This blog has been
revisiting the basic ideas that have organized its overall aim: to introduce the reader to a construct it
proposes for selecting content in civics education. That mental construct is entitled federation
theory which served as the dominant view of government and politics from the
nation’s beginnings till the end of World War II.
A functional way to view the concept of federalism, at
least in terms of the purposes of this blog, is to consider it a cultural
quality not a structural arrangement. Most
references to federalism relates to the governmental arrangement between the
central government and state governments.
But that is not the best way to see it from the perspective of this
blog.
Daniel Elazar
writes that American federalism reflects more of a basic approach to governance:
“... as something close to what the French term 'integral federalism, that is
to say, as the animating and informing principle of the American political
system flowing from a covenantal approach to human relationships.”[1] This is less a structural perspective than a
cultural one.
To add a
bit more substance: traditional
federalism reaches the standard of an “integral federalism” in that it is a
comprehensive explanation of US’ political origins. It refers to a conscious agreement of a group
or society to unite under the provisions of a covenant or a compact. The Declaration
of Independence is a covenant; the US
Constitution is a compact. “Integral
federalism” morally binds the parties as exemplified by these founding
documents. Those that agree to this type
of promise are morally bound to live by its provisions.
These
agreements are not contracts, quid pro
quo arrangements – something for something else. They are covenants or compacts that call for lasting
moral commitments. In every case, that quality
is understood by the parties who sign such an agreement. An individual party is basically committing
him/herself or themselves (in case the joining entity is a group) to a course
of being and/or action irrespective of what the other parties will subsequently
do.
Gordon Wood
argues that in the years surrounding the writing of the Declaration of Independence there was an especially strong popular
commitment to federalist ideals.
Particularly, the political group of that time, known as the Commonwealthmen
or Whigs (not to be confused with the nineteenth century Whig Party),
demonstrated an inordinate level of support for republicanism which can be
described as a type of political beliefs that include federalist thought.[2]
The
Whigs are credited with leading popular support for independence from Britain. They emphasized citizen participation –
especially at the local level – representative government, liberty, equality,
and public virtue. In other words,
citizens bound to this cultural view lived their social lives as Tocqueville
described them in an earlier posting.
According
to Wood, these Whigs conflated the ideals and ideas of the Enlightenment and
religious traditions into an ideology that encompassed a moral wholeness for
society.[3]
With
this view in mind, how did early Americans define liberty? A good summary term for their version of
liberty is communal liberty. It is a
belief in people being highly engaged in the political decision-making
process. This is essential to
traditional federalism as it both promotes social capital and operationalizes
civic humanism; i.e., that communal linkages were to be taken seriously and
actively encouraged among the citizenry.
It is safe to believe that if the Whigs were around today,
they would judge American views of liberty as foreign and dangerous. Primarily, they saw liberty as a protection
against governmental tyranny or despotism, not as the right of individuals to
do what they wanted to do.
They promoted
their view of virtue – civic virtue – in which, unlike under a tyrannical
regime, one was to be virtuous because of his/her choice to be so.[4] Choice and consent becomes central. Consent, for them, is a precursor to being virtuous
and this was essential to identifying what was acceptable political and social
behavior. There was the notion that one was free to do what one should do
and this ideal is captured by the term, communal liberty.
Juxtapose
this notion of liberty with the natural rights view – the dominant view today –
which holds that the individual has the right to make life decisions
irrespective of community needs and ambitions and to have the legal
prerogatives to carry out those decisions.[5]
To the
extent to which natural rights advocates hold this a-communal view today, the
Whigs would have seen this perspective as undermining the bonds that bind the
social community together. How? By individuals having mostly unfettered
access to individually defined goals, each person is given mostly unrestricted
ability to abuse his or her powers and pervert a healthy sense of liberty. The only restraint is that a person cannot
interfere with others doing the same.
What
results, according to Whig logic, is what pretty much exists today: a social reality in which too many are
engaging in licentious behavior and one that is driving toward anarchy, though
the nation is not near that eventual state at present.[6]
Were Whigs
supportive of individualism and, if so, how? In accordance with their beliefs,
Elazar instructs us that Americans, from the time of the nation's origin, were
socialized, at least up to the mid-mark of the last century, to support a
federalist individualism, “not the anarchic individualism of Latin countries,
but an individualism that recognized the subtle bonds of partnership linking
individuals even as they preserve their individual integrities...”[7]
From the
days of the ancient Greeks, a concern with democracy has been that they devolve
into anarchistic conditions. Elazar
claims that federalism is a way to stem this trend. In short, one needs, according to federalist
thinking, a popular and widespread belief in this more socially oriented and
communal view of liberty and individual prerogatives.[8]
In
Elazar’s own words, here is how he describes this communal view of
individualism:
...[F]ederalism was extended into
most areas of human relationship shaping American notions of individualism,
human rights and obligations, Divine expectations, business organization, civic
association and church structure as well as their notions of politics … All agreed on the importance of popular or
republican government, the necessity to diffuse power, and the importance of
individual rights and dignity as the foundation of any genuinely good political
system. At the same time, all agreed
that the existence of alienable [or limited] rights was not an excuse for
anarchy, just as the existence of ineradicable human passions was not an excuse
for tyranny. For them, the covenant
provided a means for free men to form political communities without sacrificing
their essential freedom and without
making energetic government impossible.[9] (emphasis
added)
“Public
liberty was thus the combining of each man's individual liberty into a
collective governmental authority, the political liberty equivalent to democracy
or government by the people themselves …”[10] Wood writes on, “the people participate in
it. Without the pooling of each man's liberty into a common body, no property
would be secure. 'For power is entire
and indivisible; and property is single and pointed as an atom.'”[11]
Unlike
what current libertarians claim, that as defenders of constitutional principles
they are offended by an active government, there was no early bias that the
government is the problem or that a citizenry can't count on government to meet
legitimate common needs. Instead, the Whigs
called for citizen participation in deciding what government was to do and not
to represent solely the interests of the advantaged, the wealthy minority.
In place
are structural elements to prevent tyranny, e.g., voting. Protection is secured by representation not governmental
inaction. This concern against tyranny was
heightened with the creation of a strong central government in 1787. There was no meaningful concern with government
protecting the poor or other disadvantaged populations, because there was no
historical record of such a thing.
Instead,
the Whig’s concern was with those, generally called “Federalists,” who
advocated for a strong central government.
The Whigs assumed a powerful central government would advance the
ability of the rich to become richer. For
example, they could threaten the interests of the yeoman farmers. And in this, there was agreement between the
Whigs and the followers of John Locke, the early advocates of the natural
rights view.
[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” 8.
[2] Wood does not use the term federalist, but as he
describes the beliefs of the Whigs and the way Elazar and others define and
describe federalism, those beliefs and federalism basically mean the same
thing. The republicanism refers to a
more general form of political thinking and federalism is a more specific form
of republicanism.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarism Debate, ed.
C. F. Delaney (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994), 19-37.
[7] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” 10-11.
[9] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” 26-27.
[11] Ibid., 25.
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