autumn of 1776, can Americans assume that France will come to the new republic's assistance?
(6) Will Americans have the perseverance to prosecute a terrible war to the end?
Good questions, all -- prudent questions enlightened by the experience and wisdom of the species -- but not always persuasive to other founders of a conservative temperament. There is a telling story from the Second Continental Congress. John Adams was dumbfounded that Dickinson would not sign the Declaration of Independence. In his diary Adams speculated that Dickinson wouldn't sign because of problems he was having with his wife and mother, devout Quakers both, who opposed violence and thus independence. "If I had such a mother and such a wife," wrote Adams, "I believe I should have shot myself."*

It is odd that today's populist conservative ideologues lionize the most radical founders -- Hamilton, Madison, and the rest -- but ignore the true conservative of 1776, John Dickinson.

The founders not only divided over the Declaration, but also over the extremely innovative Constitution of 1787. Of the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787, 16 refused to sign the document. Even state delegations were divided. Alexander Hamilton was the only delegate from New York who supported the new frame of government. Most historians speculate that had the Constitution been presented for a simple up-or-down vote among citizens in the 13 states in October 1787, it would not have been ratified.

Ponder: There is the tendency of today's conservatives to overlook how shockingly original much of the thinking of the Founding generation was. The newly drafted Constitution of the United States did not represent the conservative-leaning climate of opinion following the War for Independence. It would take the herculean efforts of a faction of elites to move public opinion to support the new frame of government.

Also ponder: There is the tendency of today's conservatives to use shorthand words like “republic,” “empire,” “culture,” and “founding principles” in sloppy, ill-defined ways. What really does it mean “to restore the Republic?” (Whose republic do you have in mind -- Cicero's or Montesquieu's or Jefferson's or Hamilton's?) To which principles do you recur? (Those of the older civic republican tradition or those of the more modern commercial republican tradition?)

But back to the Big Five among the founders. Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson – what all five iconic founders had in common was the ambition to make the United States not just an empire, but the greatest republican empire the world had ever seen. Whether they were imperial republicans or republican imperialists is an interesting question. Regardless, as my good friend Winston Elliott put it after two whiskey sours, these innovative republicans were the original neocons. However much populist conservatives draw from this pedigree, the imperial ambitions of America's Founders cannot sit well with conservatives in the tradition of Robert Taft or Russell Kirk.

Many cultural conservatives follow in the footsteps of the great Anti-Federalists – George Mason, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Edmund Randolph, Mercy Otis Warren, Luther Martin, and others. Do they seek to “restore” their idea of the republic – paradoxically, a republic that never existed?

Question: Were America's founders conservative or radical?

Yes!

__________

*Source of the Adams-Dickinson story and George Washington's diminished troop strength: Peter C. Mancall, Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2006), lectures 25-26.

American Founding (4): Protestant or Enlightenment?

Ideological battles over religion and the founding

Let us now consider the question of whether America was founded as a "Protestant nation," a "Christian nation." On one side of the skirmish are Protestant enthusiasts who look back to the Pilgrim Fathers, Massachusetts Bay Puritans, and great awakenings in American history, the first of which occurred in the decades leading up to the revolution. They plausibly argue that many immigrants came to these shores to practice their Christian faith unmolested. The majority of colonists was churchgoing. The majority possessed a Bible. The majority was given a Christian baptism and/or a Christian burial. Many left a final will and testament that invoked Jesus Christ. Since numerous clergy preached fiery sermons urging separation from London, the War for Independence was arguably won from the pulpit before it was attained on the battlefield. There were established churches in five of the original thirteen states even after independence had been declared -- a telling fact. Throughout the founding period, governments at the state and national level proclaimed days of thanksgiving, fasting, and prayer. Without a doubt the evidence shows that, to a significant degree, America was settled by men and women whose culture and laws were steeped in the Protestant understanding of man.

On the other side of the skirmish are secular progressives who spring from the Enlightenment. They plausibly ask how many prominent founders were professing Christians during the founding period -- the period that counts. In reality, most seemed more attached to Freemasonry than to the carpenter and tent maker. Of the nine most prominent founders, only one, John Jay, was a professing, orthodox Christian who regularly attended church. John Adams went to a church, but not a Christian one since he was Unitarian. George Washington invoked Jesus exactly two times in his public discourse. Six other prominent founders were regarded as deists during the War for Independence and Revolution.

Moreover, the founders knew their religious history and it wasn't pretty. The Reformation had sparked horrific conflagrations in Europe -- more than a hundred years of wars of religion. Religious strife was also found in British North America, albeit on a smaller scale than on the Continent. Nonconforming Christians (mostly Baptists) were harassed, beaten, and jailed by mainstream Christian authorities. Catholics were disenfranchised and terrorized even in Maryland. Given this sorry record of some followers of Christ persecuting other followers of Christ, there were good reasons to embrace secular Enlightenment ideals to promote domestic tranquility. The distancing from a specifically Protestant faith is reflected in one of the most famous state papers of the era, Jefferson's "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom." The distancing can also be seen in the "no religious test clause" in Article VI, paragraph 3, of the U.S. Constitution. Thus the evidence shows that, to a significant degree, America was midwifed into existence by political leaders who would refrain from conflating their private beliefs and their public duties.

A telling incident occurred in June 1776, as Thomas Jefferson was composing the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was no Christian but a deist, and so had the tendency to downplay that old-time religion in the public square. Yet his first draft of the Declaration read, out of deference to the many believers in the Colonies, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" [emphasis added]. It was Benjamin Franklin, another deist at the Second Continental Congress, who toned down the phrase to read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Note this bow to the secular Enlightenment in the document that was to "sell" independence to Americans, the French, and the rest of the world. The Declaration acknowledges the Creator (in a vague term that could be in the image of either deists or theists), but its writer and its editors did not fret over offending the sensibilities of Protestants by omitting the name of Jesus.

Evidence surrounding the founders and Christianity has often been abused or sloppily handled. Many of the founders' lives traced an arc not unlike that of Alexander Hamilton's. Their beliefs morphed as they got older. As Douglas Adair and Marvin Harvey explain,* Hamilton went through four religious phases. (1) He had a conventionally religious upbringing through adolescence. (2) As a young adult from 1777 to 1792 -- through the critical period of the American founding -- he expressed indifference to religion. (3) At some point in the early 1790s, while serving as Washington's secretary of the treasury, he embraced an "opportunistic religiosity" that brazenly used Christianity for political gain. (4) Only after the death of his son Philip, in a duel in 1801, did his suffering lead him to profess orthodox Christianity.* It would be dishonest to take one phase of Hamilton's life and make it pertain to the whole of his life, or to impose a phase on the founding period that did not, in fact, characterize those years. No intellectual alchemy can turn Hamilton into an orthodox, practicing Christian during the Battle of Yorktown or Constitutional Convention.

What about where the founders mention religion in general but not Christianity in particular? As already noted, the Declaration of Independence mentions the "Creator" and "nature's God" -- not Israel's Yahweh or Christianity's Trinity. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 observes that "religion, morality, and knowledge" are "necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind." But whose religion? Whose morality? Likewise George Washington, in his 1796 "Farewell Address," and John Adams, in his 1798 address to the military, argue for religion and morality among the citizenry. Again, whose religion or morality is not specified. The language is latitudinarian enough so as to include mainline as well as nonconforming Protestants, Catholics as well as Jews, Trinitarians as well as Unitarians, Deists as well as Freemasons. Pause and ponder that fact. Is it not a striking development in the early modern period, coming as it does on the heels of the wars of religion? Is this not the novus ordo seclorum proclaimed by the founders? The evidence proves that, although many of the framers were not themselves orthodox professing Christians, they espoused toleration and expressed the hope that religion would be at the foundation of America's families and culture.

To complicate matters further, note this: There was to be no "wall of separation" between faith and culture, only between faith and Congress -- a principle chiseled into the First Amendment. Jefferson himself, though criticized as a deist and accused of being an atheist, was supportive of religion even if he didn't adhere to one. The Library of Congress observes about the third president's 1801 inaugural address: "Jefferson strongly stated his belief in the importance of religion in the address. He closes the speech listing the 'freedom of religion' prominently among the constitutional freedoms."

An exceedingly complex history, this. Based on the evidence, no one ideology can take home the prize. The new republic was built on a foundation of Christian faith and Enlightenment reason. If we are scrupulous researchers, we have to accept that historical tension at the founding.

Such tension vexes ideologues who want the American Revolution to be one thing or the other. But history is rarely one thing. It's been said that even God cannot change the past. Historians have to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Since both sets of facts are part of the historical record, shouldn't both be taught? Such an approach may frustrate ideologues, but no student should ever be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Isn't one of the most important values we teach our youth is to have the courage to go wherever the evidence may lead, even when it runs counter to the powers that be, and especially when it runs counter to their own previously held notions? The discipline of history is ideal for inculcating the value of courage -- the courage to change one's mind.

Quiz: Was the United States founded as a Christian nation or as an Enlightenment nation?

Yes!

__________

*Douglas Adair and Marvin Harvey, "Was Alexander Hamilton a Christian Statesman?" William & Mary Quarterly, 1955. For an excellent article on the complexity of Hamilton's intellectual and spiritual arc, see Donald D'Elia, "Alexander Hamilton: From Caesar to Christ," Chapter 6 in The Spirits of ’76 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1983), 87-114; accessed March 6, 2011, here.

American Founding (6): Republican or Democratic Constitution?

Constitutionally, was the United States founded as a democracy or a republic?

One of the most surprising things students hear in my classroom is that the United States was not founded as a democracy. Our Constitution established a federated republic. True, both a democracy and a republic assume that citizens are sovereign. But a democracy's constitution, strictly speaking, provides only for rule by the many. It does not provide for rule by one (a monarchy) or rule by the few (an aristocracy). To the founders and framers, the most famous democracy was that of ancient Athens. Because it was a direct democracy, Athenian citizens debated each other in assembly on the Pynx; they did not have representatives to do their bidding. The founders did not want the United States to be the latter-day Athens. In their view, the mercurial crowd was dangerous to public safety and civic order.

The alternative form of government for sovereign citizens was a republic. As I argue in another essay, most of our founders and framers were innovative republicans. As they understood the term, a republic encompassed several things. First, it was a commonwealth that was not ruled solely by a monarch (Dr. Johnson's criterion in his famous 1755 Dictionary). Second, a republic was a mixed constitution in which all three political elements -- monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the few), and democracy (rule by the many) -- shared authority to govern, checking and balancing each other. Third, as Madison explained in Federalist Number 10, a republic as opposed to a direct democracy provided a buffer against the mercurial moods of crowds through elected representatives. Fourth, a republic, again as Madison noted in Federalist Number 10, could extend to a larger number of people over a greater geographic area than a direct democracy could.

The American republic was also to be federated -- that is, the various states were little republics that were united under a central authority. Federation separated the spheres of responsibility for governance between the national and state governments, just as state governments separated spheres of responsibility for governance between the state capitol and local jurisdictions like counties, townships, villages, towns, and cities.

(It is, by the way, misleading to speak of the central authority in Washington, DC, as the "federal government." More properly speaking it is the national government. The term "federal government" describes the type of government we have in the U.S., with separated spheres of responsibility between the national and state governments.)

This complex institutional ensemble -- this federated republic -- was designed to keep any individual or faction from acquiring too much power. There could arise no tyranny of the majority, ever the bane of direct democracies. Madison put it memorably: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions" -- the auxiliary precautions being the large, complex, federated republic that was designed in Philadelphia in 1787.

The revolutionary generation was clear about rejecting monarchy as the sole form of government. The Declaration of Independence is one of the most eloquent statements ever crafted against a monarch -- in this case, King George III and his violations against the English constitution.

The founders were also clear about establishing states with a republican form of government. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the most brilliant document crafted by the Confederated Congress, never once mentions the word "democracy." Rather, it stipulated that "whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government: Provided, the constitution and government so to be formed, shall be republican" (emphasis added).

The framers who met in Philadelphia in 1787 were wary of democracy. Edmund Randolph, looking at the state constitutions then in existence, expressed the opinion of most of the delegates when he said, "Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions. It is a maxim which I hold incontrovertible, that the powers of government exercised by the people swallows up the other branches. None of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy." Nowhere did the framers include the word "democracy" in the text of the Constitution. Rather, they stipulated, in Article IV, Section 4, that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" (emphasis added). A republican form of state government would include a monarchical or executive element (the governor), an aristocratic element (in the judiciary and in those bicameral legislatures in which there is a senate), and a democratic element (in the House or Assembly).

The Federalist Papers that were written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay following the convention were filled with warnings against democracy. In Federalist Number 10, Madison wrote that "democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

Nor would our first presidents let up in the criticism of democracy. Our second president, John Adams, said, "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." Our third, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49." Our fourth, James Madison, observed, "Democracy is the most vile form of government." It is not odd that Americans today reflexively support a form of government that was feared by virtually every one of the framers of our Constitution?

In the American formulation of a republican constitution, the monarchical element is the presidency; the aristocratic elements are the Senate and Supreme Court; the democratic element is the House of Representatives. The original intent of the framers was to keep the people quite removed from direct governance. Not the people directly but electors would choose the president. Not the people directly but state legislatures would select U.S. senators. Not the people directly but the president would nominate Supreme Court justices, who then had to be confirmed by the Senate. Nothing like ancient Athens, this.

So constitutionally, our national frame of government and our state governments were set up to be republican in form.

That said, there were also powerful democratic elements in the American founding. Politically, local governance could rely on direct democracy, as the New England town hall famously illustrates. Economically, the marketplace is essentially a democracy of the cash nexus. In civil society, churches and numerous organizations choose leaders by direct democracy. We know that Americans on the frontier often relied on democratic methods. When the citizens of Springfield, Illinois, sent troops into the Black Hawk War, the local militia elected Abraham Lincoln to be their captain. (The Rail Splitter later claimed he was more proud of winning that election than any other.) From our earliest days, democracy provided the way founders, farmers, and frontier people got things done. It was an important element in local politics, the marketplace, churches, and even in the militia.

Another important thing to remember is that constitutional amendments have tilted the balance in the direction of the democratic element. So, for example, U.S. senators are now directly elected by citizens. By custom, moreover, it would be highly unlikely for any Electoral College to overturn the popular vote in a state. Progressive Era reforms -- initiative, referendum, recall -- are clearly democratic in thrust.

So, while national American politics are republican in character, American culture is strongly democratic.

Quiz: Was America founded as a democracy or a republic?

Yes, and yes! But the framers established republican national and state governments that subsumed the democratic order in society and politics.

American Founding (5): Revolutions of Recovery vs Innovation

Revolutions of recovery vs. revolutions of innovation

Another ideological battleground surrounds the idea of "revolution." There are two kinds of revolutions -- revolutions of recovery and revolutions of innovation -- and the American Revolution was a brew of both. Our founding combined the attempt to recover and the necessity to innovate. Recover what? The ancient rights of Englishmen. Innovate how? Safeguarding sovereign free citizens from arbitrary power, the founders established the world's largest federated republic with an exquisite separation of powers unburdened by monarchy, aristocracy, and an established church. Seen this way, the American Revolution is the child of recovery and innovation, memory and desire.

Most of my students have heard only one side of the story. Focusing on Boston's mobs -- or on the experience of women, indentured servants, slaves, and aboriginal Americans -- they have been taught that 1776 was a revolution of innovation in which greater numbers of human beings could live in freedom and equality. By this account, the American Revolution spearheaded a social transformation of world-historical significance. There is undeniable truth in this interpretation, especially when the long view is taken.

But it is not the whole story. Revolutions also can arise from the need to recover a past order. What might be called the Burkean view of the American founding -- based on the Anglo-Irishman's view of events in his country in 1688-'89 -- is that it was a revolution prevented not made. Again, John Willson has argued that the founders "were engaged in recovering as well as founding, of protecting liberty as much as inventing it." By this interpretation, King George III was destroying the best constitution then in existence and trying to make it something else, something destructive to liberty. So George III was the rebel innovator, much more so than George Washington, who resisted (in part) to preserve the ancient rights of Englishmen in British North America.

It is important to listen to the language people use. It matters whether the stress is on the "American founding" or the "American Revolution." The former puts the emphasis on memory and recovery; the latter, on desire and innovation.

Quiz: Was the American founding a revolution of innovation or a revolution of recovery?

Answer: Yes, absolutely!