PAROCHIAL’S COMPREHENSIVENESS

 

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

So, with a review (from the last posting) of parochial federalist inspired subject matter – as a commonplace of curriculum development[2] – completed, one is ready to consider the implications such a review suggests.  In other words, what conclusions can be drawn regarding the suitability of the construct – parochial federalism – in terms of civics’ subject matter?  Using Eugene Meehan’s concerns,[3] several conclusions can be proposed.

          By way of reminding usual readers (and introducing them for those who are not), the conclusions Meehan offers are comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.  That is, how well does a construct meet the demands of these attributes?  This blogger, in the spirit of applying this evaluative scheme to pedagogic use, adds abstraction level and motivation.  This posting will share this presentation’s judgements concerning comprehension.

          But before starting, a word on the motivation educators might have when concerned with elements of a useful construct.  Educators are helped if they have a clear sense of why they should utilize a reputable construct to guide any choice of content that they have students study.  Here, guidance from Daniel Elazar[4] is considered to provide educators with such guidance.

          He identifies three reasons to study governance and politics.  They are the striving for justice, the discovery of insights as to why politics is what it is, and to assist in the establishment and maintenance of a civil society.  Surely, if asked, any social studies educator would find little fault with these reasons, but what they implement in current civics courses falls short of actualizing these reasons.  One reason for this lack is how the field of study, to increasing levels, has abandoned parochial federalism since the late 1940s.

With that proviso, this posting turns to the first of these concerns, comprehension.  In addressing comprehension, to be totally complete, one would have to provide an untold number of issues and explain how parochial federalism leads one to gain attention and insight into each of those issues.  That would not be doable – given the countless number of issues – but the reader can get a notion of how the construct handles a sample of issues.  So, what follows are some general comments as to this construct’s comprehensiveness, vis-a-vis this sample.

          The first is that parochial federalism provides a comprehensive view of how policies are considered and formed by a polity’s citizenry which is central to the concerns of a republic.  The construct leads one to consider the factors that will affect the success of that enterprise and the values, structure, and process elements required to make them workable.  The evidence described earlier in this blog reviews those elements, but this posting will give a sense of that functionality.

From the definitions of liberty, equality, and public virtue to the structural prescription of representative government, the construct provides solutions for the basic needs associated with human dignity.  Here are the thoughts of a highly regarded historian, J. G. A. Pocock, who reflects on the advantages of republics in the manner of federalism[5] from a more traditional perspective:

 

Republics [of the late fifteenth century] existed to mobilize the intelligence and virtue of all citizens; their stability was dependent on their doing so and if they failed [sic] they became governments of a few, whose intelligence and virtue were doomed to decline by their finite and insufficient character.  A hidden oligarchy behind a republican façade must lack rationality, because it did not direct the intelligence of all to the good of all; it must lack virtue, because it subjected the good of all to the good as seen by a limited number; it must lack virtu, because it did not mobilize the ragione [reason] and constanza [constancy] of all to deal with the happenings by which it was surrounded.  It must prove insufficient in both integrity and durability … [6]

 

Expressing the ideas of Guido Cavalcanti (poet of the 1200s), Pocock captures the practicality of federalist ideals – across the political/governance analogous board – by comparing it to oligarchy and through that practicality, one can surmise how comprehensive the view must be.

          By defining, as a basic requisite, the treatment of each member in terms of equal status (as federalism does), a certain logic is placed in motion.  In the development of the United States, this principle was demonstrated, initially, by the locally exclusive, segregated arrangements or communities which were the norm and the central element of parochial federalism (hence its name).  Due to the internal logic of federalist republicanism, the nation became more and more inclusive within its communities.[7]

          For example, one can argue that the Civil War, as a reflection of the debate over slavery, was inevitable.  That is, under the federalist paradigm there were only three logical options in handling the slavery issue:  the voluntary incorporation of the African American slaves into society, the forcible emancipation of the slaves, or the emigration of slaves.  Of course, the option to forcibly free the slaves was chosen.

          By extension, the civil rights movement can also be seen as a natural, albeit too slow, development.  With the same logic, the inclusion of all groups is seen as eventually coming about.  With the resulting, growing interest derived from participation and its accompanying rewards of the polity’s accomplishments, all groups have a vested interest in the continuance of the federalist republic. 

The level of inclusion might be thwarted by the aims of those within separate groups, particularly ethnic groups, but not from the evolution of the federalist values.  There is currently a radical response to the general assimilation view described above and that also falls comfortably within the concerns of parochial federalism. 

Writers of the multiculturalist approach argue that a view that all ethnic and gender designated people are desirous of melting their perspectives into the dominant view of the Anglo-Saxon base majority is false.  As parochial federalism’s concern for individual dignity is considered, this concern also falls under the purview of this construct.  They, the multiculturalists, further argue that diversity should not be stymied by such movement toward universality.[8]

          An advocate of parochial federalism would first recognize the legitimacy of this concern but respond that the ends of republican government are such that a certain level of agreement on the basic tenets of citizen interaction, equality, liberty, and public virtue are prerequisites for the survival of any republic and any moves away from those values are proving to be detrimental to the health of the nation’s republic.[9]

          With equality as one of its key instrumental values, the parochial federalist construct can explain the workings of a republic in relation to realistic demands emanating from dynamic growth and profound changes the nation experienced by being anchored to a universal, human need:  all men and women seek human dignity. 

The exact operational definition of dignity varies among cultures and social settings, but its constant attribute is the desire to feel important and meaningful.  Within the Western tradition, democratic institutions have evolved as an expression of that desire.  And since parochial federalism places such importance on it, one can further appreciate how this bolsters its comprehensiveness.

          The primary dependent variable is the workings and successes of republican government in which the person can be treated as an equal and viable member of the community in which he or she finds him/herself.  This gathers in a multitude of issues that are not limited to social concerns but transpires into political and economic concerns as well.  Parochial federalism identifies those principles that lead to the successful maintenance of a republican government.

But in a diverse social environment, one tests the basic values of federalism and questions how faithful the republic is to its basic principles.  Advocates of this construct can claim that to the degree the nation has betrayed its republican principles (a heighten and growing fear since World War II), it has had to suffer the anti-social, nihilistic, crime ridden realities and a lack of economic competitiveness (as argued earlier in this blog).  And social media has intensified this trend.

Given that the republic remained strong – apart from the Civil War – leads to the judgement that the federalist union of the US through World War II thrived under the dominance of parochial federalism.  Yes, the years leading to the Civil War were challenging in maintaining federal values.  One can also cite the 1960s and the current polarized politics as challenging, but these last two examples have not occurred with a nation under the dominant influence of parochial federalism – the natural rights view prevailed or currently prevails in those cases.

These are the type of questions and points of interest that the utilization of parochial federalism leads both political scientists and civics teachers to explore.  As pointed out above, to completely address comprehensiveness, one would have to visit each major issue that contemporary America is facing.  That would be impractical, but with the above representative issues, this blogger believes, they give the reader a good sense of this construct’s comprehensiveness. 

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces according to Joseph Schwab are subject matter, teacher, student, and milieu.

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

[4] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[5] Pocock does not use the term, federalism, but his descriptions – as illustrated in the quote provided – demonstrates.

[6] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:  Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975), 93 (emphasis in the original).

[7] Michael Lind, The Next American Nation:  The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1995).

[8] Rod A. Janzen, “The Social Studies Conceptual Dilemma:  Six Contemporary Approaches,” The Social Studies (May/June 1995), 134-140.

[9] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998/1969) AND in Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022), reviews the debate between the prudence and/or justice of multiculturalism and centered pluralism.  There, the author grants the legitimacy of immigrant groups holding onto their traditional ways and customs short of ascribing to American legal and constitutional ideas, ideals, and principles.  That review relies on the argument offered by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992).

 

EQUALITY’S RELIANCE ON PUBLIC VIRTUE

 

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

In the opinion of an advocate for parochial federalism, concerns over equality among the general population usually take on a charitable quality as people consider it.  “Let’s help the underprivileged,” it’s what God or some humanitarian disposition calls for one to do.  While there is nothing wrong with such a view, it shortchanges the essential function such behavior serves in maintaining a polity, especially a republic.  This posting continues this blog’s review of equality and the related moral demeanor one associates with it.

The commonwealth’s interest is to create the conditions that approach that ideal by maintaining a level of equal neutrality between itself and its members.  That is, each member is equal before the eyes of the commonwealth.  Each is entitled to survive and have the opportunity to advance – usually, but not exclusively, measured by financial standing.  Yet, republicanism, when parochial federalism enjoyed dominance among the American public, did not believe in governmental activity to distribute wealth to benefit the poor.

The debate during the early part of the nation’s history was not whether government action should help the poor (a function of private charity), but whether any governmental action should help the rich.  The ideal was for the government to create the conditions of equal opportunity, not equal results or to be an agency to advance the interests of those who had a lot.  Therefore, some critically saw just about all government action as helping to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, while others saw it as a mechanism to help create more opportunity.[2]

Upon such an equalizing social/economic aim, one can base a secular morality.  Therefore, the elements influencing a resulting moral demeanor sustaining equality is the belief in a strong sense of self-reliance as well as a deep suspicion in the action of government and the motives of elites.  To a meaningful degree, a political assumption arising from such thinking is that at any given time one encounters this dialectic:  the interests of the well-off pitted against the interests of the not so well-off.

Parochial federalism sees this as the center of politics, and prudence lies in sorting who and what – with whom and with what – a society’s welfare is best served (the ultimate value of this construct).  It doesn’t necessarily call for governmental welfare programs, but it doesn’t totally dismiss them either. 

What it does call for is a serious commitment toward establishing the social/economic conditions that lead to equality while not diminishing the societal welfare in other ways.  At base, it calls for public virtue, the sincere desire to establish and maintain a moral society.  And this posting next identifies public virtue or a moral demeanor as a central element of a parochial federalist curriculum.

To trace this line of thinking back to the colonial Whigs, the ideal in their eyes was republican government.  Parochial federalism is a form of republicanism.  “To the radical Whigs, rooted in the Commonwealth period of the 17^th century, the perfect government was always republican.  A republic represented not so much the formal structure of government as it did its spirit …”[3]  The spirit of republicanism can best be summed up by the term, public virtue.

In this context, the Whig tradition makes a strong reference to the republics of antiquity.  With that tradition, man is seen in terms of the classical struggle of choosing between virtue or vice, between reason or passion.  They praised most highly the character traits of temperance, restraint, fortitude, independence, and dignity.  Studying antiquity meant inquiring into the lessons of Greece and Rome, selectively, through the work of Western writers since the Renaissance, especially the translations of their own radical Whigs.

Their study was focused on the conditions that led to the decline of those great republics of the past:

 

Writing at a time when the greatest days of the Republic were crumbling or already gone, pessimistic Romans – Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, Plutarch – contrasted the growing corruption and disorder they saw about them with an imagined earlier republican world of ordered simplicity and acadian virtue and sought continuity to explain the transformation. …

          [T]he Americans had learned “the melancholy truth” about the ancient republics “that were once great and illustrious, but are now no more” and had used their knowledge in their diagnosis of the ills of the mother country [Britain] in the 1760s and 1770s.[4]

 

In short, it was the lack of character, the internal cancer, that brought to an end the republics of the past.  A social sickness infected the populations of those great republics, a malady caused by their very successes and mirrored by the British in the late eighteenth century.

          Success meant riches and, in turn, desire for refinement and luxury, thus making the people susceptible to the temptations of a softer life and unwilling to meet the duties the maintenance of the republic demanded.  “Republics died not from invasion from without but from decay from within.”[5]

          Republics demanded the voluntary sacrifice of private interest to the common good.  That is why republics had to be relatively small states to allow familiarity and a sense of commonness among the population to promote the transcendence above that self-interest.  Smallness also allowed a manageable way to communicate the prevailing view of the common good which naturally made it easier for that perspective to grow.  At least, that was the initial theory Whigs brought into the Revolutionary phase of America’s development.

          With size came a magnitude of interests in number and in substance.  Resulting divisions were seen by Whigs as dangers to the moral wholeness of the state, an organic whole.  Federalism solved the problem of states which found it in their interest to become larger but wanting to maintain their republican character.

          That is, as the forces of common bonds loosened in larger states, baser ambitions of greed and revenge grew.  “The ideal which republicanism was beautifully designed to express was still a harmonious integration of all parts of the community.”[6]  Federalism allowed smallness within largeness as communities were allowed to develop their own character, priorities, and cultural exclusivity.[7]

          All groups were allowed to participate, but within their own communities.  This level of exclusivity was amply experienced within the first hundred years of the nation’s history and even into its second century.[8]  And this concern is still relevant today.  Larger polities were achieved by communities banding together in compact-al arrangements where all communities were equal, and each was/is able to define its own local policies.

          But local communities did not have the power to defy the core values and principles of republican governance (for example, see the constitutional provision of requiring each state to have a republican form of government).  The United States, at least in terms of its governmental structural form, was and is to be federal with that construct’s non-central provision.

          In a republic, the individual must be convinced that he/she must subsume his/her private wants and desires to the extent they counter the welfare of the whole community.  The public good is the good of all individuals collected, but with the provisions of equality and ultimately liberty (insofar as there is no despotism) respected.  Surely, these qualifications are enhanced by a general communal disposition.  In sum, this is the essence of public virtue.

          A study of government that is meant to promote such public virtue is teleological – i.e., considered from the perspective of its purpose.  It is not neutral but recognizes the responsibility of any rationally committed generation to promote and socialize its youth to its core values including the values of liberty and equality.

          Overall, with this account of public virtue, this blog has reviewed the elements of the subject matter, the first of the commonplaces of curriculum development.  The next posting will begin reviewing what the implication of this analysis has for a curricular developer of civics instruction.  It certainly looks to a curriculum that was in place prior to the late 1940s and should, with perhaps some minor adjustments, be reinstituted again.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).  One can judge the establishment of public education under this latter rationale.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968), 49.

[4] Ibid., 51-52.

[5] Ibid., 53.

[6] Ibid., 60.

[7] With this cultural/political background, one can appreciate the growth of “home rule” among American states that saw increased respect for local initiatives.  Implementing what is known as the Dillon Rule, while not abandoning state sovereignty over statewide affairs, it encourages incorporating home rule provisions into state constitutions and enacted laws.  See Travis Moore, “Dillon Rule and Home Rule:  Principles of Local Governance” (February 2020), accessed March 29, 2022, https://nebraskalegislature.gov/pdf/reports/research/snapshot_localgov_2020.pdf .

[8] Michael Lind, The Next American Nation:  The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1995).

THE SPOILS ARE TWO-FACED

 

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

This blog has just presented a rendition of how parochial federalism views liberty (over the two previous postings).  Now it turns to how that view sees equality and a related concern, morality.  As to liberty, a state in which people live sans despotism, to maintain it, they also have a responsibility to be moral and to sustain a moral demeanor in relation to their activities.  Practically, liberty would be impossible to keep if the people collectively sank to corruption and vice.

          To illustrate the point, one need only to look to the lessons of classical antiquity as many 18^th century thinkers, especially Montesquieu, had done.  These thinkers connected a relationship between a moral spirit and a society’s political constitution.  So influenced, the founding generation in America believed that the formula for successful republics was establishing and keeping a moral spirit that prevails as a great nation rises to prominence due mostly to industry and valor.

          This spirit promoted a discipline which led to their initial survival and success as they developed toward greatness.  The implied greatness, as in the case of the earlier Romans, was defined in their ability to not only become prosperous, but also to exhibit a strong ability to determine their future.  The republican spirit served them as they became wealthy and eventually were able to enjoy the luxuries accrued from their successes.

          Gordon Wood points out:

          “While the Romans [of antiquity], … maintained their love of virtue, their simplicity of manners, their recognition of true merit, they raised their state to the heights of glory.  But they stretched their conquests too far and their Asiatic wars brought them luxuries they had never before known.  ‘From the moment virtue and public spirit sunk apace:  dissipation vanished temperance and independence.’”[2] 

The latter period of success promoted the temptations of corruption (believed to be an inevitable development) and bloated conceit led to an ethos of sloth and anarchy.  At least this was the view of the 18^th century thinkers.[3]

The reader should recall from previous postings that the federalist/republican tradition was and is heavily steeped in a religious foundation – at least as it was manifested in the nation’s colonial past.  Was the secularization of thought – initially introduced with the influence of the Enlightenment – in modern times a danger to the moral base of parochial federalist thought? 

One development of such secularization is consumerism that, according to T. H. Breen, captured American demeanor starting roughly in 1740.  Breen points out there was a healthy amount of comment among the “pundit” class of that time that such tendencies threaten to undo what the Americans had been able to establish and that later, such concern helped them to institute and mostly maintain a boycott of British goods during the Revolutionary years.[4]

The congregationalist tradition of the American churches, firmly established by the time of the writings of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, insured that those documents were constructed on a covenant (federal) theology – or a federal principle.  Among those pundits was fair number of religious personages, such as ministers, but not exclusively so.

 

By the middle of the eighteenth century … the covenant idea had been plucked from its religious roots and secularized by men like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.  They transformed it into the concept of the social compact, the freely-assumed bond between man and man that lifted men out of an unbearable state of nature and into civilization.  In the Lockean view widely admired by Americans, it was this social compact that made popular government possible.  The availability of the covenant idea in two forms meant that those Americans who did not acknowledge the political character of the covenant between man and God inevitably recognized the political character of the social compact between man and man and built their constitutions upon that.[5]

 

For its maintenance, a social compact between man and man had the same need for moral behavior among its participants as covenants between God and man and in essence provided a reason for secular morality. 

Why?  Because such unions are communal to meaningful levels and, as such, have low tolerance for self-centered immorality.  Consequently, several social/economic concerns are highlighted by these concerns.  And one is helped by seeing such unions as partnerships and all that that entails.

The parochial federalist construct would encourage inquiry into several issues:  how rich and successful has the overall society become, how much of a separation (financially and socially) exists between the upper classes and the rest of society, how pervasive have the corrupting ways of the rich enfeebled the lower strata?  These are offered as legitimate concerns.

Whigs (of Revolutionary vintage) believed that corruption always began with the top socio-economic classes, as they led the people to a consumption (as referred to above) as opposed to one in which the interests of the commonwealth are dominant.  A main concern Americans had with the British at the time of the Declaration of Independence was that that society, the British, had become too corrupt to be able to rejuvenate itself to meet the principles of its constitution.[6]

Commonwealthmen (another name for Whigs) had a low opinion of the civil habits of those in power.  The powerful, made up of elites, are seen as a scheming group that, through a variety of techniques available to them, deprive the multitude of their fair share of resources.  Beyond that, the many are predisposed to being duped and exploited.  The populous tend to be rapt in their immediate concerns and inattentive to the shift of power that the elites are constantly trying to draw away from them.[7]

Despite this predisposition, when the level of abuse becomes overwhelming, as it was perceived in 1776, it is time for that multitude to respond.  A response not, in the case of the American Revolution, to overturn the English constitution, but to reestablish its core principles.  This is even acknowledged by a natural rights historian, Breen.  He writes:

 

It has become fashionable among some commentators to condemn modern consumer culture, insisting that it sustains itself on the creation of false wants.  Self-indulgence, one hears, erodes the bonds of civil society.  The critics may be correct.  Whatever the truth, they do sound a lot like those eighteenth-century moralists who fretted that ordinary people could not handle the temptations of the marketplace.  This perspective underestimates the capacity of men and women to comprehend their own political situation.  It is true that goods can corrupt.  But in certain circumstances they can be made to speak to power.  The choice is ours to make.[8]

 

As a central element of the Whig view, a citizen of a republic relies on the belief that merit should be the basis of advancement; it should not be inheritance or other meaningless adornments bestowed by higher authority.  Whigs highlighted, along with liberty, the core value of equality. 

Equality did not mean the eradication of subordination.  The necessities of maintaining an orderly society demanded that some oversee others.  Those with accomplishments deserved their status and the authority they earned.  But Whig equality simply meant that all, under the ideal, should have an equal opportunity – not as a “bumper sticker” sentiment, but in reality – to achieve a higher station in life.

And with that basis, one can further look at the Whig sense of public virtue.  That will be the concern of the next posting.  It will start with further distinguishing how parochial federalism defines equality to how they defined a moral demeanor through their view of public virtue and its role in not only defining equality but also in identifying the essential social qualities necessary to sustain liberty.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968), 35.

[3] Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787.  For an extended description of one of Rome’s emperors during these “luxury” years, see Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius:  A Life (Cambridge, MA:  Da Capo Press, 2009).  For a philosophic – well reviewed – accounting of what polities experience in what its author describes as a circular, dialectic development, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:  Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975).

[4] T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution:  How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, NY:  The Oxford University Press, 2004).

[5] 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, 23-24.  Usual references to Locke’s contribution use the term, social contract, while Elazar introduces the term, social compact.  This is seen, by this blogger, to be significant.  A compact can be seen as a secularized version of a covenant.  It should not be confused with more recent application of the term.  That is, as described in “The Social Compact Was a Creation of the Multilateral Twins, The International Fund and the World Bank,” Kaieteur News (January 7, 2014), accessed March 25, 2022, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/01/07/a-social-contract-or-a-social-compact/ .

[6] Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution, 330.

PROTECTING AND ENHANCING LIBERTY

 

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

With an understanding of how one can judge the value of federalism as a construct, one is ready to undertake a critical view of it.  An appropriate place to begin – given that the present aim is to analyze the construct as it relates dialectically to natural rights – is with its value of liberty.  A Whig (of Revolutionary vintage[2]), if alive today, might view liberty, as expressed by the natural rights view, as an expression of individualism and irresponsible behavior.  And that expression can be judged to be of a dysfunctional nature in today’s America.

That would include the nation’s schools where there has been serious misinterpretation of the term, liberty, reflecting today’s common usage.  In the days of the Whigs, liberty meant and was seen as arrangements set up to protect people from despotism.  It did not mean individuals could do whatever they wished or even felt was the right thing to do as they individually defined what was right or good.  That sort of individually defined liberty, when considered, was dismissed as undermining social bonds.

Individuals, from rulers to common folk, could abuse whatever powers they might have and pervert liberty by being licentious and driving the polity toward anarchy.[3]  “Americans early became socialized into a kind of federalist individualism, that is to say, not the anarchic individualism … but an individualism that recognized the subtle bonds of partnership linking individuals even as they preserve their individual integrities.”[4]

Government and civics instruction should address the natural drift toward anarchistic conditions which plague the “rule of the many” polities.[5]  The levels of incivility today – heightened by the politically polarized landscape along with self-centered behaviors one readily sees – indicate that abuses of liberty are at significantly high levels.[6] 

Liberty, as defined by the Whig tradition, has an inherent quality that people are expected to exercise which entails duties and obligations.  This notion can be traced to a tradition that one can ascribe to the term, federalism, and its relation to covenants.  It was not merely a political concept, but could and did define, in ideal terms, what individualism, human rights, and obligations should be.  Elazar writes:

 

The evidence is overwhelming that the covenant principle translated into the larger political realm as part of the development of modern popular government produced the idea of federalism.  The history and meaning of the term itself reveals [sic] this.  The word federal is derived from the Latin feodus which means covenant. …  All [colonial people] agreed on the importance of popular or republican government, the necessity to diffuse power, and the importance of individual rights and dignity as the foundation of any genuinely good political system.  At the same time, all agreed that the existence of alienable rights was not an excuse for anarchy just as the existence of ineradicable human passions was not an excuse for tyranny.  For them, the covenant provided a means for free men to form political communities without sacrificing their essential freedom and without making energetic government impossible.[7]

 

And how did this sentiment express itself when early Americans strove to organize themselves?  Many of the founding generation (Patrick Henry being the most outspoken) sided with the Greek model of antiquity in which the city-states united for only common purposes, mostly defense.  Consequently, such thinking among Americans favored a strong localism, and definitely, upon their independence from Britain, independent states.

          But the founding fathers accepted a model that was new.  They understood that local, small polities could be subject to unchecked passions of factions or majorities which could lead them to act as tyrannical as despots could act. 

 

The interdependence of the national and state governments was to ensure their ability to check one another while still enabling them to cooperate and govern energetically.  In the words of Publius, they advocated a republican remedy for republican diseases.[8]

 

          The basic structural solution was to be a non-central system; the assumption being that no central power exists, but that there are several authorities, both national and regional.  In every case, these authorities are granted their power directly by the people.  Yes, a national authority might be granted preeminence, but that position does not establish a single authority which can take away from the other entities their basic power.

          Elazar describes this distribution as follows:

 

The American people and their leaders were to extend this aspect of federalism, which is partially described in common parlance as the “checks and balances” system, into most other areas of their political life.  Both the state governments and the national government have powers which cannot be taken from one another, even when both planes share in their exercise.  The principle was further applied to relations of the various branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial – within each plane even before the invention of federalism.  It was subsequently applied to the structure and organization of the party system … [9]

 

In fact, one can see the federal principle integrally embedded in the nation’s civil society – its national culture.[10]      This ideal is modified in that there is an internal desire to meet political or social problems with local effort and shift to regional or national responses only when practical concerns, such as mutual defense or inability of local entities to meet common demands, have made it necessary.

          When a more regional or national solution is sought, components of that solution will be left, as much as possible, to local efforts (for example, in drafting an army, the US has used local draft boards).  While early attempts to nationalize the nation’s political arena were made by the Federalist Party, the Jeffersonians, with their election victory in 1800, made their emphasis to grant a general primacy to the states “as custodians of the nation’s political power, an emphasis that was to be dented from time to time … but not altered until the 20^th century.”[11]

          Another restriction the republican Whig tradition places on the structural arrangement that helped establish early guarantees to secure liberty – as the Whigs defined it – was conditions in which the representative bodies were situated.  To begin, they were to meet often for short periods of time so that the representatives of such bodies could come back to live with their fellow citizens and experience the consequences of their own handiwork. 

They also worked with complete legislative independence from the executive agents, and this was seen as essential.  In that way, legislators would not be “contaminated” in their deliberations, and, in turn, they would not interfere with those professionals of the executive as those agents went about implementing policy. 

In terms of protecting liberty, it would be protected by anchoring the legislative body to the people.  Proportional representation, freer elections, frequent legislative meetings, and healthy mistrust of any governing institution were seen as desirable elements in a polity preserving liberty by tying that government to the people.[12]

If correct in their calculations, liberty – while always a subject to be abused by non Whiggish actors – promised to be firmly established and protected from such abuse.  The next concern, to be picked up in the next posting, is a moral demeanor within a governmental arrangement that is established on and enhanced by an equality standard.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).

[2] This view is distinguished from the political beliefs and positions of the Whig Political Party of the early to mid-1800s.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968).

[4] 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, 10-11.

[5] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33 (Spring, 1991), 231-254.

[6] A varied literature that this blog has repeatedly cited supports this contention but for early contributions, see Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy (January 1995) 65-78 AND Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Putnam defines social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[7] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federalism and Covenant,” in The Covenant Connection:  From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism, edited by Daniel J. Elazar and John Kincaid (Lanham, MD:  Lexington Books, 2000), 245-255, 254-255.  The term covenant has a strong connection to religious beliefs.  The term, compact, essentially means the same thing but without a religious tie.

[8] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution? Thoroughly,”, 21.

[9] Ibid., 21-22.

[10] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution? Thoroughly.”

[11] Ibid., 28.

[12] J. G. A. Pocock presents an interesting argument that by vesting the power in the hands of the people, a polity is infinitely more apt to depend on custom to devise its policies and laws.  The advantage is that custom is the product of past generations who, through their trial and error, have had sufficient opportunity to keep what works and dismiss what doesn’t.  On the other hand, a single or small body of rulers depend on their individual judgements.  Obviously, the argument goes, the former is more prudent than the latter.  See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:  Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975).