An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …
In the opinion of an advocate for parochial federalism, concerns over
equality among the general population usually take on a charitable quality as
people consider it. “Let’s help the
underprivileged,” it’s what God or some humanitarian disposition calls for one
to do. While there is nothing wrong with
such a view, it shortchanges the essential function such behavior serves in maintaining
a polity, especially a republic. This
posting continues this blog’s review of equality and the related moral demeanor
one associates with it.
The commonwealth’s interest is to create the
conditions that approach that ideal by maintaining a level of equal neutrality
between itself and its members. That is,
each member is equal before the eyes of the commonwealth. Each is entitled to survive and have the
opportunity to advance – usually, but not exclusively, measured by financial
standing. Yet, republicanism, when parochial
federalism enjoyed dominance among the American public, did not believe in
governmental activity to distribute wealth to benefit the poor.
The debate during the early part of the
nation’s history was not whether government action should help the poor (a function
of private charity), but whether any governmental action should help the
rich. The ideal was for the government
to create the conditions of equal opportunity, not equal results or to be an
agency to advance the interests of those who had a lot. Therefore, some critically saw just about all
government action as helping to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few,
while others saw it as a mechanism to help create more opportunity.[2]
Upon such an equalizing social/economic aim,
one can base a secular morality.
Therefore, the elements influencing a resulting moral demeanor sustaining
equality is the belief in a strong sense of self-reliance as well as a deep
suspicion in the action of government and the motives of elites. To a meaningful degree, a political
assumption arising from such thinking is that at any given time one encounters
this dialectic: the interests of the
well-off pitted against the interests of the not so well-off.
Parochial federalism sees this as the center of
politics, and prudence lies in sorting who and what – with whom and with what –
a society’s welfare is best served (the ultimate value of this construct). It doesn’t necessarily call for governmental
welfare programs, but it doesn’t totally dismiss them either.
What it does call for is a serious commitment
toward establishing the social/economic conditions that lead to equality while
not diminishing the societal welfare in other ways. At base, it calls for public virtue, the
sincere desire to establish and maintain a moral society. And this posting next identifies public
virtue or a moral demeanor as a central element of a parochial federalist
curriculum.
To trace this line of thinking back to the colonial
Whigs, the ideal in their eyes was republican government. Parochial federalism is a form of
republicanism. “To the radical Whigs,
rooted in the Commonwealth period of the 17th century, the perfect
government was always republican. A
republic represented not so much the formal structure of government as it did
its spirit …”[3] The spirit of republicanism can best be
summed up by the term, public virtue.
In this context, the Whig tradition makes a strong
reference to the republics of antiquity.
With that tradition, man is seen in terms of the classical struggle of
choosing between virtue or vice, between reason or passion. They praised most highly the character traits
of temperance, restraint, fortitude, independence, and dignity. Studying antiquity meant inquiring into the
lessons of Greece and Rome, selectively, through the work of Western writers
since the Renaissance, especially the translations of their own radical Whigs.
Their study was focused on the conditions that
led to the decline of those great republics of the past:
Writing
at a time when the greatest days of the Republic were crumbling or already
gone, pessimistic Romans – Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, Plutarch – contrasted the
growing corruption and disorder they saw about them with an imagined earlier
republican world of ordered simplicity and acadian virtue and sought continuity
to explain the transformation. …
[T]he Americans had learned “the
melancholy truth” about the ancient republics “that were once great and
illustrious, but are now no more” and had used their knowledge in their
diagnosis of the ills of the mother country [Britain] in the 1760s and 1770s.[4]
In short, it was the lack of character, the internal cancer, that brought
to an end the republics of the past. A
social sickness infected the populations of those great republics, a malady
caused by their very successes and mirrored by the British in the late eighteenth
century.
Success meant riches and,
in turn, desire for refinement and luxury, thus making the people susceptible
to the temptations of a softer life and unwilling to meet the duties the
maintenance of the republic demanded.
“Republics died not from invasion from without but from decay from within.”[5]
Republics demanded the
voluntary sacrifice of private interest to the common good. That is why republics had to be relatively
small states to allow familiarity and a sense of commonness among the
population to promote the transcendence above that self-interest. Smallness also allowed a manageable way to
communicate the prevailing view of the common good which naturally made it
easier for that perspective to grow. At
least, that was the initial theory Whigs brought into the Revolutionary phase
of America’s development.
With size came a
magnitude of interests in number and in substance. Resulting divisions were seen by Whigs as
dangers to the moral wholeness of the state, an organic whole. Federalism solved the problem of states which
found it in their interest to become larger but wanting to maintain their
republican character.
That is, as the forces of
common bonds loosened in larger states, baser ambitions of greed and revenge
grew. “The ideal which republicanism was
beautifully designed to express was still a harmonious integration of all parts
of the community.”[6] Federalism allowed smallness within largeness
as communities were allowed to develop their own character, priorities, and
cultural exclusivity.[7]
All groups were allowed
to participate, but within their own communities. This level of exclusivity was amply experienced
within the first hundred years of the nation’s history and even into its second
century.[8] And this concern is still relevant
today. Larger polities were achieved by
communities banding together in compact-al arrangements where all communities
were equal, and each was/is able to define its own local policies.
But local communities did
not have the power to defy the core values and principles of republican governance
(for example, see the constitutional provision of requiring each state to have
a republican form of government). The
United States, at least in terms of its governmental structural form, was and
is to be federal with that construct’s non-central provision.
In a republic, the individual
must be convinced that he/she must subsume his/her private wants and desires to
the extent they counter the welfare of the whole community. The public good is the good of all
individuals collected, but with the provisions of equality and ultimately
liberty (insofar as there is no despotism) respected. Surely, these qualifications are enhanced by
a general communal disposition. In sum,
this is the essence of public virtue.
A study of government that
is meant to promote such public virtue is teleological – i.e., considered from
the perspective of its purpose. It is
not neutral but recognizes the responsibility of any rationally committed generation
to promote and socialize its youth to its core values including the values of
liberty and equality.
Overall, with this
account of public virtue, this blog has reviewed the elements of the subject
matter, the first of the commonplaces of curriculum development. The next posting will begin reviewing what
the implication of this analysis has for a curricular developer of civics
instruction. It certainly looks to a curriculum
that was in place prior to the late 1940s and should, with perhaps some minor
adjustments, be reinstituted again.
[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).
[2]
Michael
J. Sandel, Democracy's
Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). One can judge the establishment of public
education under this latter rationale.
[3]
Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968), 49.
[4] Ibid., 51-52.
[5] Ibid., 53.
[6]
Ibid., 60.
[7] With this cultural/political background, one can
appreciate the growth of “home rule” among American states that saw increased respect
for local initiatives. Implementing what
is known as the Dillon Rule, while not abandoning state sovereignty over statewide
affairs, it encourages incorporating home rule provisions into state constitutions
and enacted laws. See Travis Moore, “Dillon
Rule and Home Rule: Principles of Local Governance”
(February 2020), accessed March 29, 2022, https://nebraskalegislature.gov/pdf/reports/research/snapshot_localgov_2020.pdf
.
[8] Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American
Revolution (New York, NY: The Free
Press, 1995).
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