EXPRESSED INTEREST BY ALL PROVIDES BALANCE

In past postings – somewhat early in the history of this blog – I shared with you Gordon S. Wood's historical account of a prevailing political view at the time of the founding of our republic. What I highlighted was the support for an approach to governance that its backers called the commonwealth view. They were known as commonwealthmen and I associated federalist ideas and ideals with their beliefs.¹ While prevalent among the politically opinionated populous, it was not the only outlook and surely did not hold sway among the elite political actors of the day. I still hold that federalist principles provided the backdrop to the overall political discourse of that time. But Richard Hofstadter² points out that among the founding fathers who attended the Constitutional Convention, the more prominent view took on a suspicious attitude toward the common man and I would suggest that a lot of what was believed by the commonwealthmen was seen by these leaders as naive and unrealistic. He describes the general sense these founders held was that the human being is a selfish being who pursues his/her interests with insatiable passion. They also saw the developments between the Revolution and 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, as proof positive of their biases.

The state governments that were set up during the time of the Revolution and afterwards gave the common people too much power and they proceeded to abuse that power. At least, that's how many in the elite class saw what was going on within the states. These developments encouraged them to pursue a new constitutional arrangement. Hofstadter writes:

As the Revolution took away the restraining hand of the British government, old colonial grievances of farmers, debtors, and squatters against merchants, investors, and large landholders had flared up anew; the lower order took advantage of new democratic constitutions in several states, and the possessing class were frightened.³

And the founding fathers belonged to the “possessing class.” As such, they were very conscious of the issues that reflected the opposing class interests of the time.

Yet they wrote a constitution that reflected an understanding that they could not dismiss the “lower order.” They appreciated that, one, humans are going to be passionate about their interests no matter at what point in the economic spectrum they find themselves; two, whichever class is given the advantage – be they the rich, the poor, or those in between – they will use their power to advance their interests; and three, the only hope there is of avoiding oppression is to make sure that each class is included in the power structure that results from their efforts of devising a workable constitution. This they did, in the constitution they wrote, with a bias favoring the elites. What they didn't foresee was the cultural bent among the populous that would develop the political institutions which would in the future overcome this bias and shift the system toward a more democratic one.

Some of the institutional practices and processes that characterized this shift have included expanding the franchise, the election of senators, explosion of communication facilities, maintenance of state prerogatives over local concerns, home rule within the political distribution of state power, one man – one vote, constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and free press, and the general cultural bias that supports individual citizens in pursuing their interests. This latter development sometimes gets subdued. Actually, it's subdued most of the time. But the recent actions, the response to the tragic events at Sandy Hook elementary school, demonstrate that popular involvement can and does have an impact on how political issues are determined. While the final determination concerning gun safety is still an open question, one cannot deny that the level of popular involvement has drawn the attention of policy makers on either side of the issues involved. Civics instruction needs to generate or at least encourage a more active role among the citizenry as an on-going factor in the determination of our public policy.

Of course, an active role reflects a self-interested strategy by those who take part. But there is a more patriotic function. What happens most of the time is that only those with concentrated interest become involved. The parents and others in Connecticut who have involved themselves with this gun issue understandably have done so after the tragic events of December, 2012. They feel a concentrated interest. The National Rifle Association has had and will continue to have a concentrated interest in this area. Unfortunately, most of us have a diffused interest. Gun safety, if we think about it at all, is one of a multitude of concerns of more or less equal intensity. The question remains whether the level of tragedy Sandy Hook created is strong enough to center this concern for enough of us so as to lead toward action. Does the tragedy motivate those who were not directly affected by the shooting to contact policy makers – members of Congress – to make the desired changes? More generally, when average citizens choose to ignore any involvement, the result is that a political vacuum is created and is filled by the vested interests of the various issue areas. Financial interest groups are highly involved in financial politics, industrial interest groups in industrial politics, medical interest groups in medical politics, and so on and so on. And given the concern expressed by the founding fathers, one cannot be surprised by the recurring nature of our public policy being skewed in favor of those interests and too often at the expense of the commonwealth.

1Wood, G. S. (1998). The creation of the American republic 1776-1787. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. This seminal work was originally published in 1969.

2Hofstadter, R. (1948). The American political tradition. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

3Ibid., p. 4.