SOME ENLIGHTENED BELIEFS

 

In this story of how federalism, a perception regarding the relationship between the individual and his/her government, has fared during the American experience, this blog has reached the foundation of a new colony, that of Connecticut.  The original motivation to establish that eventual colony and state was spearheaded by Puritans in three towns to separate themselves from the Anglican influence one found in Massachusetts.  That development is described in the last posting.

          It is of importance to this story since in one of the towns seeking separation was Hartford that would become the home of Yale.  There, Samuel Johnson would be influenced by the writings of Enlightenment thinkers and as a post-graduate student and tutor, led the way to institute a new curriculum called “The New Learning.” 

In the reading list of that curriculum were the works of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Copernicus, and that was only on the philosophic/science side of scholarly works.  On the literary side there were the stories of Shakespeare, Milton, and Addison.  These works and their ideas hit the “grapevine” of that time, i.e., the religious networks that, in this case, were centered in Yale College.  All this began roughly in the year 1718.

A historian who has studied this development and has reported certain central elements of it is James MacGregor Burns.[1] According to his reportage, the Enlightenment in Europe coincided with the Reformation and, as a result, the church came under critical review when it exercised its authority over questions regarding nature and government. 

Starting with Copernicus and his theorizing that the earth, contrary to religious dictum, was not the center of the universe, led to enormous energetic interest in the study of physical existence.  This encouraged a whole new approach to investigating nature that began with the Cartesian premise that nothing was known (except one’s own existence), and one needed to go out and hypothesize, observe, measure, and tentatively conclude what the basic elements of that reality are.[2]

 The second element Burns points out is how extensively this newer view took hold.  It stretched throughout Europe and even led to the overthrow of governments.  And once taking hold in America, it played a role in encouraging and emboldening a generation of leaders that would lead toward the independence of the colonies that would become the US. 

Third, he makes a definite connection between Enlightenment ideas and the direction American leaders would take.  These leaders will include John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.  Of particular concern were the philosophizing of certain social / economic / political qualities such as liberty and equality.  Here one can trace the original importation of the natural rights view as a legitimate philosophic tradition that owes a lot of its original arguments to John Locke, although, through the ensuing years that tradition has gone through extensive change, especially of late.

And fourth, Burns summarily sees the overwhelming effect of the Enlightenment as a “light” that made visible the realities of existence through the use of reason.  That light shone the way to go past the obstacles of traditional, faith-based thought that had stymied people’s ability to discover what humans have to contend with through the various turns in their lives.  This ranged from diseases, to movement, to meeting the wants and needs of people to survive and live better, more comfortable lives.

The aim of the Enlightenment here in America, as in Europe, was to apply reasoning to science, politics, and religion.  That reason, for example, encouraged religious tolerance; why engage in constant religious fights that in Europe led to the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) that ended due to exhaustion with no side winning?  It upgraded the arts as important pursuits.  It promoted a secular or, at least, a non-denominational moral approach that could replace theology.  And, probably most effective, was the introduction of science as a higher education discipline.

One form or result of a secular moral view was the upstart of deism – the belief in an uninvolved deity that might have created what is, but basically stands back and lets that creation do its thing.  Apparently, this belief became common among the leadership class of the American colonies. 

What became disfavored among the elite class were such beliefs in the ability to prophesize and the occurrence of miracles.  But of most importance was the influence the Enlightenment had on the leadership and on many of the common folk as to the reasonableness and prudence in adopting religious tolerance.  This and the other Enlightened views, through the slow process outlined above, took hold especially among the educated. 

It did not directly lead toward demanding independence but laid the foundation that would later make Americans less tolerant of English policies they found distasteful and that was not limited to the upper class.  It grew among the population in general.  So, as for the relevant history of the 1700s, one can see related influences taking hold, but did they eliminate federalist foundational beliefs?  This writer believes they did not, but instead were incorporated under the federated framework the Puritans had established.

Again, that influence can be best summarized as one of congregationalism.  This foundational form is counter to the vertical structure of such religions as Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism.  The formation of congregations is the result of local people bonding together to establish a church and it was through that mode that Puritanical churches were established in New England.  In turn, historians basically agree that this mode naturally led to the establishment of the colonial polities.  They also led to the early educational institutions such as Harvard and Yale.

Next, this story will review how Harvard reenters the story of the Enlightenment through mostly the work of Increase Mather.  His work will be the topic of the next posting as that posting aims to fill in some the information gaps regarding the development of the Enlightenment among Americans during the 1700s.

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[1] James MacGregor Burns, Fire and Light:  How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World (New York, NY:  MacMillan, 2013).

[2] As the philosophy of science would later state (under the philosophizing of Karl Popper), all conclusions are subject to disproof.  This is known as the principle of falsification. 

A YALE TURN

With this posting, this blog moves on with its account of the historical development Americans experienced in their views of governance and politics.  The overall question being asked is:  can one ascribe the perceptual orientation Daniel Elazar identifies as federalism to Americans in the years from colonial times to World War II?  Until this point, this blog has described the thinking of the first generation of colonists. 

A lot of the early political/religious (often intertwined) thinking was done under the federalist system of a compact-al defined polity and had to do with how Puritanical they were going to be.  Were they going to follow a more scholastic/intellectual path that relied on logic or were they going to be readily swayed by a more emotionally based will?  As this ongoing tension evolved, a first, naturally born generation was being raised and developing its own views.  And to add to this mix, these newcomers were to experience the import of an intellectual movement.

This turn was emanating from Europe and before addressing its elements, one should keep in mind that in reporting such movements, various facts by historians and other experts are apt to vary.  Again, the aim here is to give the reader an overall sense of how Americans viewed their relationship between themselves, on an individual basis, and government and how that was being affected by the various forces these people were experiencing. 

One turn was a change of locality as to where the effects of this change were being most felt.  The early debate described above seemed to center on the concerns expressed on the campus of Harvard in Massachusetts.  That will shift to Yale and that story is intermingled with the development of Connecticut.  A passing knowledge of how it became a colony helps this story of Yale’s role and how political thinking was to change.

And, in that, a good place to start is with if not the first colonial constitution, then one of the first such documents.  The reader should keep in mind, by writing and abiding with such a foundational document, these colonists were exhibiting their reliance on federalism to define their governance and politics.  To history, this Connecticut document is known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. 

The document fulfills a necessary function so that it be considered a legitimate constitution, i.e., it sets out how a formed government will be constituted – it establishes its structure of government.  Also, this document has the elements Donald Lutz outlines as being requisites for such a foundational instrument.  He identifies twelve elements of concern and here are the first three and the first sentence of the fourth.  He writes,

 

1.     Political covenants were derived in form and content from religious covenants used to found religious communities.

2.     A complete political covenant had the following elements:  (a) an oath calling on God as a witness or partner; (b) the creation of a people whose members are identified by those who signed the covenant; (c) the creation of a civil body politic, or government; (d) the specification of the shared goals and values, a shared meaning, that defined (self-defined) the basis for the people living together; and (e) the creation and description of institutions for collective decision making.

3.     The people covenant form evolved rather quickly into the political compact form.  A political compact is identical to a political covenant except for the absence of an oath [calling on God’s role] in a compact.  The elimination of the oath resulted in the force of the document, and therefore the basis of political obligation, resting entirely on the consent of those signing it.  The move from political covenant to political compact is thus a shift to de facto popular sovereignty.

4.     The political compact eventually evolved into what we now recognize as the American form of constitutionalism. …[1]

 

 The Fundamental Orders fulfill these elements and serve as a starting point, and that document’s beginning paragraph should be studied to garner these people’s basic view.  By doing so, the reader can bring life to what Lutz point out.

          Here is this writer’s “translation” of that document’s first paragraph (recall, that the original is written in the idiom of its time).

 

For as much as it has pleased the Almighty God, the wise disposition of his divine prudence to Order and dispose of things that we the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established  according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and cojoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth; and do, for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and pursue the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed  according to such laws, rules, orders and degrees as shall be made, ordered and decreed, as follows …[2]

 To state the obvious, the religious influence is center and prominent.  It reflects a Puritanical view and as one reads on, the principle of self-commitment to belong and meet responsibilities is more than hinted at as the “governor” describes his responsibilities. 

To state the obvious, the religious influence is center and prominent.  It reflects a Puritanical view and as one reads on, the principle of self-commitment to belong and meet responsibilities is more than hinted at as the “governor” describes his responsibilities. 

The question this blog asks:  will the Enlightenment, as it is interpreted on this side of the Atlantic, going to challenge this perception, enhance it, or merely accommodate to this already cultural element one finds as the Enlightenment makes its initial inroads?  Again, this newer constitution, which is issued in 1639, serves as a piece of evidence of what was held as espoused values and goals when it comes to governance. 

And how did Connecticut come to be?  That story is a bit confusing and not essential to know in its details to achieve the intentions of this blog.  The steps somewhat begin with the Massachusetts General Court issuing permission for the cities identified in the document to set up this entity that will be known as Connecticut.  The document was the product of a commission set up to deal with a dispute in which the cities being united helped in their cause.  The story includes Massachusetts’ governor, John Winthrop.

All of these matters led to the creation – and the writing of a constitution – of a new colony.  Close (less than forty miles) to one of those original cities, a university would be established.  That would be Hartford and the university was Yale in New Haven.  The date of its establishment was 1701.  Its role in introducing the Enlightenment is also a bit messy, but certain key facts are clear.

            Apparently, in 1714, Jeremiah Dummer generously donated a library to the newer university.  At the school was an industrious post-graduate student, Samuel Johnson.  He took it upon himself to study the books of the library and, by doing so, was exposed to ideas that went contrary to his Puritanical understanding of things. 

He is quoted as seeing this discovery as overwhelming to a “low state of mind.”[3]  As a result, Johnson introduces a curriculum shift at Yale that he called “The New Learning.”  With that, the reader is invited to the next posting that will pick up this Connecticut tale that will eventually lead them back to Harvard.

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[1] Donald S. Lutz, “Introductory Essay,” Colonial Origins of the American Constitution:  A Documentary History, edited by Donald S. Lutz (Indianapolis, IN:  Liberty Fund, 1998), xxxv-xxxvi. 

[2] Ibid, 211.  As the text indicates, the depiction here is a version of what is found in this source.  Lutz provides the document in its original spellings.  Of note, this writer visited the Wikipedia entry for the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.  That entry describes summarily the document, as a constitution, setting up “[g]overnment [as being] based on the rights of an individual, and the orders spell out some of those rights, as well as how they are ensured by the government.”  The reader is asked:  does the language this document use indicate that individualism is its main thrust?  This writer believes it does not and feels that this categorization serves to support the view that the current prominent view of governance and politics being that of the natural rights view.  See “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed April 26, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Orders_of_Connecticut#:~:text=The%20Fundamental%20Orders%20were%20adopted,the%20open%20ocean%20for%20trading.

[3] Donald S. Lutz, Stephen L. Schechter, and Richard Bernstein, Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted (Madison, WS:  Madison House), 24. 

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.

A PROFESSIONAL TURN

 

The last two postings review Daniel Elazar’s continuum of views Americans harbor over the relationship between individual citizens and their government.  To date, this blog has identified and described individualism and collectivism.  The third view – one that is encouraged by collectivism – is corporatism, the topic of this posting.

          Elazar defines corporatism as

 

… the organization of civil society through corporate structures which are able to efficiently focus considerable power and energy on the achievement of specific goals and which have a tendency to combine with one another to control common fields of endeavor, primarily economic but potentially political as well.[1]

 

 While such entities can be broad based, they are usually established to achieve specific sets of aims and goals.  They tend to have specific structural arrangements with leadership under a manager and his/her supportive administrative staff.  They function, in turn, for owners or shareholders, but practically are given a great deal of authority to perform the day-to-day practices that constitute how the entity goes about its business.

          These entities, as corporations, are in law considered as reified persons which in turn limits any legal exposure their owners might face; they, in turn, vote-in an entity’s managers, share the profits the entity is able to earn, and usually have a relatively easy ability to gain or shed their portion of ownership.  Under this structural arrangement a form of collectivism is provided as an option to achieve various social aims and/or goals.  One encounters this option in business endeavors within a national and even international economic landscape.

          Again, as with individualism and collectivism, one can find examples of this view among the early efforts to colonize America.  The fact is that the early voyages of settlers were sponsored by trading companies.  These companies were corporate entities in England and Holland.  While their involvement was limited – due to the inability to earn sufficient profits – to the first generation of settlers they did have a lasting effect on how collective efforts should be pursued. 

One finds similar approach in other settlement projects as Americans stretched their expansion westward across the American frontier.  This mechanism in settlements was associated with the trans-Appalachian West effort and the trans-Mississippi West effort.  Beyond that, one can cite the efforts of the railroad corporations.  Today, business development cannot be considered without expecting corporate entities doing the groundwork to develop new technologies including those of industry, technology, and even urban development.

Despite these broad areas of influence, corporatism did meet its limits.  Never, up to the twentieth century, was it seen as the model to be utilized in establishing and maintaining polities at the local, state, or national levels.  That is to say, a clear distinction existed and was maintained as to what business and public governance are and were distinct areas of collective efforts should exist.

This distinction, though, did not prohibit social reformers from adopting corporate models in their proposed reforms of perceived exploitive realities that various groups experienced – such as with labor and their working and living conditions.  This became common during the Progressive period and the proposed changes they advocated.  They particularly sought changes in municipal governmental structures and introduced such changes as instituting city manager positions.  This proved to be a turning point.

The coming of what Elazar calls the “metropolitan-technological frontier” coincided with the years after World War II when one sees a shared vision between well-run businesses and the ability to modernize governmental practices and structural arrangements.  The result has been a marriage of sorts between these conceptions, collectivism and corporatism, at the expense of individualism, though it is this writer’s opinion that this marriage offered individualism a source of felt independence.

That is, under resulting governmental bureaucracies, the individual is a lost entity basically free to act as he/she feels is rewarding under the relative anonymity vast bureaucracies allow and even encourage.  One often cited example in this blog is the loss of the neighborhood cop who would walk his beat (male dominated at that time) and be known by and know the set of common people he was assigned to protect.  This is not to minimize the problems such an arrangement encouraged – for example, old-fashioned political machines and their bosses.

Elazar identifies, and this writer agrees, the key adopted concern by those who deal with the structures of polities was/is efficiency.  This demonstrated the direct influence business corporations had on governance.  That influence bore down on treating governmental concerns, many of them being very human and evading clear definitional parameters, to business thinking.

That oftentimes reduces concerns to measurable variables resembling scientific analysis.  While this approach usually works in the profit/loss world of business, it has been found lacking in the world of governance.  Elazar concludes:  “Thus political life has also been pushed in the direction of corporatist ideas with little questioning as to whether the basic assumptions of corporatism are applicable or appropriate in a democratic political arena.”[2]

This blog has argued that since World War II, the natural rights construct has become dominant in its influence over Americans’ view of governance and politics.  Just above, what Elazar reports can be viewed as evidence to this claim with the proviso that this writer indicates; i.e., individualism, while limited by corporatism, in reality has provided the landscape that allowed it to become ever more virulent as what individuals do can lie below the surface of being acknowledged.  This, in turn, leads to the environment where problems can incubate and grow.[3]

What remains for this blog to describe is Elazar’s fourth concept; that being federalism.  That will be the topic of the next posting.

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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, 13.

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] See Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2013, accessed 7/8/2020, https://safetydifferently.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SDDriftPaper.pdf , 1-11.  This article reviews the proliferation of incubating problems, why they exist, and why they intensify over time.

WARMING UP TO COLLECTIVISM

 

The last posting introduced Daniel Elazar’s continuum of ideas about how Americans view the relationship between individual citizens and government.[1]  The first of these concepts is individualism, and that posting describes how Elazar sees that relationship.  In order, the concepts beyond individualism are collectivism, corporatism, and federalism; this posting looks at collectivism. 

It can be viewed as a reaction to more extreme individualism in which that self-centered view, history has demonstrated, leads in sufficient cases to social irresponsibility especially on the part of the rich.  That tendency has proved to be an influential factor since it has encouraged the electorate to support policies that have sought solutions to those actual or perceived abuses.  But this development jumps to more recent years and ignores earlier versions of collectivism.

          As pointed out in the last posting, this view can be traced all the way back to the colonial origins of the country.  Upon close inspection, one can detect collectivist models of colonization in such efforts as establishing Jamestown and Plymouth.  That is, those colonies began as the efforts of collectives – joint ownership arrangements – of the colonies’ assets.  In both cases, these collective efforts were abandoned, and they fell back to individual enterprises in which individuals owned the various assets within those colonies.

          But this did not kill off this concept.  It has, during the years, resurfaced from time to time.  First in other colonial efforts, but more memorable were the utopian efforts in the nineteenth century.  In those cases, they seem to be reactive attempts to resolve various private or individual exploitive conditions that groups organized to address.

These examples had limited effects on the economy or the social makeup of Americans since the bulk of these experimental efforts was isolated communities that eventually dissolved or transformed into more common arrangements.  Their ultimate failure was due mostly to their inability to ensure its members – in sufficient numbers – to meet their responsibilities in providing needed services or goods.  So, until the 1930s, collectivism, as a coherent mode of organizing, had little influence on the social/economic conditions of American society.

But then there was the Great Depression.  With historic levels of unemployment and loss profits, the nation was primed to seek public policy to meet the emergency.  In response, the federal government, under the stewardship of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, introduced large doses of collectivist policies which are summarily known as the New Deal. 

Those policies can be characterized as being aimed at relief (providing needed essentials to unemployed workers), recovery (increasing gross demand), and reform (changing systemic arrangements within the economy, e.g., the establishment of Social Security).  A lot of these policies were experimental in nature and some survived their initial enactments, some did not.  Consequently, to this date, the nation has collectivist policies in effect.

But this initiation in collectivism, as an idea, did not begin with the New Deal, there was actually a vibrant social advocacy for such policies stemming back to the years after the Civil War.  Mostly through a strain of Progressivism – and some Progressive experimentation through the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson – a good deal of theorizing preceded what would later find expression in the New Deal.  Different schools of progressive thought emanated from that time period.

One school that had a particular influence on the Theodore Roosevelt administration under the advisement of such thinkers as Herbert Croly, milder forms of collectivism did make their way to actual policies.  The general aim of the progressives under TR’s leadership was to avoid giving up industrialization while taking into account the interests of the working class. 

A book of that time that had a bit of collectivist input was the novel, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy which promoted a fairly collectivist view of an ideal society with a military style social/economic arrangement.  While being a best seller of that time – and still read for its historical value – it had little effect on actual policy.

While the Progressive policies and those they suggested did influence the New Deal policy makers, their overall immediate effect was limited in terms of their collectivist attributes or in terms of their duration.  The nation, during the 1920s, entered a highly laissez faire – i.e., individualistic – period under the administrations of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.  But before leaving the TR-to-Wilson period, Elazar judges that Croly’s ideas did have their effect on various developments that the New Deal was to institute some years later.

Summarily, Elazar writes,

 

This is not to say that the New Deal was itself collectivist.  It was far too unsystematic for that, and it is unlikely that Franklin D. Roosevelt wished to foster a collectivist America, but among those around him there were people who saw in collectivism – democratic collectivism to be sure – the only solution to the problems facing the country.  Capitalizing on the moralistic strain in American society which periodically encourages Americans to try to impose single standards of behavior, even in delicate areas, upon the American public, they and their heirs have succeeded in the intervening decades in creating a substantial collectivist thrust within the body politic.  Needless to say, it is not known by that name.  Sinclair Lewis once said that fascism [a right-wing collectivist-political arrangement] could only come to the United States in the name of liberty.  So too, with collectivism.[2]

 

This last note reminds this blogger of what the insurgents yelled as they stormed the Capitol last January 6.  One can upon reflection see as with these insurgents, that extreme individualism can and has led to collectivist movements, sometimes as a remedy to extreme individualism and at other times as an expression of it.

Currently the nexus seems to fall on identity politics; back in the thirties it was economic deprivation.  And as in any continuum, this ideation of the relationship between the individual and the government leads to the next level, corporatism.  This blog will focus on corporatism in its next posting.

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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.

[2] Ibid., 13.

WE ARE ALL IN THIS SANS TOGETHERNESS

 

In a former life, this writer taught the high school course, American Government.  And before the term or course began, he knew that one lesson was already lodged into his schedule.  That lesson would be toward the beginning of the term, and it was noted as the “political spectrum” lesson.

          He would draw on the board a single horizontal line and that image was to communicate a continuum.  Vertically, he would place a line in the middle.  Then going to the right, more or less at equal distances, he would add three more vertical lines with the last one at the end of the horizontal line.  The same would go to the left of the middle line.  Below these vertical lines, he would entitle each.

          The middle line would be titled neutral and/or moderate.  Then going right, each of the lines, in turn, would be titled conservativism, nationalism, and fascism/Nazism.  To the left of the middle, the titles liberalism, socialism, and communism would be placed. 

Surely, recurring readers of this blog will know to what all this refers; i.e., the right, to increasing degrees, indicates belief in conservatism (belief in traditional, national values) to increasing degrees of intensity.  Left of center, one has belief in liberal/progressive values (belief in social/economic/political experimentation or change).  As to the “extreme” terms at the ends of the horizontal line, they indicate approaching and then arriving at totalitarian rule, as exhibited by Hitler’s rule in Germany or Communist Party rule (especially under Stalin) in the Soviet Union.

This former teacher, during the lesson, would indicate how the American population was distributed along this graph with a bell-shaped curve.  This curve sort of explained why the US has a two-party system.  It’s a math thing.  He would toward the end of the lesson superimpose a curve with a number of “bumps,” the bumps growing in height as it approached short of and just beyond the center of the horizontal but with the curve almost at zero point in the moderate or neutral range.  This would demonstrate why Europe has multi-party arrangements.

Another point was made, that as one found oneself toward the extremes, one would be more motivated to be involved in politics and to even secure more claimed knowledge about it (symbolized on the graph with plus signs and minus signs).  Of course, this described amounts of knowledge acquisition did not insure one was open to true knowledge.

As one observes among Americans today, that attraction could very well be toward desired “knowledge.”  Of course, such affected people are subject to propaganda lies or misunderstandings if those beliefs further support established biases.  Today, by the way, the role that social media plays in promulgating such misinformation is well documented.

This political spectrum can be applied to political populations from around the world, and if one were to go online and inquire the term “political spectrum,” one would find more involved representations of this distribution of political sentiment.  But all this is offered here as merely context. 

Daniel J. Elazar offers a spectrum of sorts that distributes American political thinking and sentiments.  He doesn’t use the term spectrum, but as with the spectrum described above, his terms can be (and are described) as points on a continuum.  His terms are “individualism,” “collectivism,” “corporatism,” and “federalism.”  This posting will begin an overview of his “spectrum” by describing the first of these terms, individualism.  But his offering begs the questions, why offer this set and why are they offered in the order they are described?

In way of answering these concerns, he writes:

 

American history can be understood as a struggle between four major orientations toward the relationship between the individual and civil society (that by-now-slightly archaic early modern term which conveys so well the way in which all comprehensive societies necessarily have a political form and the way all good societies keep that political form from becoming all-embracing totalitarian).[1]

 

He further points out that each of the terms refers to a political tradition in American culture that stretches back to the nation’s beginning.  While Elazar makes the case that the last view, federalism, was dominant during all those years, the other three can find their American origins during the nation’s founding.

          And with that introduction, he begins a rundown of these terms beginning with individualism.  Of the four, individualism is probably the best known and most talked about.  According to this writer, it is dominant today, but Elazar thought otherwise.  This despite the fairly shared opinion that America, through the years, has been probably one of the most individualistic nations in the world.

          As such, they are categorized as Lockean men and women.  Each is pictured as a solitary entity contracting him/herself with other solitary actors through the arrangements spelled out in contracts – legally recognized agreements which are specific in their elements and reflecting transactional obligations.  Within these agreements an assumed motivation of self-interest prevails.

          With such a basic understanding, the role of government is limited to protecting the rights of each actor to be so engaged freely and hampered only by limitations that would undermine the actualization of such a system.  For example, that government would legitimately issue laws and accompanying policing powers to make robbery punishable upon being found guilty of such behavior. 

Short of such actions, individualism leads to a reality in which those who are most successful in the entailed competition of interests, can exert more influence – the rich tend to rule.  History provides sufficient evidence to this consequence when individualism is dominant.  American history offers such evidence and, one can argue, no less evidence than what the more recent years has demonstrated since the individualistic bias of the prevailing Reagan policy era which started in the 1980s still prevails. 

Today, as a consequence, one reads such headlines as “Top 1% of U.S. Households Hold 15 Times More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Combined.”[2]  Along with this level of what many consider irresponsibility by the rich and others, is the psychological reaction to this “everyone is his/her own domain.”  That is a resulting, prevalent levels of alienation among the American populous. 

As individualism increases and has been dominant since the years after World War II, there have been increased cases of anti-social activities and personal depression that one associates with an alienated social environment.[3]  Interestingly, even the staunches individualists do seem to make exceptions to this more general view by allowing for kinship and friendships.  Some of this can be found in the most individualistic hobs of social life, those being country clubs, fraternities/sororities on colleges campuses, and religious congregations, parishes, or temples (although this last religious category is not noted for being so individualistic).

The next posting will move on to collectivism – admittedly, a big conceptual jump from individualism.  But one should keep in mind that this individualism does not lose its influence as one might be caught up in collectivist, corporative, and even federalist allegiances.

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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, prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1994), 1-30, 12.

[2] Tommy Beer, “Top 1% of U.S. Households hold 15 Times More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Combined,” Forbes (October 8, 2020), accessed April 9, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/?sh=506a9c815179 .

[3] For example, “Alienation,” Healthline (n.d.), accessed April 9, 2021, https://www.healthline.com/health/alienation .