This
blog has made the argument that a federalist view, more than any other, was the
dominant view of governance and politics.
What does that mean? With this
posting, the blog will sort out this claim.
What it does not mean, as the use of the term, dominant, indicates, is that
it was not the only view among early Americans.
Hopefully, after reading this and
subsequent postings, the reader can attain a rounded understanding of the early
thinking of colonists and of the citizenry of the new American republic. This writer relies on a number of scholars to
stitch together a description of these foundational thoughts, developments, and
policy decisions; among them is philosopher George Santayana, political
scientist Daniel J. Elazar, and political theorist/philosopher Michael J.
Sandel.
In 1911, George Santayana, famous for
the quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,”
published an address, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy.”[1]
To begin, Santayana points out that since the earliest days of the nation,
there has been a two-sided Christian view which has molded a lot of our social
and political thought: a
fire-and-brimstone Calvinist view and a gentler message known as social
transcendentalism.
The Calvinist view bolstered a concern
for the ravages of sin and expressed itself as an “agonized conscience.” The
gentler side promoted an imported, social philosophy. Social transcendentalism, which developed
more formally in Europe during the eighteenth century, augmented a more
self-enhancing message. A review of both
allows one an insight into an early American tension that played out within
most Americans and among them in local community settings.
Calvinism pushed Americans to be
disciplined and promoted a moral standing to hard work which resulted in a
discipline necessary to tame a frontier environment. The harsh conditions and
its dangers were met by a people armed with a view of life and morality suited
to meet the challenges. So successful was this mental and emotional framework
that it became victimized by the success it allowed these settlers to achieve.
And while many of the Calvinist
mentality has mellowed or diminished, Americans are still seen as a
hard-working people. As the demands of
the frontier environment subsided, Americans, with a prosperous economy and
material security, began to have available the finer things of life.
They found it difficult to maintain the
stricter way of living, at least to the levels they endured earlier. Oh, there
were attempts to refuel it with movements such as the Great Awakening in the
1730s – Calvinism did not disappear – but it lost its more stringent character
by the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.[2]
An influential aspect of the Calvinist
past was the development of congregations. From America’s earliest settlements,
this form of social arrangement, the congregational model, characterized how
Americans organized themselves. And with
this bias, the nation’s view of federalism was initially formed.
Key to this was organizing agreements
among settlers through the utilization of covenants, sets of communal
commitments by the settlers which established the basic social and political
arrangements of the group. These instruments were formalized as written
agreement(s) in the form of a charter or a constitution. To solidify this
important promise to each other, the settlers called on God to witness the
agreement.[3] This aspect is developed further in future
postings.
Due to diminishing harshness,
transcendentalism became prominent. Leading this movement in the nineteenth
century, Ralph Waldo Emerson helped define transcendentalism for Americans by
activating a Kantian tradition called “systemic subjectivism.” This was a more individualist turn,
especially as compared with Calvinist thought.
Emerson strongly promoted a
self-initiative bias which was highly valued in a mostly frontier nation. The
quality was easily integrated into a romanticized version of Yankee lore and was
instrumental in adopting Lockean ideas (which has been explained in previous
postings). But it should be remembered
that Emerson’s influence does not make itself known until the mid-1800s and
significantly after the Calvinist influence had been well-established.
Two characteristics were emphasized in
this transcendental vision: emphasis on present needs and the importance of the
will over the intellect – action over thinking.
And so, the major challenging view to a communal bias was introduced in
a social and somewhat economic sense.
As opposed to the earlier Calvinist
focus on evil, transcendental thought seemed to have a blind eye for it and
rhapsodized an up-beat disposition and optimism. To Emerson, these dispositions
translated themselves into confidence or trust in oneself, in one's ability.
Along with confidence came a positive
self-definition and a faith in intuition: “the perspective of knowledge as they
radiate from the self.”[4] But this view of Emerson is getting a bit
ahead of the story, but serves as backdrop for what will transpire around the
years of the early republic. After the
foundational generation gave the nation its constitution (along with the Declaration of Independence), there began
an increasing, over time, acceptance of individualism.
Summarily, an imbalance seemed to
emerge and the challenging perspective became noteworthy; this less humble view
stood in counter distinction to Calvinism.
Among the turmoil associated with an emerging nation, two competing
social perspectives took root: one, a
lure for the marketplace, and two, a commonweal view, a much more communal
orientation. Each of these views would compete
among the people and even within a person’s perceptions.
The marketplace view defines citizens
according to their role in the bargaining processes of the market. In this
view, each person seeks his or her own self-interest. On the other hand, in the
commonweal view, citizens are having, among themselves, undivided interests.
This tension took on different styles among the various regions of the nation
and, according to Elazar, led to the evolution of three distinct political
subcultures in America.[5]
Here, it is necessary to explain that
this overall cultural diversity is presented in relative terms. Each of the regions did and does exhibit the
various listed cultural traits and beliefs to stronger or lesser degrees than
what had been found in the other regions.
For example, the anti-communal traits exhibited in the mid-Atlantic
colonies and then states are by degree stronger in that region. But one can still detect an overall political
culture characterizing the whole American nation.
In sharing a short description of each,
to be provided in the next posting, of the three sub-cultures, the effort will begin
with a review of the first of these which was introduced with the Pilgrims and
Puritans in the New England colonies.
They were influential beyond their numbers in that their biased view of
government and politics became the dominant view. That view remained dominant till World War
II.
In the next posting, this blog will
compare the lists of beliefs that the subsequent subcultures developed in the
different regions of the nation.
Specifically, it will compare the moralistic beliefs that are derived
from the Calvinist tradition and the individualistic beliefs that are derived
from the transcendental tradition. There
is another tradition, but that is limited to the southeast states of the old
Confederacy. What has resulted is an
intriguing story – stay tuned.
[1] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in
American Philosophy,” in The Annals of
America, vol. 13, (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968/1911) eds.
Charles Van Doren and Mortimer J. Adler, 277-288.
[2] Daniel N. Robinson, American
Ideals: Founding a “Republic of Virtue,” [a transcript book], (Chantilly,
VA: The Teaching Company/The Great
Courses, 2004).
[3] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil)
Authority,” Journal of Church and State,
33, (Spring, 1991): 231-254.
[5] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas
Y. Crowell, 1966).
No comments:
Post a Comment