No US president has promoted, during my lifetime, a natural
rights view of politics more than Ronald Reagan. Therefore, it is safe to say that a
federalist such as myself would not find much to agree with the former
president. To avoid confusion, with a
lot of the punditry one hears, one needs to keep in mind how I define these
terms. “Federalist,” as it is used in
the media today, is reserved to mean a person who advances the notion of
“states’ rights.” I do not deny that federalism is a belief system that
promotes local control, but this is a bias, and belief in federalism does not
call for one to radicalize this bias.
One only needs to remember that the original “Federalists,” during the
debate over the constitution of 1787, were those who wanted a stronger central
government. A shorthand way to
distinguish between natural rights advocates and those advancing federalism is
to see the first view as pro-individual and the latter as pro-community. The summary definition of natural rights is
the belief that every individual has the right to seek what he/she wants as
long as he/she doesn’t hurt others.
Federalism is the notion that social/governmental arrangements arise
from individuals coming together and through a spelled out agreement – a
covenant or a compact – and bind themselves together to seek mutual goals. I have argued that for most of the history of
this country, the prevailing normative view of politics and government was
traditional federalism. As of about
fifty to sixty years ago, the nation shifted from traditional federalism to a natural
rights view. A chief agent who
solidified this shift was Ronald Reagan.
And yet for all the negative consequences I see as a result
of this shift, I believe President Reagan had one quality I much admire. Let me set the scene for this qualified
praise. In the initial paragraph of a
recently published book, the author, Lawrence Lessig, writes:
There is a feeling today among too
many Americans that we might not make it.
Not that the end is near, or that doom is around the corner, but that a
distinctly American feeling of inevitability, of greatness – culturally,
economically, politically – is gone.
That we have become Britain. Or
Rome. Or Greece. A generation ago Ronald Reagan rallied the
nation to deny a similar charge: Jimmy
Carter’s worry that our nation had fallen into a state of “malaise.” I was one of those so rallied. And I still believe that Reagan was
right. But the feeling I am talking
about today is different: not that we, as a people, have lost anything of our
potential, but that we, as a republic,
have.[1]
I also agree. Reagan
embodied a will to succeed or at least he projected this will. And this is an essential element of effective
leadership. I think of it as the façade
of the will. All great presidents had
this quality. It has nothing to do with
the content of policy, at least as long as the policy is within what the
culture sees as legitimate.[2] But short of that, energetic leadership – one
that is willful and focused – can sell policy even if it means sacrifice. And ninety percent of this quality is based
on perception, not reality.
What is reliant on reality is the nature of the problems we
face. And to the extent we have lost
essential societal/governmental health as a republic, which I believe is a
result of shifting to a natural rights point of view, one needs the
appropriate policy to address this state of affairs. But to be successful, we need leadership that
does not underestimate the façade of the will.
[1] Lessig, L.
(2011). Republic lost: How money
corrupts Congress – and a plan to stop it.
New York, NY: Twelve, p. 1.
[2] I saw again an old film the other day on TV: The Man
Who Would Be King. While the film
can be seen as offensive to traditional societies, there is a kernel of
political wisdom: policy, no matter who
proposes it, has to be seen as legitimate by cultural standards in order for it
to be acceptable among the populous.
