As the last posting establishes, the American
constitutional formula was not to take a collectivist turn. Perhaps, those Americans were already too
individualistic for that sort of solution.
Frankly, this blogger believes it was not even considered as attractive
or even as an alternative. Historically,
the American experience occurred before the French Revolution erupted and the French
collectivist formulation was issued. Instead,
the American formulation, one that was brewing since the early 1600s, took a
covenantal option; first as a religious answer, but shortly thereafter as a
secular one.
Here
is how Daniel Elazar describes it,
The
covenant idea [through history] passed into early Christianity only after losing
its political implications. Its
political sense was restored during the Protestant reformation, particularly by
the Protestant groups influenced by Calvin and the Hebrew Bible, the same
groups that dominated the political revolutionary movements in Britain and
America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much of the American reliance upon the
covenant principle stems from the attempt of religiously-inspired settlers on
these shores to reproduce that kind of covenant in the New World and to build
their commonwealths upon it. The Yankees
of New England, the Scots-Irish of the mountains and piedmont from Pennsylvania
to Georgia, the Dutch of New York, the Presbyterians, and to a lesser extent,
the Quakers and German Sectarians of Pennsylvania and the Middle States were
all nurtured in churches constructed on the covenant principle and subscribing
to the federal theology as the means for properly delineating the relationship
between man and God (and, by extension, between man and man) as revealed by the
Bible itself.[1]
But with the influence of the Enlightenment –
especially the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau – those ideals were
secularized.[2] Secularization also allowed for covenantal
principles to be accepted among other Christian sects – Catholics and
Anglicans. And this Enlightenment effect
deserves its own highlighting.
In
this aspect, Elazar betrays his federal roots when he calls the main idea of
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau as not a social contract, but as a social compact. Both ideas are based on the notion that
government derives its powers from the will of the people. That the people went through some process by
which that will is expressed, recorded, and agreed upon to establish a
resulting polity is included in both concepts.
But the distinction between the two
terms, compact and contract, has more to do with timing. That is, a compact is in perpetuity or until
its purposes are fulfilled. A contract
is time specific and reliant on its signatories fulfilling the agreement and if
one or the other does not, that eradicates the agreement, making it null and
void.
A business agreement is best served by a
contract; establishing a government for a nation is best served by a compact in
which no matter what an individual or group does, the agreement is still in
force.[3] And in John Locke’s version, with its
provisions for natural law, it is amenable to establishing a popular government
in that it more fully appreciates covenantal values. It therefore proved applicable among
Americans, relative to the other social contract theories. Why? Because
their take of Locke’s approach, and hence Elazar’s choice of terms, took on a compact-al
formulation.
He claims that the evidence is
overwhelming, it describes how the American founders translated the covenant
principle so as to establish a governing model for a large land mass and a
diverse population. “The word federal is
derived from the Latin foedus which means covenant.”[4] He then proceeds to provide some of that
evidence beginning in 1645’s English Civil War, but here in America, the
current use of the term federal, begins to be used in 1777 as the
colonies were fighting for their independence.
But its ideas can be first noted in the Mayflower Compact, back 1620.
Subsequent to that with sufficient time to
develop, one can find those ideas scattered throughout the founding documents
of the various states including the Virginia Bill of Rights (1776), the Vermont
Declaration of Independence (1777), and the Constitution of Massachusetts from
the pen of John Adams (1779). One can
readily assume that all that agreement did not pop up toward the end of the
1770s without a long serious stream of thinking, discussing, debating, and
agreeing over the constitutional issues that evolved among those colonies through
the 1600s and 1700s.
And in those discussions one can see
recurring principles:
· Polities are developed by freely formed associations of
colonists.
· Those associations are formed by each motivated colonist with
all fellow colonists creating whole entities – a colonial polity – while respecting
the individual and his/her integrity within a truly vibrant governmental body.
·
In that wholeness, it is governed by self-made laws that strive to
attain and maintain the common good – its ultimate value.
·
And that that arrangement demands a law-making process by which all
have equal voice and laws are impartially interpreted and administered.
These principles, it
turns out, proved to have staying power as first the colonial polities were
formed, then while a national polity was formed, and onward as settlers made
their way to the Pacific coast taking these constitutional ideas and ideals
with them.
And in that, the evidence includes
that each of the remaining thirty-seven states’ governments was formulated by a
“covenant-making” process. This general
process was mirrored in the development of cities and towns. In the private sector, at least on paper if
not genuinely felt, the same basic process was adhered to in the formulation of
various organizational structures that followed.
Among those
organizations have been corporations, labor unions, professional organizations,
scientific and reform societies – they all followed the federal model. Even hierarchical religions at least
gave/give federal organizing attributes supportive rhetoric. It became part of the American instinct. That is,
… for federalism [it] 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 … At the same time, [despite
some variance on interpretation of federalism] all agreed that the existence of
inalienable rights was not an excuse for anarchy just as the existence of
ineradicable human passions was not an excuse for tyranny.[5]
The next posting
will address what the implications were for those who were caught up in the
“Age of Revolution” that started with the American experience in seeking their independence
from the British.
[1]
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, 23.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Of course, the resulting government can enact laws
that punish rule breakers.
[4]
Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” 24.
[5] Ibid., 26.
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