If the late 1700s through the early 1800s are
known for anything it is for the political disruptions overtaking America and
the European continent. As a foretaste,
the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain nearly a hundred years earlier (1688-1689)
stirred the demands of non-royals/nobility to have seats at the table of
national politics.
With that, the American experience began
by instituting some form of representative governance in its colonial days. But once there, this movement took on its own
steam that ended with the iconic accomplishments of first, independence, and
then of a national compact formed among a national people. This was by no means a smooth development,
but one can easily detect various themes building as Americans found their way
to a constitutional foundation.
But
in gaining a full appreciation of this development, one can look at the
European version and understand how that experience was different. And there, the attention shifts to France –
which this blog already focused on when describing the French collectivist formula,
upon which their revolution relied. A
closer look at the Jacobins, the leaders of the French effort, is necessary if
one is to gauge how similar yet different the French experience was (with its effects
lasting till today) from the American experience.
As
sort of a rule of thumb or a symbolic representation by which each revolution can
be represented, one can – without any formality or finality – compare what
custom has ascribed to the colors of their respective flags – since both boast
of their same tri colors, red, white, and blue (which the French list as blue,
white, and red).
By custom, the American rendition states
that red stands for hardiness and valor, white for purity and innocence, and
blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice.[1] Each is a value or a character trait,
elements that each American holds or strives to hold within him/herself. By contrast, the French version cites that blue
represents the nobility, white the clergy (the priests), and the red stands for
the bourgeois (and eventually the workers and small farmers).[2]
This writer, among many, can see that
the American form reflects a national union made up of free-willed individuals
agreeing to a resulting polity. On the
other hand, the French promote through their symbols, an organic whole made up
of types of people who function to meet the needs of that organic whole. This variance is profound in how each view
influenced – and continues to influence – the formulation of the resulting
polities.
Daniel Elazar addresses the
dissimilarity.[3]
And here the role of the Jacobins is
central. Whereas, similar to the
Americans, the French confronted the challenge of devising a democratic formula
for governance, they rejected central assumptions Americans grabbed unto in
figuring out not only how to form a national structure, but their state
structures as well.
To the French, the American solution was
simply too pessimistic about human nature.
They saw the American model as undervaluing the ability of the common
man and woman to avoid being corrupted.
Americans made it central to guard not only the corruption of leaders in
public office, but also of the people.
For the French, a new set up needed to merely protect against autocratic
despotism, but not against popular despotism.
To them, checks and balances merely
subverted the “general will,” a central attribute of what they perceived as an organic
unity. They ascribed a general will to constituting
the French society and that that handily trumped the relatively insignificant
interests of individuals. Being short of
such guarantees for the collective whole was/is tantamount to being
anti-democratic. According to Elazar,
such a view of individuals, Americans felt, was subversive of liberty. He writes,
By
retaining notions of the organic society, the Jacobins and their revolutionary
heirs were forced to rely upon transient majorities to establish consensus or
to concentrate power in the hands of an elite that claimed to do the same
thing. The first course invariably led
to anarchy and the second to the kind of totalitarian democracy which has become
the essence of modern dictatorship.
While the “general will” was undoubtedly a more democratic concept than
the “will of the monarch,” in the last analysis it has proved to be no less
despotic and usually even more subversive of liberty.[4]
And one can see this distinction being played
out in both countries, the French went through a string of “republics” before
hitting on a lasting formula. As for the
Americans, not all was smooth after the writing of the proposed constitution took
place back 1787.
Central
to the argument posed by the Anti-federalists – those who opposed the new
constitution in America – was the loss of power the states were to suffer if this
new basic law were to be ratified. And
initially, this concern was shared by a majority of the American people. Along with perceiving the loss of power to
this central entity, Americans were concerned with higher taxes (by this far
off government), potentially over-powered central government, and, therefore, a
loss of liberty.
Central
to their concerns was to fight for the retention of states’ power or rights. This was ameliorated by the election of
Thomas Jefferson in 1800 but would quickly spring to the fore as the nation
marched toward the Civil War sixty years later.
And that war did not end that story as the nation maintained the
relative power of the states to be relatively more vibrant until the eventual
prominence of the central government through the New Deal. It took a world-wide depression to finally allow
the central government to address national problems on an ongoing,
institutionalized basis.
One sign this writer cites as reflecting the basic
notion of how undominant federalist values remain is how often these days he
hears of states’ rights. Currently, the principle
is being heard concerning voting rights as state legislatures in “red” states
have passed or are considering passing new laws to restrict their voting
processes.
The motivation, of course, varies
according to the rhetoric of each side of that debate. Those defending the new laws argue that the
laws are meant to protect against unauthorized voting and those against them
say they are meant to keep Democratic voters from voting or having their votes
count.
Congress is considering passing a law
that would undo the effects of the new or proposed state laws, but with little
hope of passing. Consequently, those who
favor the new state laws complain that the federal government is encroaching on
states’ rights to run their elections.
This more recent claim has reinserted this issue after not being heard
of in decades. It was a recurring claim until
the sixties by mostly southern states and had to do with civil rights – which
is not too far off the current debate.
In both cases, opposition to states
exerting their “power” has been perceived as efforts by “states’ rightists” to
deprive African Americans of some rights such as voting, or a set of rights of
which they have been deprived. But the
point here is to state that this “federalist” argument has not been heard for
some time.
And one cannot help think that both
today and in its prior use, these “federalist” arguments amount to being
rationalizations utilized to defend unfederated positions. In both cases one can see the ultimate goal
is to deprive citizens of equal standing – such standing being a central
federalist value.
Elazar argues that Americans seem to find
their way back to true federalist policies.
The road can be long and hazardous, but the destination cannot be
denied. To some extent, this blogger
agrees but ultimately in the give and take of daily politics, this nation holds
federalist values in the back domains of its collective memory. Up front, it is the transactional factors
that the various players in the political arena hold prominent and bring to bear.
And with that final thought, this blog
will proceed to trace the history of this nation’s political thinking in an
episodic fashion now that the reader has been led to the Constitution writing years
(and even on to the election of Jefferson as the nation’s third president). The aim will be to share the various
experiences the American republic had prior to the late 1940s to test the
assertion that Americans were prominently guided by a federalist view in
their governance and politics.
[1] “What Do the Colors of the Flag Mean?,” The American
Legion (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.legion.org/flag/questions-answers/91471/what-do-colors-flag-mean .
[2] “Why Is the French Flag Blue, White, Red?,” Institut
Linguistque Adenet (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.ila-france.com/blog/why-is-the-french-flag-blue-white-red .
[3]
Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” in a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar, prepared for a
National Endowment for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat
Springs, Colorado, 1994), 1-30.
[4]
Ibid., 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment