Posted on 06/21/2010 7:49:27 AM PDT by Publius
Earlier threads:
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
7 Dec 1787, Federalist #18
8 Dec 1787, Federalist #19
11 Dec 1787, Federalist #20
12 Dec 1787, Federalist #21
14 Dec 1787, Federalist #22
18 Dec 1787, Federalist #23
18 Dec 1787, Address of the Pennsylvania Minority
19 Dec 1787, Federalist #24
21 Dec 1787, Federalist #25
22 Dec 1787, Federalist #26
25 Dec 1787, Federalist #27
26 Dec 1787, Federalist #28
Our Framers relied heavily on the political philosophers Montesquieu, Blackstone, Locke. Montesquieu and Blackstone wrote extensively on the division of powers as necessary to the preservation of liberty. That is why the Articles of Anarchy could not be improved, for to give thirteen members of Congress legislative, executive and judicial authority along with powers of enforcement which would be the very definition of tyranny.
Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization, it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But, once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and, for that purpose, to inquire how a free society worked. This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty; the second did not.Historians, lawyers and political scientists have always confused the rationalistic and centralizing aspects of the French tradition for our own.As a result, we have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty: one empirical and unsystematic, the other speculative and rationalistic –the first based on an interpretation of traditions and institutions which had spontaneously grown up and were but imperfectly understood, the second aiming at the construction of a utopia, which has often been tried but never successfully. Nevertheless, it has been the rationalistic, plausible, and apparently logical argument of the French tradition, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason, that has progressively gained influence, while the less articulate and less explicit tradition of English freedom has been on the decline.
This distinction is obscured by the fact that what we have called the “French tradition” of liberty arose largely from an attempt to interpret British institutions and that the conceptions which other countries formed of British institutions were based mainly on their descriptions by French writers. The two traditions became finally confused when they merged in the liberal movement of the nineteenth century and when even leading British liberals drew as much on the French as on the British tradition. It was, in the end, the victory of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals over the Whigs in England that concealed the fundamental difference which in more recent years has reappeared as the conflict between liberal democracy and “social” or totalitarian democracy.
This difference was better understood a hundred years ago than it is today. In the year of the European revolutions in which the two traditions merged, the contract between “Anglican” and “Gallican” liberty was still clearly described by an eminent German-American political philosopher. “Gallican Liberty,” wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, “is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in the wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of interference by public power. The question whether this interference be despotism or liberty is decided solely by the fact who interferes, and for the benefit of which class the interference takes place, while according to the Anglican view this interference would always be either absolutism or aristocracy, and the present dictatorship of the ouvriers would appear to us an uncompromising aristocracy of the ouvriers.”
Since this was written, the French tradition has everywhere progressively displaced the English. To disentangle the two traditions it is necessary to look at the relatively pure forms in which they appeared in the eighteenth century.
What we have called the “British Tradition” was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, seconded by their English contemporaries Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in the jurisprudence of the common law. Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism: the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet, are their best know representatives. Of course, the division does not fully coincide with national boundaries. Frenchmen, like Montesquieu and, later, Benjamin Constant and, above all, Alexis de Tocqueville are probably nearer to what we have called the “British” than to the “French” tradition. And in Thomas Hobbes, Britain as provided at least on eve of the founders of rationalist tradition, not to speak of a whole generation of enthusiasts for the French Revolution, like Godwin, Priestly, Price, and Paine, who (like Jefferson after his stay in France) belong entirely to it.
2. Though these two groups are now commonly lumped together as ancestors of modern liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that between their respective conceptions of the evolution and functioning of a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main contrast in the practical conclusions to which these approaches led has recently been put, as follows: “One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose”, and “one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberativeness; one for trail and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern.” It is the second view, as J. L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy.
The sweeping success of the political doctrines that stem from the French tradition is probably due to their great appeal to human pride and ambition. But we must not forget that the political conclusions of the two schools derive from the different conceptions of how society works. In this respect, the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and completely wrong.
Our people have had two hundred years for the rationalistic thinking to take hold and subvert the empirical evolved form of liberty. The tried and true of the local state has been subverted to the "logical" or the concept most conforming to a rationalistic ideology. The answers under the rationalistic solution have pointed to utility, uniformity and centralization.
We have done a poor job in understanding what we have inherited -- by definition satisfying the very need for conservative thought.
Excellent point.
Brutus’ primary concerns center around the state governments, their prerogatives and power, not the goal of government, “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” of the people. The Framers did not originate this term. It was common in the states’ colonial charters and constitutions written in 1776-77.
We had colonies and local governments that had persisted for four to six generations without the active day to day participation of a central government. We rebelled when that changed in the 1740 to 1770 era as Parliament went to take money in a more organized manner from the colonies. While we cited abstract terms in justifying that rebellion, we did not re-make our society and governmental institutions in that rebellion — we didn't have a Francophile rationalistic revolution remaking all of society.
We had a diverse and participatory group of Republics with citizens steeped in almost two hundred years of electing their own local authorites and functionaries. The simply wanted to continue that and keep common law and local custom and convention.
As we formed a national government, we added aspects to a written Constitution to protect those freedoms we had enjoyed that precipitated the separation. It was a practical document not a philosophic tract. The distinction of what was being protected was well understood at the time and little understood today.
One might even extend this state-centric Gallic tradition of liberty to include Marxism, a rather paradoxical but perfectly understandable development. Marx, after all, was convinced that his system was the sole route to human actualization, "liberty" grossly redefined in a collective sense (and only to be enjoyed by his Chosen People, the proletariat), but to him the only liberty that mattered. In the English tradition this is obvious and arrant nonsense; in the Gallic, that isn't as obvious. Just a couple of random thoughts.
...oh, and I should have said “British”, not “English”, rather an embarrassing lapse inasmuch as Burke was an Irishman... ;-)
Even United Kingdom would more accurately cite the Scots thinkers that predated many of the other parts of the land.
That entire Chapter of the Constitution of Liberty was something I felt so strong about that I posted it by hand typing it into a thread cut up in sections across 130 posts back in 2003 when we used to discuss such things more commonly.
I just looked back and you hadn’t posted on that thread and it might interest you to see the conservative v. libertarian angle that tpaine and others goaded me into while finding the four followup posts where the entire chapter is put on the thread.
Go:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/836099/posts
FR running low all day bump for later
So it will wait upon ladies at their toilette, accompany them to the ball, the play and the assembly, church, every home, cellar, kitchen, bedroom, all of a man's drinks, a constant companion to all, upon every head. . . . Sheesh.
A common tactic of the demagogue is to whip the populace into a froth over imaginary evils. Yates was a skilled lawyer and NY Supreme Court judge. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Let the smaller colonies have equal money and equal men and then let them have an equal vote . . . If they have an equal vote without bearing equal burdens, a confederation upon such an iniquitous base will never last long.” Ben Franklin
You are aware that the federal government regulates toilets, right?
Brutus makes some decent points, but he makes them more effectively later. His best arguments are irrefutable. Like his critique here of the flabby language of the Constitution.
You are aware that the Constitution of 1787 did not, right?
Here’s another. “What will render this power in Congress effectual and sure in its operation is, that the government will have complete judicial and executive authority to carry all their laws into effect”
A government that cannot enforce the law is not a government, a fact demonstrated perfectly by the Articles of Anarchy.
For flab, look to the Articles of Anarchy, which were ignored from the moment they were ratified.
I don’t think the “flabby language” of the Constitution is as much a problem as the fact it has been ignored.
One example: Congress has the authority (AND RESPONSIBILITY!!!!) to declare war, when necessary.
That item by itself would insure that for us to go to war, a good percentage of the population/states were in agreement.
Now war is just a whim of the President.
Another example: We went off the gold standard
Well, what would have happened if the Federal Government wanted taxes, but there was almost no gold left in the population? Would the people suffer? Would the states suffer? Both, no doubt.
So the one thing preventing the Federal government from growing uncontrollably was money measured in gold.
How to get around it? One of the things the Federal government is prohibited of doing, “Bills of credit”
Paper money.
Where is the usual outrage over the “provide for the common Defense and general Welfare” clause?
The Congress has voted on "authorizations to use force", which everyone has understood to be war bills empowering the president as commander in chief. It's still done with consent of the Congress, and usually, when the country is being whooped up for war, the senators and congressmen vote red white and blue overwhelmingly.
The Articles are definitely quaint. Charming to think that this loose confederation was able to defeat the British empire. Heady days.
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