EVALUATION OF TRADITIONAL FEDERALISM

This blog has been reviewing the mental construct, traditional federalism. It has presented this theory in positive language.  It has pointed out it served as the dominant theory of governance and politics at the origins of this nation’s republic.  It was dominant from the time of the earliest colonial settlements and through their developments into the original thirteen states.  Further, it was dominant up until the years following the second world war. 

This construct has favored collaborative and communal biases as it promoted social capital and civic humanism.  While this blog favors such biases, it does not promote traditional federalism.  So, what’s wrong with it?  To answer this question, this blog offers the following critique. 

Probably its most fundamental shortcoming is that while it espouses a moral stand that advances the common good, it never, to any level of sophistication, defined what that was either practically or theoretically.  The results were serious and were duplicitous to its own stated values.

Its most egregious offense emanated from its commitment and dependence on local jurisdictions to ensure that public policies were in accordance to those values.  Probably the history of those jurisdictions failing to protect equality serves as a telling demonstration of this shortcoming.

Overall, localism is noted for parochial attitudes and prejudices.  Traditional federalism never laid down the markers to define limits on those dispositions which led to the non-federalist policies of discrimination, bigotry, hate, and, of course, slavery.  Not enough was done to emphasize the qualitative aspects of federalism and too much was directed to its structural elements – mostly, those relating to states’ rights.

In the development of the US, this principle of equality, while initially was to be advanced and protected by the local jurisdictions, were not.  Instead, local jurisdictions were exclusive, segregated arrangements or communities in a mostly or nearly frontier environments – they were expressing the norms of their times.  Of course, nothing illustrated this shortcoming more than the issues that led to the Civil War.

Eventually, albeit slowly, due to the internal logic of republican federalism, the nation became more and more inclusive of diverse people within its communities.[1]  While the march toward greater degrees of inclusion were relentless, they, at times, were anything but smooth. 

Worth noting on this issue:  the fight toward true federalism does not need to take a back seat to any movement in terms of sacrifice and courage by those who engaged in this effort.  From fighting against slavery, for civil rights, or for equal opportunity, many sacrificed much, including for some, their lives.

Another problem with traditional federalism is related to the first one.  It simply did not respect individual rights sufficiently well; it turns out that localism is not just antagonistic of other races, nationalities, or ethnicities, it is also intolerant of what is considered offenses to religious beliefs. 

In effect, traditional federalism did not protect individuals from others imposing their religious beliefs on how a person might choose to live his/her life.  In all truth, the fight against this discrimination was led by those who adopted natural rights views as many local jurisdictions with strong singular religious beliefs judged others as deserving prejudicial treatment.  This was judged by natural rights advocates to be intrusive to individual choice, a central tenet of their preferred view.

Beyond legal sanctions, it was not unusual to confront strongly enforced social restraints on who could be hired for a job, for example, or with whom one could socialize due to behaviors or other attributes associated to a person.  These effective sanctions upheld locally defined mores and values that often originated with religious biases.  The film, The Bridges of Madison County,[2] dramatize these realities as late as the 1950s.

The context of these less than federalist social policies, often backed by law, was the lack of historical evidence of how a federalist republic should conduct its affairs.  While the beliefs were present on American shores from the 1600s, there was a lack of experience in trying to apply its vague precepts.  After all, past experiences of republican governance, before that of the US, were few and far between. 

The ideas that one can now describe as a logical system of ideas were ones the nation sort of evolved into and, in too many cases, reluctantly embraced in their collective thinking.  But this was done without sufficiently fixing the clarity of its meaning.  Yes, the founders had read a great deal about republicanism, but the bulk of such material was theoretical or historical accounts of ancient Greece and Rome.[3]

Often, these earlier Americans were just too busy getting a country started to be able to work out with any rigor the fineries of such an all-inclusive political theory.[4]  There were challenges and they ranged from inconsistency in supporting its basic values to the social tensions caused by human desires for a more self-defined life styles. 

Under such conditions, economic interests – as with slavery – trumped moral suggestions from an ill-defined political theory.  In other cases, it was religious intolerance that promoted unjust treatment of diverging lifestyles.  For the purposes of guiding educational choice of content for a civics curriculum, therefore, a revised version of federalism is needed.  This blog is committed to present that version.

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

[2] Clint Eastwood (director), The Bridges of Madison County (the film), (Warner Brothers, 1995).

[3] Daniel N. Robinson, American Ideals:  Founding a “Republic of Virtue” [a transcript booklet], (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2004).

[4] Actually, a more extended evaluation of the years under which traditional federalism held a dominant position, there were many admirable qualities, quite federalist in nature, during the pre-World War II years.  The problem is that the shortcomings were so egregious.