JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, V

 

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

Continuing from the previous posting, Donald Lutz[2] points out that between the Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the United States Constitution, a national people is created, and the basic values and commitments of that people are laid out.  At first reading, the Declaration seems to be a list of grievances.  But these grievances represent a set of values.  The exact grievances are similarly found in the constitutions of several states.  They are also found in scores of newspapers of that time.

          The Declaration follows the covenantal formula first utilized in America in the Mayflower Compact in the early 1600s.  Lutz entertains the question of whether the Declaration creates one people or is the covenant of thirteen separate people.  There are references within the document that support both positions:  on the side of “one people,” the reference of the American colonists as separating from another – the British – and the quote, “good People of these Colonies,” supports the idea of a national people and the reference in the last paragraph, “Free and Independent States,” bolsters the idea of thirteen peoples.

 

Of course, Americans today possess something like dual citizenship whereby they are simultaneously citizens of the United States and of their respective states.  One could view the Declaration of Independence as containing implicitly the first statement of dual citizenship by more or less balancing references to a national people and to state peoples, thereby implying that both are created at the same time.  It is interesting that the document tends to use group language for the creation of a single people toward the beginning and language for multiple state peoples toward the end.  The list of grievances refers at times to things the king has done to hurt a colony or a colonial government, and at other times to things he has done to harm all Americans.[3]

 

Lutz states that this duality demonstrates a federalist conception in that the national union is being created but maintaining the integrity (and this case sovereignty) of the constituent parts.

          In addition, this “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America” reflects a unanimous decision.  The covenant was not unanimous on July 4, 1776.  New York did not agree to the covenant until July 15 and not all of the signatures were affixed to the document when the Continental Congress formally approved the agreement on January 18, 1777 (missing the name of Thomas McKean) and printed it.  Despite this, the document was re-titled to include the word unanimous.

          Lutz explains,

The change in the title was an attempt to present a united front against Britain.  One can also view the insistence upon unanimity as recognition that a compact does not bind those who do not sign it or agree to it.  If we are to have a national people, a national compact, both John Locke and the American colonial constitutional tradition required that the agreement be unanimous.[4]

 

What are some of the specific values expressed in the Declaration?  A review provided by Lutz demonstrates the connection between those values in this document and those established by the colonial, federalist tradition.

          With the provision, “separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” Americans saw themselves as equal to the British.  This equality was based on Americans’ inalienable (nontransferable) right to render their consent or withhold their consent to a British constitution.  In true federalist spirit, this was a God-given right because God distributed the ability to do so equally among all.

          Lutz writes, “Just as in the Christian tradition, a poor person and a rich one are equal in the sight of God, a small nation is equal to the largest nation once it forms itself by a compact based upon unanimous consent.”[5]  Therefore, “all men are created equal” not only refers to the notion of equal individuals, but also to equal peoples; i.e., the American people being equal to the British people.

          In terms of the pronouncement that the truths proclaimed in the document were “self-evident,” they were so from a biblical or an Enlightened basis.  The quote, “Nature and Nature’s God,” refers to either the belief in God from a religious perspective or in the natural law which the Enlightened thinkers argued included human nature.  Either way, religious or rational thinkers, Jefferson felt, should be able to see the correctness of the values expressed.

          The grievances contain the following values and commitments:  legislative supremacy with a deliberate process for securing the common good, freedom of movement, independent judicial process, frugality in government based on the consent of the governed (representative government), free trade, trial by jury of one’s peers, the duty of government to protect its people from foreign and domestic violence, and deliberate governmental processes in general.

          And finally, and very significant, the Declaration of Independence does call on God to witness the agreement making this compact a covenant – giving it a religious foundation.  This last bit of context becomes notable given how the eventual constitution in 1787 takes on a secular standing in that it does not call on God to witness that agreement.

          With an extensive adoption of equality as a founding value, one quickly turns to the value of liberty.  Equality demands duty and obligation among the citizenry if it is to be respected – humans are readily motivated to dishonor equality if to do so, an individual interest is advanced.  So how this covenant treats liberty becomes centrally important.  This should be kept in mind as the following is read.

          A source which was heavily influential in providing ideas to be contained in the Declaration, and in which Jefferson also had a strong hand in preparing, was the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution.  Actually, drawn up shortly before the Declaration of Independence was issued, the document illustrates the importance and context that the founding generation placed on individual rights.

          Article one reads:

1.    That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life, liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.[6]

         

This value, of course, falls logically within the federalist view of independent, consenting members to join and form a union or society.  But the question relevant to the concerns of this dialectical presentation is to what extent can resulting governments and their laws prohibit behavior, especially on moral grounds.

Article 16 identifies the bias of the founding generation and is central to federal thought:

16.  That religion, or the duty which we owe to our CREATOR, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.[7]

 

In short, and taken with the ideas earlier shared by John Adams (in the last posting), the ideal of liberty was that a person was free to do what he/she should do.  To an advocate of parochial federalism, the legitimacy of a moral basis for governmental policy can be easily deduced from this passage and is part of the parochial / traditional federalism perspective.

          This posting will not continue and finish the presentation on isomorphism.  This blogger wishes to leave the reader with this last point to consider.  It zeroes in on the fundamental distinction between federalism and natural rights perspectives which, of course, is the central point of contention between the two constructs.

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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] Donald S. Lutz, “The Declaration of Independence, 1776” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 138-145.

[3] Ibid., 140.

[4] Ibid., 141.

[5] Ibid., 141.

[6] Donald S. Lutz, “The Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution, 1776” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 150-165, 154.

[7] Ibid., 157.

JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, IV

 

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

In progressing through Eugene Meehan’s (plus two from this blogger) elements[2] of evaluative attributes by which to judge constructs, the next element is compatibility.  But before leaving isomorphism, this and the posting will share some related commentary by the founding fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

          Consideration of isomorphism had the last posting look at and comment on the American colonial experience.  Again, the concern over isomorphism is:  does the construct line up, element-by-element, with that to which it describes, explains, and/or evaluates?  Or specifically to the concerns of this blog, how well does parochial federalism help civics educators in identifying those factors affecting the governance and/or politicking within the American republic?

To meaningfully address that concern, the last posting gave a general example of how parochial federalism functions.  How it relates to the colonial experience and, by doing so, demonstrates how inclusive its governmental/political factors are to anyone studying the political record of how the nation’s political arrangement came about.[3]  But one should keep in mind that his review is merely a case study to demonstrate its usability.

For example, a look at the expressed ideals around the time of the American Revolution will demonstrate how the foundational perspective survived and was instrumental in drawing up the constitutional framework of the nation.  In his Thoughts on Government, 1776, John Adams identified a moral basis for political arrangements:

 

We ought to consider, what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form.  Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man.  From this principle it will follow, that the form of government, which communicates ease, comfort, security, or in one word happiness to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best …

          If there is a form of government then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?[4]

 

And with this, one can detect yet another domain of interest or factor that parochial federalism addresses, that being the moral domain. 

Adams succinctly explains that governments should be established to promote the happiness of its citizens and that end is best attained through foundation of virtue.  That is, the ideal is a state in which what is moral, righteous, responsible, and serious is sought.  As such, politics is not merely an area of practical concern, but also of goodness or evil, right or wrong.

Foundationally, the moral precepts that the Puritans first established seem fresh in the mind of this founding father.  The Thoughts on Government was a published work that proved to have a profound effect on many of the delegates to the Continental Congress as they went back to their respective states (the Declaration having already claimed the nation’s independence) and worked on devising the first state constitutions.[5]

Of course, the central document depicting the political perspective of the founding fathers was/is the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

 

The Declaration of Independence was not written in a vacuum.  It did not suddenly spring from the mind of a few men.  Thomas Jefferson himself said in a letter to Henry Lee written on May 8, 1825:  “Neither aiming at originality of principles or sentiments, nor yet copied form any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American Mind.”  Apparently [sic] Jefferson attempted to summarize what he felt were the beliefs generally held by Americans on the basis of what was written in the political documents, newspaper articles, and political pamphlets.  It could not have succeeded otherwise. [6]

 

But as this blogger reported earlier in this blog (“The Meaning of Unalienable,” February 5, 2019), here is another view:

A person’s life, liberty (to do good), and happiness are part of his/her nature.  The individual has a sense for morality, a sense that that is not subject to being alienable or transferable to others.  Therefore, they are unalienable.  In all this, according to [Gary] Wills, Jefferson was highly influenced by Francis Hutcheson and this latter writer explains this distinction between rights over one’s person and the right to pursue the moral sense. 

Wills [reports]:

 

Rights arises in, and because of, society; it is a power over others so long as benevolence or innocence are directing the powers.  The test is public good.

          Hutcheson … divides rights into perfect and imperfect.  The perfect, as essential to the public good, can be defended even with private force.  The first example he gives is the right to life.  The basis of the societal bond is benevolence, and no society can undermine its own fundamental value.  Yet security in the possession of life is not only the basis for all goods one can bestow on others; it is, more important, the necessary precondition for doing good – no man can be benevolent unless he is first alive…

          He asserts the right of liberty on similar grounds:  “As nature has implanted in each man a desire of his own happiness and many tender affections toward others in some nearer relations of life, and granted to each one some understanding and active powers, with a natural right [to] exercise them for the purpose of these natural affections, it is plain each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor, or amusements as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods, while no more public interests necessarily require his labors or require that his actions should be under the direction of others.  This right we call natural liberty.”[7]

Sorry for the overly philosophic language, but here is this writer’s understanding:  Liberty seems key, but the meaning of it takes on an unaccustomed turn in that it is ensconced in one’s social context or setting.  The term, natural liberty, today has been co-opted by natural rights advocates, a la an altered Lockean view, by its current devotees and dismisses this more social foundation. 

Regardless, parochial federalism leads to such questions and basic definitions that unfortunately have been mangled and distorted for a variety of reasons, not the least, short-term political goals.  The next posting will continue describing this evolving set of ideas in which the founders illustrate their task to bring their federalist precepts to meet the political challenge of their time.  Again, the effort is to illustrate how granular parochial federalism is in how it was utilized by those who established a new national polity.

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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] Eugene J. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science:  A System Paradigm (Homewood, IL:  The Dorsey Press, 1968).  The complete list is comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.  This blogger adds abstract level and motivation.

[3] Stephen L. Schechter, “Introduction,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990).

[4] John Adams, “John Adams’s Thoughts on Government, 1776,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 129-137, 129-130.

[5] Richard B. Bernstein, “John Adams’s Thoughts on Government,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 118-128.

[6] Donald S. Lutz, “The Declaration of Independence, 1776” (138-145) in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990).

[7] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 2018/1978), 216-217.  Emphasis in the original.

JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, III

 

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

This blog is currently reviewing the efficacy of the parochial federalist construct.  It is doing this by presenting a set of conclusions inspired by Eugene Meehan’s[2] concerns – comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, control – plus two concerns added by this blogger – levels of abstraction, and motivation (the last two aimed at the construct’s application to curricular efforts).  To this point, the blog has reviewed the first four and will now turn to isomorphism.

          This concern refers to how well a construct matches, element by element, to that which it is describing, explaining, and/or evaluating.  A fifth conclusion, therefore, one can make from the evidence is that parochial federalism does have a one-to-one correspondence with the reality it is trying to explain – that would be the governance and politics of the American polity.  While volumes can be written about the formation of this nation’s national/state governmental structure, processes, and functions, they are derived from the application of federalist principles.  By reviewing that process, one can get a “case study” of how isomorphic parochial federalism is.

          What has been described in previous postings, though, still is at a certain level of generality that the reader might judge as too broad.  To demonstrate, though, that the parochial federalist construct addresses more of the one-to-one concerns involved with explaining the separate components of American government, more evidence is needed.

          While an exhaustive account of how the construct addresses all the aspects of the nation’s governmental arrangements is beyond the purposes of this account, what follows is a selected summary of evidence presented by Donald Lutz[3] that demonstrates that the federalist construct does address those varied components and permits a more granular level of analysis.  Lutz’s analyses are restricted to foundational evidence predating the US Constitution, but he identifies various far-reaching influences this exercise by the Puritans left for future generations.

          This is not to imply that actual development in the Constitution could not be analyzed using parochial federalism guidance, but extensive review of that sort would also be beyond the purposes here.  This blogger currently wants to illustrate, using an ample sample of evidence, that a one-to-one relationship between the construct and the area of study does exist.

          Starting with the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620, certain federalist elements were established.  Lutz points out that the Puritans (specifically, the group known as Pilgrims) were a religious group that was interested in simplifying the religious practices of the English churches and ensconcing them in congregational (as opposed to hierarchical) structures.

          Being persecuted in England, they decided to venture to the new world, via Holland, and “create a new city of God – a society run according to the dictates of the Bible.”[4]  And in that effort, they applied the lessons they were exposed to in Holland where they acquired a Judeo set of ideas and ideals.

          Adopting the notion of a covenant, originally from Hebraic tradition and law of the Old Testament, the Puritans established a society and a politick on the following elements:  a bonding among the members of the covenant, a calling upon God to witness the bonding, and the consent of each member to join the resulting communal union.  This latter element was a basic component; each member was free to bond and did so of his/her own volition.

          Of course, all of this was accomplished by drawing up and signing the Mayflower Compact.

 

During the 1600s over 100 other founding documents similar to the Mayflower Compact would be written by American colonists.  Some of these agreements would create single settlements, while others (such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut) would join several existing covenanted communities into broader association.  In each case the people created by the agreement would be identified by those who signed the document.  It is a peculiarly American trait that founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have signatures at the end.  This expectation is part of the legacy of early agreements like the Mayflower Compact, just as “We the People” is derived from “We the undersigned.”[5]

 

          The Mayflower Compact accomplished several other important things basic to the nation’s political perspective.  First was establishing the principle of adding or admitting new members to a covenant.  Not all signees of the Mayflower Compact were Puritans.  A non-Puritan, though, was not given subordinate status.  A new addition was instead awarded equal status to every other individual of the original group.

          Those organizing this effort made this provision the beginning of a standard that led to the constitutional provision that all new states, as they joined the national union, would be granted equal status with the original thirteen states.  Of course, such constitutional protections such as equal protection under the law can be readily traced to this principle.

          The second significant aspect of the Mayflower Compact was its Lockean logic – foreshadowing the influence of the Enlightenment.  Before John Locke ever wrote a word, Puritans in America were living out his prescriptions by creating a society first and then creating a politick to govern it.  “On the Mayflower we find the colonists doing essentially everything that Locke would later recommend.”[6]

          One last contribution of the Mayflower Compact was its clear statement of political values.  These values included a commitment to justice, equality, respect for law, and community.  Individualism was not expressed in this foundational document.  Defined in religious contexts, the Puritans brought with them strongly felt values and principles that would evolve in the formative, colonial years and provide the basis for a future bill of rights.

          Lutz further points out that the Mayflower Compact did not present a model for governmental structure.  As such, it was not the first formal constitution in America.  That distinction goes to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639.  This instrument drew up the provisions involved with the joining in federalist fashion of several Connecticut towns into a political entity that would evolve into the colony.[7]

          Again, Lutz identifies various insights into how federalism covers the topic by sharing several important features in the Fundamental Order document.  First, all three parts of government – legislative, executive, and judicial – were included in the General Court.  Second, the constituent towns kept their own governments. 

Third, these local entities maintained a great deal of freedom and, fourth, their citizen freemen were both citizens of the colony and their respective towns (a modern federalist arrangement).  The constitution specifically outlined the powers of the created government.  One can admire these colonists’ sophisticated understanding of governance.

Fifth, there was a “supremacy clause” included, giving superior power on points of legal conflict between the towns and the overarching government in relation to the power under consideration.  Sixth, in a more secular development, this constitution is not a covenant in that it does not call on God as a witness and is, therefore, a “regular” compact secularizing the agreement. 

And seventh, deserving a highlighted status, the Connecticut document bestows ultimate power to the people by being based on popular sovereignty.  That is, all the government’s power was derived from the people.  This document served directly or as the foundation of the constitution of Connecticut for 179 years.

This posting will end here with this report on the Fundamental Orders and point out that the next posting will begin with some reflective thoughts of John Adams on the contributions this document had on the nation’s early development.  But before one considers Adams’ thoughts, one can appreciate from the above descriptions how extensive and specific parochial federalist elements match up with the subject of how American political thought and subsequent governmental structures evolved.

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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] Eugene J. Meehan, Explanation in Social Science:  A System Paradigm (Homewood, IL:  The Dorsey Press, 1968).

[3] For example, Donald S. Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620” (17-23), “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639” (24-35), “The Declaration of Independence, 1776” (138-145), “The Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution, 1776” (150-165), “The Articles of Confederation, 1781” (227-248) in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990).

[4] Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620,” Roots of the Republic, 18.

[5] Ibid., 19.

[6] Ibid., 21.

[7] Lutz, “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639,” Roots of the Republic.

JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, II

 

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

Comprehensiveness, the topic of the last posting, is only the first evaluative element one can apply to judging the worthiness of a construct; the second is power.[2]  Power refers to a construct’s validity and completeness.  From the descriptive and explanatory information this blog has shared concerning the construct, parochial/traditional federalism, one can cite a history that speaks to its power. 

That is, the nation took the ideas and ideals of parochial federalism and successfully built a republic under federalist mechanism and maintained it through the nation’s growth and ever-increasing diversity.  That story further refined the construct’s concepts and rearranged its priorities, but its basic spirit was maintained.  Some of this proved to be beneficial and some did not.

One example that can be cited is the process by which the nation measured the relative importance of the equality of people as opposed to the equality of states.  Unfortunately, that development in the early to mid-1800s “fine-tuned” the nation into the Civil War, but as a result, eliminated slavery.

As that process continued, it was still being observed in the arenas of various conflicts over various issues.  One example, and of intense virulency, is the issue over race relations.  As of the late 1940s, America’s ability to institute justice for all – and honoring a federalist commitment to individual integrity – had been making progress in this area of rectifying injustice, but one should keep in mind that this issue was not exclusively hindering the American nation.  Racial antagonism could be found around the world.

Given the history of the Civil Rights movement, one can argue that it was the values of parochial federalism that paved the way for that movement to begin gaining progress starting in the late 1950s and burgeoning in the 1960s.  One can also argue that given the espoused values of federalism, this progress was not nearly good enough. 

What the construct encourages is that one should hold onto an unambiguous commitment to equality within the citizenry but given the history of prejudicial and discriminatory policies across time and place, one is faced with certain realities acting against those values.  One can attribute whatever advancement one can cite in the US to the residual federalist values having their effect even in years when federalism lost its dominance among Americans.

Therefore, despite these debates – over race, gender, age, sexual preference, etc. – the overall endeavor to develop and maintain a federally defined equality among the US populous has survived and even strengthened.  That is promising if the nation does not stray too far from its founding principles – those being federal principles – even if that construct is not held as the dominant view in America today. 

The point here, though, is that it should be.  Why? To take advantage of the power it has in couching the issues a republic faces so as to assist in finding those ways that result in ever stronger states of being.  Parochial federalism has a track record that proved able to do so from the colonial period all the way through World War II.  That history resulted in the most dominant nation on earth.

And that leads to the third conclusion.  That is, insofar as the nation is true to the principles of this construct, the basic concepts are clear in meaning; that is, they are reasonably precise.  The temptation is, as the ideal of the founding generation believed, that while the nation achieved success and wealth and sought the luxuries that wealth could buy, its people would become soft and unwilling to abide by the federalist morality.[3]

For example, today – when the prevailing view is natural rights – instead of the nation worrying over many of the issues that this blog has reviewed such as crime, drugs, the break-up of the family, etc., authority over these issues – with its accompanying power – is handed to the national government. 

That government, with a professional bureaucracy, has been given the responsibility of handling many aspects of these problems.  Actually, in most cases, it is the national government, from its own initiative, that steps in due to a lack of action or even concern at the local or state levels.  People, it seems, are too taken up with their personal issues or desires – reflecting what is prevalent today, the natural rights view – to harbor much concern over the challenges that fellow Americans are facing.

Therefore, to meet these challenges, it takes, at a national level, for enough political assets, enough voters’ demand, and enough expertise to address the demands of the indigent or otherwise weakened portions of the electorate or populous.  A good example is those who have become victimized by the opioid crisis.[4]  To the degree the nation has allowed this form of inequality to prevail, the level of federalism has diminished, and federalist morality has been compromised. 

The construct’s basic concepts are clear and they, upon being applied in the study of American politics prior to the late 1940s, revealed a nation exhibiting high levels of willingness to incorporate its prescriptions.  Since that time, that trend has been reversed.  Consequently, its influence today has been at low levels for the past seventy years.

Moving on to the fourth conclusion – the one regarding the next judgmental element – reliability.  In terms of parochial federalism, one might judge its functionality by reviewing its loss of influence.  The changes the American polity has experienced since the late 1940s have become more difficult to understand and politics has become bizarre to the average American.  This, in large measure, can be due to losing the expectant role that parochial federalism provided in framing political discourse.

That is, that political discourse has lost its ability to explain and prescribe in recurring fashion for the current generations.  In the years since World War II, political discourse has been increasingly based on conceptual formats in which those challenges are discussed (with the accompanying assumptions) in political “speak” that does not speak to the American public or, at least, a large portion of it. 

More specifically, one can observe that a degradation of localism and community – with their guideposts in knowable signs or symbols of meaning – has helped make political battles not the affairs of oneself but instead, they have become the affairs of others.  This reflects the absence of reliability that parochial federalism provided the American public.

Reliability means messaging – be it descriptive, explanatory, exhortative – means the same thing time after time.  The prevalent language today misses the mark of reliability given the transitory political landscape (e.g., social change in all its forms seems to occur in an ever more rapid pace) and the centralist nature of the nation’s (or global) economic and political realities seems foreign and somehow irrelevant.  This blogger can attest to the challenge it has been to keep up with the lingo (what does “woke” mean?).

Yet the need for reliable remedies, given the cited above evidence relating to the social pathologies, demonstrates that ignoring them will become ever more dangerous to the health of the polity.  Parochial federalism leads to the discovery of truths in understandable form and what one discovers, within this construct, are consistently expressed over time.

For example, contemporary organizational theory has encouraged moral participatory principles by organizational membership in social organizations, public/governmental entities, or private businesses.  And these include schools, but one needs, in such efforts, to not merely impose some “shared decision-making” structural model, but actually go through the processes to build a federated sense among the membership in question.  That consists of communal (localized commitment), collaboration, and cooperation within those arrangements.

The literature that supports that claim stretches back to the last century and has been extended into this one.[5] These books and articles are highly influenced by the psychology of Abraham Maslow (especially utilizing his model, “hierarchy of needs”).  Their authors and/or editors are promoting principles that recognize the practical importance of allowing people to actively engage in organizational decision-making processes – usually close to them conceptually and physically – that can best be described politically as federal republicanism. 

That would be a sense of partnership among all levels of organizational life.  In grand fashion, that would pertain to a federated nation.  And with that conclusion, there are four down, and six to go.  The next posting will begin with the conclusion relating to the judgmental element, isomorphism.  That is, how well does the construct match – element by element – to the one it addresses and assists in its study. 

[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] The other eight are precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, control, level of abstraction, and motivation.

[3] To review evidence of such concern and reality, even before the Revolutionary War, see T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution:  How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, NY:  The Oxford University Press, 2004).

[4] For an account of how ignored the onset and growth of the opioid crisis was without much concern among the American public, see Sam Quinones, Dreamland:  The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York, NY:  Bloomsbury, 2015).

[5] This blogger is partial to the edited book, The Planning of Change.  See Warren Bennis, Kenneth Dean Benne, and Robert Chin (editors), The Planning of Change (New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985).  Other sample sources include J. Stephen Ott, The Organizational Culture Perspective (Pacific Grove, CA:  Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1989) AND Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership:  Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992) AND Tahira M. Probst, “Countering the Negative Effects of Job Insecurity through Participative Decision-Making Lessons from the Demand-Control Model,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10 (4) (2005), 320-329 AND John L. Cotton, David A. Vollrath, Kirk L. Froggatt, Mark L. Lengnick-Hall and Kenneth R. Jennings, “Employee Participation:  Diverse Forms and Different Outcomes,” The Academy of Management Review, 13, 1 (1988), 8-22 AND J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen, “Participation Decision-Making:  An Integration of Multiple Dimensions,” Human Relations, 50, 7 (1997), 859-878.