JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, III

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

This blog is currently reviewing the efficacy of the parochial federalist construct.  It is doing this by presenting a set of conclusions inspired by Eugene Meehan’s[2] concerns – comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, control – plus two concerns added by this blogger – levels of abstraction, and motivation (the last two aimed at the construct’s application to curricular efforts).  To this point, the blog has reviewed the first four and will now turn to isomorphism.

          This concern refers to how well a construct matches, element by element, to that which it is describing, explaining, and/or evaluating.  A fifth conclusion, therefore, one can make from the evidence is that parochial federalism does have a one-to-one correspondence with the reality it is trying to explain – that would be the governance and politics of the American polity.  While volumes can be written about the formation of this nation’s national/state governmental structure, processes, and functions, they are derived from the application of federalist principles.  By reviewing that process, one can get a “case study” of how isomorphic parochial federalism is.

          What has been described in previous postings, though, still is at a certain level of generality that the reader might judge as too broad.  To demonstrate, though, that the parochial federalist construct addresses more of the one-to-one concerns involved with explaining the separate components of American government, more evidence is needed.

          While an exhaustive account of how the construct addresses all the aspects of the nation’s governmental arrangements is beyond the purposes of this account, what follows is a selected summary of evidence presented by Donald Lutz[3] that demonstrates that the federalist construct does address those varied components and permits a more granular level of analysis.  Lutz’s analyses are restricted to foundational evidence predating the US Constitution, but he identifies various far-reaching influences this exercise by the Puritans left for future generations.

          This is not to imply that actual development in the Constitution could not be analyzed using parochial federalism guidance, but extensive review of that sort would also be beyond the purposes here.  This blogger currently wants to illustrate, using an ample sample of evidence, that a one-to-one relationship between the construct and the area of study does exist.

          Starting with the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620, certain federalist elements were established.  Lutz points out that the Puritans (specifically, the group known as Pilgrims) were a religious group that was interested in simplifying the religious practices of the English churches and ensconcing them in congregational (as opposed to hierarchical) structures.

          Being persecuted in England, they decided to venture to the new world, via Holland, and “create a new city of God – a society run according to the dictates of the Bible.”[4]  And in that effort, they applied the lessons they were exposed to in Holland where they acquired a Judeo set of ideas and ideals.

          Adopting the notion of a covenant, originally from Hebraic tradition and law of the Old Testament, the Puritans established a society and a politick on the following elements:  a bonding among the members of the covenant, a calling upon God to witness the bonding, and the consent of each member to join the resulting communal union.  This latter element was a basic component; each member was free to bond and did so of his/her own volition.

          Of course, all of this was accomplished by drawing up and signing the Mayflower Compact.

 

During the 1600s over 100 other founding documents similar to the Mayflower Compact would be written by American colonists.  Some of these agreements would create single settlements, while others (such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut) would join several existing covenanted communities into broader association.  In each case the people created by the agreement would be identified by those who signed the document.  It is a peculiarly American trait that founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have signatures at the end.  This expectation is part of the legacy of early agreements like the Mayflower Compact, just as “We the People” is derived from “We the undersigned.”[5]

 

          The Mayflower Compact accomplished several other important things basic to the nation’s political perspective.  First was establishing the principle of adding or admitting new members to a covenant.  Not all signees of the Mayflower Compact were Puritans.  A non-Puritan, though, was not given subordinate status.  A new addition was instead awarded equal status to every other individual of the original group.

          Those organizing this effort made this provision the beginning of a standard that led to the constitutional provision that all new states, as they joined the national union, would be granted equal status with the original thirteen states.  Of course, such constitutional protections such as equal protection under the law can be readily traced to this principle.

          The second significant aspect of the Mayflower Compact was its Lockean logic – foreshadowing the influence of the Enlightenment.  Before John Locke ever wrote a word, Puritans in America were living out his prescriptions by creating a society first and then creating a politick to govern it.  “On the Mayflower we find the colonists doing essentially everything that Locke would later recommend.”[6]

          One last contribution of the Mayflower Compact was its clear statement of political values.  These values included a commitment to justice, equality, respect for law, and community.  Individualism was not expressed in this foundational document.  Defined in religious contexts, the Puritans brought with them strongly felt values and principles that would evolve in the formative, colonial years and provide the basis for a future bill of rights.

          Lutz further points out that the Mayflower Compact did not present a model for governmental structure.  As such, it was not the first formal constitution in America.  That distinction goes to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639.  This instrument drew up the provisions involved with the joining in federalist fashion of several Connecticut towns into a political entity that would evolve into the colony.[7]

          Again, Lutz identifies various insights into how federalism covers the topic by sharing several important features in the Fundamental Order document.  First, all three parts of government – legislative, executive, and judicial – were included in the General Court.  Second, the constituent towns kept their own governments. 

Third, these local entities maintained a great deal of freedom and, fourth, their citizen freemen were both citizens of the colony and their respective towns (a modern federalist arrangement).  The constitution specifically outlined the powers of the created government.  One can admire these colonists’ sophisticated understanding of governance.

Fifth, there was a “supremacy clause” included, giving superior power on points of legal conflict between the towns and the overarching government in relation to the power under consideration.  Sixth, in a more secular development, this constitution is not a covenant in that it does not call on God as a witness and is, therefore, a “regular” compact secularizing the agreement. 

And seventh, deserving a highlighted status, the Connecticut document bestows ultimate power to the people by being based on popular sovereignty.  That is, all the government’s power was derived from the people.  This document served directly or as the foundation of the constitution of Connecticut for 179 years.

This posting will end here with this report on the Fundamental Orders and point out that the next posting will begin with some reflective thoughts of John Adams on the contributions this document had on the nation’s early development.  But before one considers Adams’ thoughts, one can appreciate from the above descriptions how extensive and specific parochial federalist elements match up with the subject of how American political thought and subsequent governmental structures evolved.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Eugene J. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science:  A System Paradigm (Homewood, IL:  The Dorsey Press, 1968).

[3] For example, Donald S. Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620” (17-23), “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639” (24-35), “The Declaration of Independence, 1776” (138-145), “The Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution, 1776” (150-165), “The Articles of Confederation, 1781” (227-248) in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990).

[4] Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620,” Roots of the Republic, 18.

[5] Ibid., 19.

[6] Ibid., 21.

[7] Lutz, “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639,” Roots of the Republic.

JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, II

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

Comprehensiveness, the topic of the last posting, is only the first evaluative element one can apply to judging the worthiness of a construct; the second is power.[2]  Power refers to a construct’s validity and completeness.  From the descriptive and explanatory information this blog has shared concerning the construct, parochial/traditional federalism, one can cite a history that speaks to its power. 

That is, the nation took the ideas and ideals of parochial federalism and successfully built a republic under federalist mechanism and maintained it through the nation’s growth and ever-increasing diversity.  That story further refined the construct’s concepts and rearranged its priorities, but its basic spirit was maintained.  Some of this proved to be beneficial and some did not.

One example that can be cited is the process by which the nation measured the relative importance of the equality of people as opposed to the equality of states.  Unfortunately, that development in the early to mid-1800s “fine-tuned” the nation into the Civil War, but as a result, eliminated slavery.

As that process continued, it was still being observed in the arenas of various conflicts over various issues.  One example, and of intense virulency, is the issue over race relations.  As of the late 1940s, America’s ability to institute justice for all – and honoring a federalist commitment to individual integrity – had been making progress in this area of rectifying injustice, but one should keep in mind that this issue was not exclusively hindering the American nation.  Racial antagonism could be found around the world.

Given the history of the Civil Rights movement, one can argue that it was the values of parochial federalism that paved the way for that movement to begin gaining progress starting in the late 1950s and burgeoning in the 1960s.  One can also argue that given the espoused values of federalism, this progress was not nearly good enough. 

What the construct encourages is that one should hold onto an unambiguous commitment to equality within the citizenry but given the history of prejudicial and discriminatory policies across time and place, one is faced with certain realities acting against those values.  One can attribute whatever advancement one can cite in the US to the residual federalist values having their effect even in years when federalism lost its dominance among Americans.

Therefore, despite these debates – over race, gender, age, sexual preference, etc. – the overall endeavor to develop and maintain a federally defined equality among the US populous has survived and even strengthened.  That is promising if the nation does not stray too far from its founding principles – those being federal principles – even if that construct is not held as the dominant view in America today. 

The point here, though, is that it should be.  Why? To take advantage of the power it has in couching the issues a republic faces so as to assist in finding those ways that result in ever stronger states of being.  Parochial federalism has a track record that proved able to do so from the colonial period all the way through World War II.  That history resulted in the most dominant nation on earth.

And that leads to the third conclusion.  That is, insofar as the nation is true to the principles of this construct, the basic concepts are clear in meaning; that is, they are reasonably precise.  The temptation is, as the ideal of the founding generation believed, that while the nation achieved success and wealth and sought the luxuries that wealth could buy, its people would become soft and unwilling to abide by the federalist morality.[3]

For example, today – when the prevailing view is natural rights – instead of the nation worrying over many of the issues that this blog has reviewed such as crime, drugs, the break-up of the family, etc., authority over these issues – with its accompanying power – is handed to the national government. 

That government, with a professional bureaucracy, has been given the responsibility of handling many aspects of these problems.  Actually, in most cases, it is the national government, from its own initiative, that steps in due to a lack of action or even concern at the local or state levels.  People, it seems, are too taken up with their personal issues or desires – reflecting what is prevalent today, the natural rights view – to harbor much concern over the challenges that fellow Americans are facing.

Therefore, to meet these challenges, it takes, at a national level, for enough political assets, enough voters’ demand, and enough expertise to address the demands of the indigent or otherwise weakened portions of the electorate or populous.  A good example is those who have become victimized by the opioid crisis.[4]  To the degree the nation has allowed this form of inequality to prevail, the level of federalism has diminished, and federalist morality has been compromised. 

The construct’s basic concepts are clear and they, upon being applied in the study of American politics prior to the late 1940s, revealed a nation exhibiting high levels of willingness to incorporate its prescriptions.  Since that time, that trend has been reversed.  Consequently, its influence today has been at low levels for the past seventy years.

Moving on to the fourth conclusion – the one regarding the next judgmental element – reliability.  In terms of parochial federalism, one might judge its functionality by reviewing its loss of influence.  The changes the American polity has experienced since the late 1940s have become more difficult to understand and politics has become bizarre to the average American.  This, in large measure, can be due to losing the expectant role that parochial federalism provided in framing political discourse.

That is, that political discourse has lost its ability to explain and prescribe in recurring fashion for the current generations.  In the years since World War II, political discourse has been increasingly based on conceptual formats in which those challenges are discussed (with the accompanying assumptions) in political “speak” that does not speak to the American public or, at least, a large portion of it. 

More specifically, one can observe that a degradation of localism and community – with their guideposts in knowable signs or symbols of meaning – has helped make political battles not the affairs of oneself but instead, they have become the affairs of others.  This reflects the absence of reliability that parochial federalism provided the American public.

Reliability means messaging – be it descriptive, explanatory, exhortative – means the same thing time after time.  The prevalent language today misses the mark of reliability given the transitory political landscape (e.g., social change in all its forms seems to occur in an ever more rapid pace) and the centralist nature of the nation’s (or global) economic and political realities seems foreign and somehow irrelevant.  This blogger can attest to the challenge it has been to keep up with the lingo (what does “woke” mean?).

Yet the need for reliable remedies, given the cited above evidence relating to the social pathologies, demonstrates that ignoring them will become ever more dangerous to the health of the polity.  Parochial federalism leads to the discovery of truths in understandable form and what one discovers, within this construct, are consistently expressed over time.

For example, contemporary organizational theory has encouraged moral participatory principles by organizational membership in social organizations, public/governmental entities, or private businesses.  And these include schools, but one needs, in such efforts, to not merely impose some “shared decision-making” structural model, but actually go through the processes to build a federated sense among the membership in question.  That consists of communal (localized commitment), collaboration, and cooperation within those arrangements.

The literature that supports that claim stretches back to the last century and has been extended into this one.[5] These books and articles are highly influenced by the psychology of Abraham Maslow (especially utilizing his model, “hierarchy of needs”).  Their authors and/or editors are promoting principles that recognize the practical importance of allowing people to actively engage in organizational decision-making processes – usually close to them conceptually and physically – that can best be described politically as federal republicanism. 

That would be a sense of partnership among all levels of organizational life.  In grand fashion, that would pertain to a federated nation.  And with that conclusion, there are four down, and six to go.  The next posting will begin with the conclusion relating to the judgmental element, isomorphism.  That is, how well does the construct match – element by element – to the one it addresses and assists in its study. 

[Reminder:  The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, he/she can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings by this blogger by merely clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] The other eight are precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, control, level of abstraction, and motivation.

[3] To review evidence of such concern and reality, even before the Revolutionary War, see T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution:  How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, NY:  The Oxford University Press, 2004).

[4] For an account of how ignored the onset and growth of the opioid crisis was without much concern among the American public, see Sam Quinones, Dreamland:  The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York, NY:  Bloomsbury, 2015).

[5] This blogger is partial to the edited book, The Planning of Change.  See Warren Bennis, Kenneth Dean Benne, and Robert Chin (editors), The Planning of Change (New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985).  Other sample sources include J. Stephen Ott, The Organizational Culture Perspective (Pacific Grove, CA:  Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1989) AND Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership:  Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992) AND Tahira M. Probst, “Countering the Negative Effects of Job Insecurity through Participative Decision-Making Lessons from the Demand-Control Model,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10 (4) (2005), 320-329 AND John L. Cotton, David A. Vollrath, Kirk L. Froggatt, Mark L. Lengnick-Hall and Kenneth R. Jennings, “Employee Participation:  Diverse Forms and Different Outcomes,” The Academy of Management Review, 13, 1 (1988), 8-22 AND J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen, “Participation Decision-Making:  An Integration of Multiple Dimensions,” Human Relations, 50, 7 (1997), 859-878.

PAROCHIAL’S COMPREHENSIVENESS

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

So, with a review (from the last posting) of parochial federalist inspired subject matter – as a commonplace of curriculum development[2] – completed, one is ready to consider the implications such a review suggests.  In other words, what conclusions can be drawn regarding the suitability of the construct – parochial federalism – in terms of civics’ subject matter?  Using Eugene Meehan’s concerns,[3] several conclusions can be proposed.

          By way of reminding usual readers (and introducing them for those who are not), the conclusions Meehan offers are comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.  That is, how well does a construct meet the demands of these attributes?  This blogger, in the spirit of applying this evaluative scheme to pedagogic use, adds abstraction level and motivation.  This posting will share this presentation’s judgements concerning comprehension.

          But before starting, a word on the motivation educators might have when concerned with elements of a useful construct.  Educators are helped if they have a clear sense of why they should utilize a reputable construct to guide any choice of content that they have students study.  Here, guidance from Daniel Elazar[4] is considered to provide educators with such guidance.

          He identifies three reasons to study governance and politics.  They are the striving for justice, the discovery of insights as to why politics is what it is, and to assist in the establishment and maintenance of a civil society.  Surely, if asked, any social studies educator would find little fault with these reasons, but what they implement in current civics courses falls short of actualizing these reasons.  One reason for this lack is how the field of study, to increasing levels, has abandoned parochial federalism since the late 1940s.

With that proviso, this posting turns to the first of these concerns, comprehension.  In addressing comprehension, to be totally complete, one would have to provide an untold number of issues and explain how parochial federalism leads one to gain attention and insight into each of those issues.  That would not be doable – given the countless number of issues – but the reader can get a notion of how the construct handles a sample of issues.  So, what follows are some general comments as to this construct’s comprehensiveness, vis-a-vis this sample.

          The first is that parochial federalism provides a comprehensive view of how policies are considered and formed by a polity’s citizenry which is central to the concerns of a republic.  The construct leads one to consider the factors that will affect the success of that enterprise and the values, structure, and process elements required to make them workable.  The evidence described earlier in this blog reviews those elements, but this posting will give a sense of that functionality.

From the definitions of liberty, equality, and public virtue to the structural prescription of representative government, the construct provides solutions for the basic needs associated with human dignity.  Here are the thoughts of a highly regarded historian, J. G. A. Pocock, who reflects on the advantages of republics in the manner of federalism[5] from a more traditional perspective:

 

Republics [of the late fifteenth century] existed to mobilize the intelligence and virtue of all citizens; their stability was dependent on their doing so and if they failed [sic] they became governments of a few, whose intelligence and virtue were doomed to decline by their finite and insufficient character.  A hidden oligarchy behind a republican façade must lack rationality, because it did not direct the intelligence of all to the good of all; it must lack virtue, because it subjected the good of all to the good as seen by a limited number; it must lack virtu, because it did not mobilize the ragione [reason] and constanza [constancy] of all to deal with the happenings by which it was surrounded.  It must prove insufficient in both integrity and durability … [6]

 

Expressing the ideas of Guido Cavalcanti (poet of the 1200s), Pocock captures the practicality of federalist ideals – across the political/governance analogous board – by comparing it to oligarchy and through that practicality, one can surmise how comprehensive the view must be.

          By defining, as a basic requisite, the treatment of each member in terms of equal status (as federalism does), a certain logic is placed in motion.  In the development of the United States, this principle was demonstrated, initially, by the locally exclusive, segregated arrangements or communities which were the norm and the central element of parochial federalism (hence its name).  Due to the internal logic of federalist republicanism, the nation became more and more inclusive within its communities.[7]

          For example, one can argue that the Civil War, as a reflection of the debate over slavery, was inevitable.  That is, under the federalist paradigm there were only three logical options in handling the slavery issue:  the voluntary incorporation of the African American slaves into society, the forcible emancipation of the slaves, or the emigration of slaves.  Of course, the option to forcibly free the slaves was chosen.

          By extension, the civil rights movement can also be seen as a natural, albeit too slow, development.  With the same logic, the inclusion of all groups is seen as eventually coming about.  With the resulting, growing interest derived from participation and its accompanying rewards of the polity’s accomplishments, all groups have a vested interest in the continuance of the federalist republic. 

The level of inclusion might be thwarted by the aims of those within separate groups, particularly ethnic groups, but not from the evolution of the federalist values.  There is currently a radical response to the general assimilation view described above and that also falls comfortably within the concerns of parochial federalism. 

Writers of the multiculturalist approach argue that a view that all ethnic and gender designated people are desirous of melting their perspectives into the dominant view of the Anglo-Saxon base majority is false.  As parochial federalism’s concern for individual dignity is considered, this concern also falls under the purview of this construct.  They, the multiculturalists, further argue that diversity should not be stymied by such movement toward universality.[8]

          An advocate of parochial federalism would first recognize the legitimacy of this concern but respond that the ends of republican government are such that a certain level of agreement on the basic tenets of citizen interaction, equality, liberty, and public virtue are prerequisites for the survival of any republic and any moves away from those values are proving to be detrimental to the health of the nation’s republic.[9]

          With equality as one of its key instrumental values, the parochial federalist construct can explain the workings of a republic in relation to realistic demands emanating from dynamic growth and profound changes the nation experienced by being anchored to a universal, human need:  all men and women seek human dignity. 

The exact operational definition of dignity varies among cultures and social settings, but its constant attribute is the desire to feel important and meaningful.  Within the Western tradition, democratic institutions have evolved as an expression of that desire.  And since parochial federalism places such importance on it, one can further appreciate how this bolsters its comprehensiveness.

          The primary dependent variable is the workings and successes of republican government in which the person can be treated as an equal and viable member of the community in which he or she finds him/herself.  This gathers in a multitude of issues that are not limited to social concerns but transpires into political and economic concerns as well.  Parochial federalism identifies those principles that lead to the successful maintenance of a republican government.

But in a diverse social environment, one tests the basic values of federalism and questions how faithful the republic is to its basic principles.  Advocates of this construct can claim that to the degree the nation has betrayed its republican principles (a heighten and growing fear since World War II), it has had to suffer the anti-social, nihilistic, crime ridden realities and a lack of economic competitiveness (as argued earlier in this blog).  And social media has intensified this trend.

Given that the republic remained strong – apart from the Civil War – leads to the judgement that the federalist union of the US through World War II thrived under the dominance of parochial federalism.  Yes, the years leading to the Civil War were challenging in maintaining federal values.  One can also cite the 1960s and the current polarized politics as challenging, but these last two examples have not occurred with a nation under the dominant influence of parochial federalism – the natural rights view prevailed or currently prevails in those cases.

These are the type of questions and points of interest that the utilization of parochial federalism leads both political scientists and civics teachers to explore.  As pointed out above, to completely address comprehensiveness, one would have to visit each major issue that contemporary America is facing.  That would be impractical, but with the above representative issues, this blogger believes, they give the reader a good sense of this construct’s comprehensiveness. 

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces according to Joseph Schwab are subject matter, teacher, student, and milieu.

[3] Eugene J. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science:  A System Paradigm (Homewood, IL:  The Dorsey Press, 1968).

[4] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[5] Pocock does not use the term, federalism, but his descriptions – as illustrated in the quote provided – demonstrates.

[6] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:  Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975), 93 (emphasis in the original).

[7] Michael Lind, The Next American Nation:  The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1995).

[8] Rod A. Janzen, “The Social Studies Conceptual Dilemma:  Six Contemporary Approaches,” The Social Studies (May/June 1995), 134-140.

[9] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998/1969) AND in Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022), reviews the debate between the prudence and/or justice of multiculturalism and centered pluralism.  There, the author grants the legitimacy of immigrant groups holding onto their traditional ways and customs short of ascribing to American legal and constitutional ideas, ideals, and principles.  That review relies on the argument offered by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992).

 

EQUALITY’S RELIANCE ON PUBLIC VIRTUE

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

In the opinion of an advocate for parochial federalism, concerns over equality among the general population usually take on a charitable quality as people consider it.  “Let’s help the underprivileged,” it’s what God or some humanitarian disposition calls for one to do.  While there is nothing wrong with such a view, it shortchanges the essential function such behavior serves in maintaining a polity, especially a republic.  This posting continues this blog’s review of equality and the related moral demeanor one associates with it.

The commonwealth’s interest is to create the conditions that approach that ideal by maintaining a level of equal neutrality between itself and its members.  That is, each member is equal before the eyes of the commonwealth.  Each is entitled to survive and have the opportunity to advance – usually, but not exclusively, measured by financial standing.  Yet, republicanism, when parochial federalism enjoyed dominance among the American public, did not believe in governmental activity to distribute wealth to benefit the poor.

The debate during the early part of the nation’s history was not whether government action should help the poor (a function of private charity), but whether any governmental action should help the rich.  The ideal was for the government to create the conditions of equal opportunity, not equal results or to be an agency to advance the interests of those who had a lot.  Therefore, some critically saw just about all government action as helping to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, while others saw it as a mechanism to help create more opportunity.[2]

Upon such an equalizing social/economic aim, one can base a secular morality.  Therefore, the elements influencing a resulting moral demeanor sustaining equality is the belief in a strong sense of self-reliance as well as a deep suspicion in the action of government and the motives of elites.  To a meaningful degree, a political assumption arising from such thinking is that at any given time one encounters this dialectic:  the interests of the well-off pitted against the interests of the not so well-off.

Parochial federalism sees this as the center of politics, and prudence lies in sorting who and what – with whom and with what – a society’s welfare is best served (the ultimate value of this construct).  It doesn’t necessarily call for governmental welfare programs, but it doesn’t totally dismiss them either. 

What it does call for is a serious commitment toward establishing the social/economic conditions that lead to equality while not diminishing the societal welfare in other ways.  At base, it calls for public virtue, the sincere desire to establish and maintain a moral society.  And this posting next identifies public virtue or a moral demeanor as a central element of a parochial federalist curriculum.

To trace this line of thinking back to the colonial Whigs, the ideal in their eyes was republican government.  Parochial federalism is a form of republicanism.  “To the radical Whigs, rooted in the Commonwealth period of the 17^th century, the perfect government was always republican.  A republic represented not so much the formal structure of government as it did its spirit …”[3]  The spirit of republicanism can best be summed up by the term, public virtue.

In this context, the Whig tradition makes a strong reference to the republics of antiquity.  With that tradition, man is seen in terms of the classical struggle of choosing between virtue or vice, between reason or passion.  They praised most highly the character traits of temperance, restraint, fortitude, independence, and dignity.  Studying antiquity meant inquiring into the lessons of Greece and Rome, selectively, through the work of Western writers since the Renaissance, especially the translations of their own radical Whigs.

Their study was focused on the conditions that led to the decline of those great republics of the past:

 

Writing at a time when the greatest days of the Republic were crumbling or already gone, pessimistic Romans – Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, Plutarch – contrasted the growing corruption and disorder they saw about them with an imagined earlier republican world of ordered simplicity and acadian virtue and sought continuity to explain the transformation. …

          [T]he Americans had learned “the melancholy truth” about the ancient republics “that were once great and illustrious, but are now no more” and had used their knowledge in their diagnosis of the ills of the mother country [Britain] in the 1760s and 1770s.[4]

 

In short, it was the lack of character, the internal cancer, that brought to an end the republics of the past.  A social sickness infected the populations of those great republics, a malady caused by their very successes and mirrored by the British in the late eighteenth century.

          Success meant riches and, in turn, desire for refinement and luxury, thus making the people susceptible to the temptations of a softer life and unwilling to meet the duties the maintenance of the republic demanded.  “Republics died not from invasion from without but from decay from within.”[5]

          Republics demanded the voluntary sacrifice of private interest to the common good.  That is why republics had to be relatively small states to allow familiarity and a sense of commonness among the population to promote the transcendence above that self-interest.  Smallness also allowed a manageable way to communicate the prevailing view of the common good which naturally made it easier for that perspective to grow.  At least, that was the initial theory Whigs brought into the Revolutionary phase of America’s development.

          With size came a magnitude of interests in number and in substance.  Resulting divisions were seen by Whigs as dangers to the moral wholeness of the state, an organic whole.  Federalism solved the problem of states which found it in their interest to become larger but wanting to maintain their republican character.

          That is, as the forces of common bonds loosened in larger states, baser ambitions of greed and revenge grew.  “The ideal which republicanism was beautifully designed to express was still a harmonious integration of all parts of the community.”[6]  Federalism allowed smallness within largeness as communities were allowed to develop their own character, priorities, and cultural exclusivity.[7]

          All groups were allowed to participate, but within their own communities.  This level of exclusivity was amply experienced within the first hundred years of the nation’s history and even into its second century.[8]  And this concern is still relevant today.  Larger polities were achieved by communities banding together in compact-al arrangements where all communities were equal, and each was/is able to define its own local policies.

          But local communities did not have the power to defy the core values and principles of republican governance (for example, see the constitutional provision of requiring each state to have a republican form of government).  The United States, at least in terms of its governmental structural form, was and is to be federal with that construct’s non-central provision.

          In a republic, the individual must be convinced that he/she must subsume his/her private wants and desires to the extent they counter the welfare of the whole community.  The public good is the good of all individuals collected, but with the provisions of equality and ultimately liberty (insofar as there is no despotism) respected.  Surely, these qualifications are enhanced by a general communal disposition.  In sum, this is the essence of public virtue.

          A study of government that is meant to promote such public virtue is teleological – i.e., considered from the perspective of its purpose.  It is not neutral but recognizes the responsibility of any rationally committed generation to promote and socialize its youth to its core values including the values of liberty and equality.

          Overall, with this account of public virtue, this blog has reviewed the elements of the subject matter, the first of the commonplaces of curriculum development.  The next posting will begin reviewing what the implication of this analysis has for a curricular developer of civics instruction.  It certainly looks to a curriculum that was in place prior to the late 1940s and should, with perhaps some minor adjustments, be reinstituted again.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).  One can judge the establishment of public education under this latter rationale.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968), 49.

[4] Ibid., 51-52.

[5] Ibid., 53.

[6] Ibid., 60.

[7] With this cultural/political background, one can appreciate the growth of “home rule” among American states that saw increased respect for local initiatives.  Implementing what is known as the Dillon Rule, while not abandoning state sovereignty over statewide affairs, it encourages incorporating home rule provisions into state constitutions and enacted laws.  See Travis Moore, “Dillon Rule and Home Rule:  Principles of Local Governance” (February 2020), accessed March 29, 2022, https://nebraskalegislature.gov/pdf/reports/research/snapshot_localgov_2020.pdf .

[8] Michael Lind, The Next American Nation:  The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1995).