CHOSEN OR CHOOSING?

 

With Daniel Elazar’s four views of how Americans have seen the relationship between the individual and government were reviewed in the last four postings, this blog can resume its telling of how federalism, the last of the four views, has fared during the history of this nation.  By way of review, the other three views are individualism, collectivism, and corporatism and each of the previous four postings describes and somewhat explains what each of these perceptions are and have been.

Again, federalism, as Elazar defines it, is a perspective that denotes that the individual citizen faces his/her social world through his/her membership in various cooperative networks, they include such groupings such as family and local associations, and all the other partnerships one joins through life.  It is a view that transcends legal definitions and gets at the very human emotions that are stirred as one interacts with other members of these collectives. 

And, as such, it provides a motivation to be cooperative, collaborative, and communal.  As one becomes informed of how American social history evolved, one can ask:  was any portrayed behaviors or behavior patterns a reflection of individualism, collectivism, corporatism, or federalism?  All four were present from the beginning and, from a practical sense, all four provided functional perspectives to the various sorts of challenges a people might and do face.

With that sort of mental scheme – a categorizing model – one can pick up the history of the colonial settlers through the first generation.  That story, in this blog, left off with the conflict between the religious intellectuals and the more emotionally based advocates that found the intellects being too beholden to pagan authority of the ancient Greeks and Romans, especially Aristotle and Cicero.  In a sentence, the intellects promoted logic and the more “feeling” contingent promoted the will.

Of most relevance to the concerns of this blog was that the “will” contingent added an element of selectivity to the question of who belongs to the church, not a small concern when one wishes to determine who had influence, both socially and politically.  They relied on the Puritanical belief that members of the congregation are made of those who have been chosen by God.  To remind the reader, one can get a good grasp of pure Puritanical beliefs by reviewing the acronym TULIP. 

It stands for the following:

“T” for total depravity; the human condition ameliorated only by God’s grace.

“U” for unconditional election; that is, God determines who is saved.

“L” for limited atonement; that is, God’s grace results from the suffering of Christ.

“I” for irresistible grace; that is, if chosen, a person will not reject God’s grace.  And

“P” for perseverance of the saints; that is, the chosen will be accordingly active and known by others.

And of importance here is the “U.”  That is, if one is not selected by God for salvation, one is not among the advantaged.  This is usually detected by being one of need or otherwise inordinately challenged.

          This ran in direct opposition to the Church of England that mandated everyone born on English soil was automatically a member of that church.  Therefore, one religion was restrictive, the other open.  This had its effects in how open the two sets of believers defined membership to the church, and to the polity.  But there was an ironic twist to this distinction.

          That turn resides in the fact that it is the individual who claims his/her selection by God.  This was done through a willing profession by the person who falls within God’s grace.  The individual, through this act, “volunteers” for his/her inclusion into this faith.  Here is how Allen C. Guelzo describes this arrangement:

 

… if … it was the will which ruled, then sincerity could be served by nothing less than the full conscious embrace of those propositions as an act of love, and that could only happen by divine grace.  If the Voluntarists were right, then the corresponding notion of the church and society had to be that of the Separatists, who denied admission to the church to all but those who could make a conscious, willing profession of divine grace.

            Of course, to embrace Voluntarism meant surrendering the pretense that Puritanism was only about rehabilitating the Church of England.  It meant, in fact, revolutionizing it, and junking any basis for establishing a Puritanized version of a natural church in Massachusetts.  If that happened, the Massachusetts society would become completely detached from the church.  It would, even worse, become exactly the sort of Pagan society described by the classical authorities of which the Puritans were so suspicious.[1]

 

And if one remembers that the head of the Church of England was the monarch, the king or queen, then this detachment had more to it than just attending another church, it could, if an ocean weren’t in the way, verging on traitorous behavior.  In addition, this sense of the individual making a reflective, faith claim put the onus on the person to join.  Yes, a certain level of good fortune added legitimacy to that claim, but regardless, it is the individual who decides to join.

          This is a very federalist requisite.  That is, one, from exercising free will, joins into a federalist arrangement.  He/she agrees to the terms of membership which includes the aims and goals of the arrangement.  One can sense from this thinking what would become “We the People of the United States, in Order to …” 

Here, at this earlier date, one is considering religious commitment, but one cannot ignore the implications this belief would have on the approach one is encouraged to take when defining one’s role in social institutions in general and that includes the polity.  But there is not a straight line from this early “revolution” to the political revolution that gained Americans their independence or, later, their lasting compact-al agreement, the US Constitution. 

For one thing, the very next generation, born and raised in the years from 1630 to 1660 rebelled against this form of Puritanism, at least the virulent form that the first generation espoused and practiced.  For them, they never experienced the direct oppression of the Crown attempting to curtail their religious practice.  This, in turn, cooled their sense of rebellion and it wasn’t until 1687 that the English government even exerted any control.

          In that year, the original charter was replaced with a document that allowed for the Church of England to establish itself in the colony – more specifically in Boston.  They also restructured Harvard that had been giving Puritans, by popular demand, a meaningful presence on that campus.  But all of this will be paled by an overwhelming new force emanating from Europe.  The Enlightenment is gaining ground and it will prove to be highly influential among the educated class of Americans as the seventeenth century is drawing to close.

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 30-31.  The factual information contained in this posting is taken from this source.

A MORAL STRAIN FROM THE BEGINNING

 

“Federalism is a fourth orientation in American life, one which has so dominated the mainstream of the American experiment that it is utterly taken for granted.”[1]  With that, Daniel Elazar starts his accounting of the last of the four views he attributes to Americans, that is views they have held from the very beginning of their experience in North America.  The last three postings, in turn, describe the other three views:  individualism, collectivism, and corporatism.  This posting addresses federalism.

          In the colonial period there was John Winthrop and his promotion of federal liberty, the right to do what one should do, being free of one’s natural passions that can enslave a person.  In the Revolutionary period, there was Thomas Jefferson and his promotion of ward republics.  There, governmental functions are controlled and performed close to the citizen, i.e., in subdivisions of a city or a county.  At that level, everyone knows everyone else, and Jefferson’s idea has survived in the existence of small townships, voting precincts, neighborhood associations, and school districts.

          Elazar claims that this concept is not totally original with Americans.  One can find its rationale in the writings emanating from civil societies, such as France.  There, political thinkers write of “integral federalism.”  Here in the US, that ideal has been part of its fabric all along and, therefore, assumed within its political theorizing from the earliest colonial days.  One can say its elements have been beyond discussion.

          In a nutshell, all that federalism denotes is that the individual citizen faces his/her social world through the mediation of various cooperative networks; they include the family, local associations, unions, religious communities, ethnic groups, and all the other partnerships one joins through the course of life.  It stands in the face of anarchic qualities related to individualism and provides the rationales one can believe in and feel for, motivating one to set aside purely selfish modes of behaviors.

          In its way, it allows the person to engage in collective endeavors while not succumbing to the forces that lead to collectivism (in which individuals lose their individuality).  And finally, it harnesses corporative endeavors within the parameters of just aims, goals, procedures, and functions.  It places the acts of collectives, associations, communities, assemblages, and governmental entities within a path of establishing, maintaining, and strengthening meaningful partnerships.

          Can one detect within any such congregation various betrayals of such lofty ideals?  Of course, one can.  One can even see that “normal” behavior or anticipated behavior would and does fall short or go contrary to such values as those expressed above.  But the telling factors that portray those ideals are found in the accepted and functioning structures of government or of private entities.  They are found in the patriotic symbolisms that a people utter or illustrate.  They are found in the documents held sacred.  In other words, they are found in those artifacts that represent espoused values.

          If they don’t determine behaviors or the anticipation of behaviors, what good are they?  They set the moral tone, they define what is good as opposed to evil, they determine what is right as opposed to wrong.  They are the baseline of the law – probably its most consequential function – or how one will disparage laws that don’t measure up.  All of this is difficult to measure, to quantify, but the qualitative power of its presence cannot be overestimated.

          That is why, unlike Elazar, this blogger is seriously and professionally preoccupied with his, this blogger’s, judgement that since the years after World War II, this nation, as a people, has replaced federalism as its dominant view of governance and politics.  And while one can find people who think and assign value in terms of the federalist perspective, the nation has instead opted for a natural rights view as dominant. 

This blog has shared many of this writer’s reasons for this judgement.  He holds it with deep regret and hopes the nation can find its way back not to its initial version of federalism, but an improved version.  Not back to what can be termed a parochial/traditional view, but a liberated federated view.  That is a view that is truly inclusive of all peoples – races, nationalities, ethnicities, gender, and people of all ages – on an equal basis and that live in die in this land.

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[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “How federal is the Constitution? Thoroughly.”  In a booklet of readings, Readings for classes taught by Professor Elazar (1994, 1-30) prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. Conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 15.