It
was federalist thinking, as defined in this blog, that gave the nation a strong
initial commitment to communal values.
Included in this construct was a view of government and politics that
emphasizes a collective bias which holds that citizens are in a
partnership. Here it is called
traditional federalism and this construct provided a strong commitment to a set
of ideas and ideals historians call civic humanism.
Civic humanism is central to the
collective nature of federalism.
Federalism is not so much a fancy term for states’ rights or an argument
that politics should basically revolve around state issues. While the use of the term here incorporates a
lot of this local focus, it is more
concerned with the notion that it is about viewing the body politic as just
that: an organic association in which
its component entities are highly interrelated and codependent.
As explained in an earlier posting, a
federalist union is formed by the use of a covenant or compact. A covenant – the word federalism is derived
from the Latin word, foedus, for covenant[1]
– or compact is considered a sacred,
written agreement among a people or its representatives who want to form an
association to accomplish stated purposes.
This process needs to have the parties,
as part of the agreement, accept a set of conditions to accomplish those
purposes. As has been stressed in this
blog, to further assure that the parties hold true to the agreement, the
signatories swear compliance to its provisions.
It was also stated previously; certain
scholars indicate that natural rights ideas and ideals became dominant during
the time of the writing of the 1787 national constitution. This writer disagrees. Here is why.
While the Constitutional Convention was a definite step away from a
purer federalism, its procedures and outcomes were still well ensconced within
its penumbra of ideas.
Here is Forrest McDonald’s account of
this argument:
It
is a grave mistake, however, to assume from this [the influence of natural
rights thinking] that the Framers … cynically abandoned the whole notion of
virtue in the republic and opted to substitute crass self-interest in its
stead. Several historians have made that
assumption, and at least one has gone so far as to pronounce the judgment that
the very tradition of civic humanism, of men finding their highest fulfillment
in service to the public, thereby was brought to an end.[2]
While
one can logically see the adoption of a bill of rights being an indication that
Lockean ideas were becoming dominant, one can also see how it also promotes
basic ideals of federalism and republicanism.
Central to the notion of federalism, one of its basic values, is
equality. This sense of equality has an
inclusive quality to it; all are equal in this common, organic whole of a
society.
Laws
that favor one group over others, as laws often do, pose, at least potentially,
a threat to the egalitarian character of a polity. One can argue that the founders had concerns
of any emerging class of business people and that that reflected a more
fundamental danger or threat toward the organic nature of a polity. One should remember, that concern was not
limited to the Commonwealthmen, but was the concern that spurred an initial
attraction to Lockean ideas.
The
founders were taken with a central analogy:
seeing the health of a polity as akin to the health of an organic being. Bernard Bailyn reports on the views of John
Adams:
So
John Adams wrote that a political constitution is like “the constitution of the
human body”; “certain contextures of the nerves, fibres, and muscles, or
certain qualities of the blood and juices” some of which “may properly be
called stamina vitae, or essentials
and fundamentals of the constitution; parts without which life itself cannot be
preserved a moment.”[3]
This health, it was
understood, was negatively affected by abusive laws.
There
are other quotes that could be added, but that is not the intent here. The intent is to stress that the delegates at
the 1787 Convention foresaw a national government functioning within the
parameters of federalist values and what historians have come to call “civic humanism.”
The
founders and that generation’s espoused beliefs continued to be supportive of
civic humanism, but as a nation its people began to acquire behavioral patterns
that further and further, albeit slowly, moved them from this commitment. More citizens’ behaviors would take on those
actions that were aimed at advancing self-interest to the exclusion of those
advancing the common good.
This proceeded to a point which this
writer judges to be those years following World War II. In an informal way, the reader can test this
assertion. He/she could view films shown
on Turner Classic Movies and analyze the subtext of feature films and see
whether he/she can detect a shift from pre-1945 films and those produced after,
say, 1955.
For example, two films that illustrate this shift,
in the opinion of the writer, is the 1930s’ film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town[4]
with Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur and the 1948 film, Billy Wilder’s Foreign Affair (also starring Jean
Arthur).[5] The reader is invited to view those
films. The first film glorifies a
communal lifestyle and the second questions those very values as demonstrated
by the actions of Americans abroad after the war.
Part of
the argument here is that a history, summarized below, of continuous challenges
to the dominance of traditional federalism eventually were too much. Traditional federalism finally was replaced
by the natural rights construct. One might
ask: why did it take so long for this to
happen or perhaps did it happen before the post war years? Of course, this is a matter of degree and
fixating the turn to a particular year or to small number of years is guess
work.
The
writer believes from various sources, including feature films, that it took
until the early fifties to finalize this transformation, but even then, the
natural rights view was to be further solidified in subsequent years. Another factor to this development is that
the ascendency was not in a straight line, but through ups and downs.
Through
that history one can point to developments that further encouraged the adoption
of natural rights thinking. In previous
postings, the blog outlined the effects of the Puritanical era – a period of
fire and brimstone theology, – the softening effect of the transcendental
philosophic era, the writing and ratification of the 1787 Constitution, and the writing and ratification of the Bill of Rights. Subsequent phases that advanced natural
rights perspective and helped debase federalist views were:
• The settlement of the West encouraged
a rugged individualism that was characterized as being more self-reliant,
cruder, more informal, more democratic in an individualistic way, imaginative,
and prone to initiating innovations.
• The Civil War recast of the
constitutional structure in which state power was seriously restrained, but the
states maintained many of their sovereign powers. This was due to a general reluctance to
legislate those prerogatives away or to adjudicate, in the courts, a diminution
of those powers. Further restraint of
state power, but a strengthening of federalist based equality, was the writing
and ratification of the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution and Civil Rights acts.
• In the late 1800s, an
industrialization shift changed the economy in various ways including the rise
of large corporations that took hold at the expense of small businesses that
lost the ability to viably compete.
While corporations themselves were organized as collectives, they still
counted on a strong sense of individual property rights. Also, the corporation led to a detachment
between ownership and the human intercourse of daily operations through the
establishment of stock ownership. In
addition, large corporations led the nation to a national economy – to be
followed by a global economy – which undermined local viability to determine
public policy at those levels.
• Then, and in response to
industrialization, the Progressive Movement and the New Deal followed in which
the individual was lost in the maze of large government, but, through the
resulting anonymity, found new means of expression which further advanced
individualism. In addition, these
measures led the way to a more predominant central government, again at the
expense of local government.
• And most recently, the age of
technology, especially television, has taken hold. As a result, a simplistic sense of reality
and materialism has replaced the written forms of communication giving the
nation truncated language, one lacking in metaphors, and an expectation of
being continuously entertained.[6]
With
that summary, this review of what constituted traditional federalism is
complete. A summary account of
traditional federalism is as follows: it
is a construct based on moral agreements aimed at promoting the common good; it
applies this moral view when considering realistic politics whether under the
conditions of an arena with its conflicts or of a public square and its
alliances to achieve collaboration; and its aim is to enhance two qualities,
social capital and civic humanism.
Yet, this blog does not promote
traditional federalism. So, what’s wrong
with traditional federalism? To answer
this question, this blog offers a critique and will share it in the next
posting.
[1] Daniel
J. Elazar,
“Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal
of Church and State, 33, (Spring, 1991):
231-254.
[2] Forrest McDonald, “The Power of Ideas in the Convention,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional
History, Volume I: The Colonial Era
through Reconstruction (Lexington, MA:
D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 160-169, 162-163.
[3] Bernard Bailyn, “The Birth
of Republican Constitutionalism,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional
History, Volume I: The Colonial Era
through Reconstruction (Lexington, MA:
D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 91-97, 91.
.
[5] Billy Wilder (director), Foreign Affair (a film),
(Paramount Pictures, 1948).
[6] Neil Postman, Amusing
Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in
the Age of Show Business, (New York:
Penguin Books, 1986).
