JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, XI

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

So, as the last posting ended, one can generally judge parochial/traditional federalism as the more communal, less individualistic approach when compared to the natural rights view.  To contextualize this debate more broadly, its origin can be traced back to Europe several centuries ago, predating its manifestation in America.  J. G. A. Pocock[2] traces a form of it to the 1600s and 1700s in Britain with the rise of trade, money, and credit displacing the agriculturally based economy. 

That development saw the rise of corruption and it was tied to these newer economic processes and practices.  And corruption included (and might still today) the distorted views one adopts by participating in an economy that no longer deals with the real but with the artificial.  When one makes a living producing or selling products that have little to no intrinsic value but simply cater to whimsical trends and styles, one can ask how honest and true such endeavors are.

How well does such an activity reflect an honorable personage?  Pocock cites the reflective writers of those years who argued that with trade – as opposed to agriculture – they found this baseless pursuit as corrupting.  Here is a taste of Pocock’s reportage of those thinkers who pointed out this form of artificiality:

Man remaining sociable – except when driven lunatic by cupidity and imagination – there are real virtues, real passions of sympathy and honesty, to secure the edifice of government in an actual moral universe.  But the question is always pragmatic: is credit in harmony with confidence, are men’s opinions, hopes, and fears concerning each other operating to stabilize society and increase prosperity? … And if there is no such framework, the individual as zoon politikon cannot be forever formally reasserting his own civic being, or renewing its principles.  His business is to get on with his social life, practice its virtues, and make his contribution to the credit and confidence which men repose in one another …

          [T]he classical theory of corruption was necessitated by an awareness of the growing relations between government, war, and finance, and the mercantilist warfare caused a revival of interest in the external relationships of commonwealths with other commonwealths and with empires.  We have found that it was through the image of the rentier, the officer, and the speculator in public funds, not through that of the merchant or dealer upon a market, that capitalism imparted its first shock and became involved in its first major controversy in the history of English-language political theory.  We have found that a “bourgeois ideology,” a paradigm for capitalist man as zoon politikon, was immensely hampered in its development by the omnipresence of Aristotelian and civic humanist values which virtually defined rentier and entrepreneur as corrupt, and that if indeed capitalist thought ended by privatizing the individual, this may have been because it was unable to find an appropriate way of presenting him as citizen.  “Bourgeois ideology,” … seems to wage a struggle for existence and may never have fully won it.[3]

 

How civic minded can a bourgeois afford to be? 

That question is loaded with assumptions as to what the ultimate values, ambitions, aims, and goals are to which a businessperson aspires.  But then beyond that, what Europe was experiencing with the rise of trade was a formation of competitiveness among nations for resources and markets.  And this further led to the development of empires with their colonies (for raw materials) and markets to conduct their trade. 

Therefore, expansion – usually through exploration and wars – undermined the health of balanced republics where the interests of the one, the few, and the many were kept in check. And in this atmosphere one can ask:  Can that businessperson maintain the federalist commitment for the common good or is that commitment subverted by self-interest? 

Experience tells some that for practical purposes a good deal of “educating” needs to be in place to assure allegiance toward advancing civic humanism and social capital – summarily considered the common good.  Yet it convinces others that corruption is unavoidable.  Why?  Because at the base of all this is a shift toward the advancement of individual interests over that of the communal welfare.

That shift in those earlier days still remains today.  If anything, with the development of industrialization and post industrialization economies, this basic divorce between what those thinkers considered real and unreal has been irreversibly set.  Yet, this sort of concern would be asked in civics classrooms if the general discourse was guided by parochial federalism.  It still seems pertinent in the development of basic political understanding of what is real and what should be real.  Admittedly, this sort of lesson might be limited to the more advanced student.

In turn, parochial federalism as an approach would introduce such political relations not from a neutral position but one that seeks two objectives.  First, it would ask those questions that enquire into these concerns and, second, call on students to form their opinions about the related normative issues these concerns represent. 

Why?  Because federalism represents an understanding of the institution of government from a perspective that respects the collective and enabling character of social institutions.  In addition, the federalist format, both structurally and idealistically, pervades all sorts of American institutions (a product of the nation’s historical foundation) such as churches, corporations, and schools.[4]  And this brings one to the social aspect of all these concerns:  the role and importance of institutions on the lives of citizens, including students.

          Part of this enabling process – that is, enabling a student to see his/her role as a partner in the polity – is to begin to understand that institutions are not merely haphazard, agreed upon methods of behavior, but have developmental histories that have stood the test of time and, as such, have profound influences on all citizens.  Sometimes, behind the bravado of the nation’s individualistic myth, there is a pervading concern that people’s lives are being run by institutions that are less under their control and undermine their liberty.[5]

          Without taking a stand on the recent publication of a Supreme Court draft of a proposed decision regarding abortion rights, there is no mistake that that decision is highly influenced by religious doctrine concerning the human status of a fetus.  Religion, as one of any nation’s basic institutions, does have a legitimate role in influencing behavior, but should it have legal standing in determining public policy? 

One can cite various elements of US constitutional tradition that stand in opposition to such a role.  After all, the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a religion.  Can establishment include the codification in law of religious beliefs?  This is the type of question that parochial federalism would find legitimate for instructional purposes.

          This is an example of how institutions affect one’s partnering function under a federalist arrangement.  Again, a parochial federalist view of American government would assist in giving the student a more enabling stance in that a proactive approach to societal institutions would be offered.  It would lead to a more interactive role for citizens – including students – making the institutions – through their more responsive practices – more sensitive to the changes in society and therefore more adaptive to change. 

This active role would be couched in the knowledge of the basic human factors that gave life to those institutions and that a parochial federalist guided civics curriculum would address – reflected in its perennial character.  And with that, this presentation is ready to address the next topic, Student Economic Interest.  The plan was to go into that topic in this posting but that would make it too long.  So, for that entry, the reader needs to revisit this blog next Tuesday.

[Reminder:  The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, he/she can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings by this blogger by merely clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975).

[3] Ibid., 459-460.  Emphasis added.  The term “zoon politikon” refers to the human attribute of being a political animal.  The term is associated with Aristotle.

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

[5] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).