Posted on 12/26/2009 3:33:08 PM PST by the_conscience
What does it mean to be a conservative in the United States? Dictionaries are not much help on this one, since like most reference works, they turn out to yield fairly bland and abstract conceptions. For instance, the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines the adjective conservative as either "relating to a philosophy of conservatism" or "constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism." Webster's does go on to say that being conservative has to do with the maintenance of "existing views, conditions, or institutions." In other words, conservative is supposed to be synonymous with "traditional," "moderate," and "cautious," favoring norms of "taste, elegance, style, or manners."
This is all well and good, but this definition, from an American dictionary no less, does not help much with the idea of American conservatism. The reason is that the United States is a novel phenomenon in human history. Of course, antecedents for it exist in ancient Greece and Rome. But the nation that emerged out of the late eighteenth-century British colonies in North America was hardly conservative, considering that it gave up on the two institutions that had preserved some semblance of cultural and political order in the West since at least the fifth century--namely, crown and church. What is more, whether the new nation was liberal or republican in its ideology, a point much debated by historians, it is not too controversial to suggest that the freedoms won in the American colonies' war for independence were also fairly novel from the perspective of European society. This is one of the reasons why Americans call Europe the Old World as opposed to our New one. The United States granted incredible intellectual, political and economic freedom to its citizens (slavery notwithstanding). These freedoms were so unusual that one of those traditional institutions of European social order, the papacy, condemned Americanism in 1899 as fundamentally incompatible with Roman Catholic teaching and practice. What Pope Leo XIII regarded as hostile to Catholicism was not so much theological novelty, but the liberal ideology that advocated representative forms of government, free markets and the separation of church and state, an ideology that Pius IX had already condemned in his Syllabus of Errors. In other words, the traditional institution of the papacy condemned ideas and sentiments that today's conservatives regard as traditional. This is another way of saying that conservatism in the United States is something of an oxymoron or a case of political schizophrenia. From an historical perspective, our conservatism is really liberalism, since it is on the side of the things that nineteenth-century liberals championed--limited government, individual freedom and economic opportunity. This means that watching conservatives trying to deny their liberalism can be either very confusing or very amusing. In the latter camp would fall H. L. Mencken, who, when pressed on why he lived in the United States, wrote that it was "incomparably the greatest show on earth . . . worth every cent it costs."[1]
No doubt, J. Gresham Machen would be a primary exhibit of American conservatism's strangely entertaining ways. In 1926, he testified before the Congress of the United States against the formation of a Federal Department of Education. Machen's reasons for opposing the proposal stemmed from his politics, which were decidedly liberal, if not libertarian. They may not have been all that unusual for a Southern Democrat, which Machen was. But they must have sounded odd coming out of the mouth of a fundamentalist who, during the same month that he appeared before Congress, also testified before a committee of the northern Presbyterian Church, and there did exactly what he criticized Congress for doing. In this testimony, Machen argued not for greater freedom but actually for more intolerance. He blamed liberalism for the controversy that was dividing Presbyterians and argued that preachers who could not affirm such doctrines as the virgin birth of Christ should be barred from the Presbyterian Church. For Machen, liberalism was an entirely different religion from Christianity, and conservatives should oppose it with all their might. But before Congress, Machen played a different tune. Instead of blaming liberalism for America's woes, he did the liberal thing of telling government officials to leave the American people alone.
So how do we square Machen's liberal politics with his conservative religion? Was he simply guilty of contradicting himself? Does ideological consistency, for instance, require being a conservative in all walks of life, including politics, religion, and culture? Or is it possible to be, as Daniel Bell thought of himself, a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics and a conservative in culture?[2] Could it be that Machen's apparently double-minded performance in 1926--liberalism before Congress and strict Calvinism before Presbyterian commissioners--is simply the dark side of conservatism in the United States? What I will do in these remarks is, first, explore Machen's political conservatism and its significance for federalism; second, look at the implications of his libertarianism for education; and last, make a few observations about what lessons Machen might offer to contemporary American Protestants who think of themselves as conservative.
Anyone wondering why Machen would have been asked to testify before Congress about the proposed federal department of education most likely would have pointed to his credentials as an educator. After all, Machen had been associated with schools for practically all his life. He loved the study of classical languages and literature, and was very much alarmed that the "one-hundred percent American" crowd, the ones pushing for English-only curricula, would prohibit the study of not only German, but also Latin and Greek.
Yet his appearance on Capitol Hill stemmed more from his political views than his pedagogical convictions. The organization that brought Machen to Washington was the Sentinels of the Republic, a libertarian association spearheaded by Massachusetts businessmen who opposed all things federal, from military conscription, Prohibition, and the Child Labor Amendment, to the federal department of education. In an address Machen gave to the Sentinels, only a month before his appearance before Congress, he made clear that the proposed department was primarily about politics. "Let us be perfectly clear about one thing," he concluded, "if liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else."[3] Machen thereby established his political identity as an American conservative, that is, as one who was fundamentally committed to the principle of limited government.
Machen's conservatism began quite startlingly with the idea that government, was a necessary evil. The purpose of the state, accordingly, was not "to produce blessedness or happiness" but rather to prevent "blessedness or happiness from being interfered with by wicked men." Machen's politics began with the aim of sustaining the good life of individuals and families, rather than making a people into a great nation. In a lengthy passage from an address given before Christian day school teachers and administrators, Machen outlined the political creed of all genuine conservatives on this side of the Atlantic:
I believe in the notion that there are certain basic rights of the individual man and the individual family which must never be trampled under foot--never for any supposed advantage of the whole, never because of the supposed necessity of any emergency--certain basic rights like the right of personal freedom, the right of property, the right of privacy of the home, the real freedom of speech and of the press. I believe in the specifically American idea of government--not a nation divided for purposes of administrative convenience into a number of units called states, but a number of indestructible states, each with its inalienable rights, each with its distinctive features, with its own virtues to be cultivated by its own citizens, with its own defects not to be remedied at all unless remedied by its own citizens, and, on the other hand, a Federal government not in possession of any general and unexpressed sovereignty but carefully limited to powers expressly granted it by a Constitution which was not of its own making.
These were not merely political convictions but also deeply felt sentiments, so deep that Machen was almost embarrassed to admit his love for his country, confessing that his affection was probably "disgustingly sentimental."[4]
But these sentiments, Machen also admitted, were a source of great sorrow. His affection for the American idea of government caused much grief because of the beating that liberty was taking in his day. "The healthy hatred of being governed," he explained, "formerly so strong in the American people, is gradually being lost." As long as government policies conferred certain physical benefits, no one opposed legislative interference, threats to family life or government monopolies. Or, as Machen put it in his book diagnosing the defects of liberal Protestantism, where he wanted to retain the good sense of what liberalism meant, modern governments never considered whether forced welfare was a bad thing: "In the interests of physical well-being the great principles of liberty are being thrown ruthlessly to the winds."[5]
Machen's firm commitment to limited government was his chief reason for opposing the proposed federal department of education. That proposal, he believed, was grounded in the notion that education was essentially an affair of the state, "that education must be standardized for the welfare of the whole people and put under the control of government." In sum, governmental control and regulation of education implied that children "belong to the State, that their education must be provided for by the State in a way that makes for the State's welfare."[6] This assumption undermined the proper authority for education, namely, the parents who bore responsibility for their own children. Parents, Machen believed, had the right to educate their children in whatever way they saw fit. He even warned that if Christian day schools, institutions he greatly admired, ever competed with families, then he could never endorse them.
Consequently, protecting the legitimate authority of local powers--what Protestants used to call "lesser magistrates"--worked in tandem with Machen's commitment to limited government. In other words, he opposed federal control of or intrusion into the affairs of other duly recognized and constituted authorities, ranging from families, neighborhoods, and counties to the state governments that make up the United States of America. For this reason, Machen saw in federal programs, like a department of education or the Child-Labor Amendment, the same sort of centralization and consolidation of political power that Germany was exhibiting under National Socialism and the Soviet Union under Communism. The American alternative to such efforts, he believed, was not to centralize and consolidate power in a more benign fashion, but to avoid centralization altogether and limit national government by dispersing power to a host of local authorities, whether public officials or not.
Of course, decentralizing power--what we would call today devolution--would mean less uniformity and even less efficiency. But Machen would not blink when confronted by these apparently negative consequences. He even went so far as to say that inefficiency and diversity were good things in themselves. Although Machen was not at all happy with many of the individual States' education policies, especially with legislation making English the only language, he was far more comfortable with forty-eight governments having spoons in the pot than with allowing the federal government to be the sole chef. Some of the States might "become very bad in the sphere of education," he explained, "but it is perhaps not likely that all of them will become utterly bad." In fact, he thought there was "a great safeguard" in the multiplicity of local governments. What is more, Machen believed that such multiplicity would foster greater competition, another benefit of decentralization. He held that "there ought to be [in the sphere of education] the most unlimited competition--competition between one state and another and competition between state schools and private schools." If such competition led to inefficiency, so much the better. Efficiency was no magic wand that made everything it touched good. Instead, efficiency directed to harmful ends was equally destructive. Better, then, he reasoned, to have many agencies and authorities taking a hand in education so that efficient forms of bad education would not snuff out good education, no matter how inefficient. As he told senators and representatives, "a more uniform and efficient system of public common school education . . . is the worst fate into which any country can fall."[7]
This is a place where contemporary conservatives would likely be uncomfortable with Machen's views, since many on the right not only want to reduce the hold of the federal government on educational policy and funding, but also think they know what a good education looks like and desire to see the blessings of such a curriculum extended to all of America. But Machen was a consistent conservative and did not flinch from the consequences of limited government. Local control in the service of liberty meant more people having a say in such matters as education. And more people having a say, especially more parents determining the nature of their children's schooling, meant a greater chance of diversity in approaches to and the content of education. Machen believed that preserving liberty for parents and nurturing diversity in education were far more important than having national educational standards, and he did not naively believe that in the end the distribution of power to local authorities would work out automatically for the good of the nation, conceived as an efficient and uniform world power. What Machen thought to be in the best interests of America was a wide spectrum of families and local communities determining their own affairs, not the dissolving of familial and regional idiosyncrasies for the sake of national interest.
Despite Machen's silence about religion in his testimony before Congress, his conservative politics did stem implicitly from theological convictions. But it is important to note before spelling out some of these Presbyterian foundations for his commitment to liberty how much Machen departed from the dominant Protestant conceptions of freedom, diversity, and the common good. For one thing, Machen's Calvinistic predecessors from New England would have been completely dumbfounded by his apparent disregard for a uniform public order based on commonly held convictions about the good, the true, and the beautiful. Puritan notions of religion and public life did not make room for diversity and religious freedom--just ask Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams--since Puritans held that true religion was the bedrock for good government. New England's Congregationalists eventually reconciled themselves to America's religious freedom after much kicking and screaming. But Machen was fighting not just the holy-commonwealth heritage of New England Calvinism, but also more recent Protestant efforts to secure Christian civilization in America. Ever since the end of the Civil War, northern Protestants had been advocating various ecumenical and interdenominational endeavors in order to work together more efficiently. They wanted to establish a united Protestant front against the centralized and uniform power of America's growing Roman Catholic population, and extend the virtues of Anglo-American morality to all classes, races, and regions.
Yet, despite swimming against the Protestant tide, Machen's politics had a strong footing in Calvinist notions about liberty of conscience, the limits of church power, Presbyterian polity, and sphere sovereignty. Presbyterians did not have a market on the belief in liberty of conscience, but they were one of the few communions with a whole chapter devoted to it in their doctrinal standards. Chapter twenty of the Westminster Confession of Faith reads, "God alone is Lord of conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men." To be sure, this was not a justification for unbridled license, since the confession goes on to recognize legitimate authorities, like the magistrate, to whom Christians are to be submissive unless compelled to do something contrary to conscience. But this doctrine, along with the Calvinist notion that the only authority that could legitimately bind consciences was the Word of God, not the state, the church or the family, gave Presbyterians like Machen a hermeneutic of suspicion that was ever watchful for abuses of power. And even when power was legitimate, the doctrine of sphere sovereignty implied that the church, the state, and the family were limited each to its own sphere of authority and could not go beyond it. State control of education was a flagrant violation of sphere sovereignty. But Calvinists believed that parochial or church-based schooling was also wrong, since the family was the sole institution responsible for the training of children except in such dire circumstances as those of orphans. For that reason, Machen favored Christian schools run by families, not church-schools that were overseen by clergy.
One last theological conviction that helps to account for Machen's political convictions is Presbyterian church government. Unlike episcopal forms of government, as found in the Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions, Presbyterians keep church power out of the hands of one officer or bishop and vest it in a series of graded courts--from the session of the local congregation, to the presbytery consisting of congregations in a particular geographical area, to the general assembly, the highest court where representatives from all presbyteries gather to oversee the ministry of the church. This principle of structural obstacles to the centralization of power also informed American government's separation of power. American Presbyterian polity also protects the rights of lower courts against those of the higher, giving the greatest power to sessions for the week-in and week-out life of a congregation, while also granting to presbyteries the responsibilities of ordaining ministers. The point is that Presbyterians of Machen's stripe, who were always wary of higher courts usurping the powers of local bodies, believed that even though this system of government was often long on procedure and short on quick decisions, it left the most important matters of church life to members and officers most immediately affected by those decisions.
In other words, Presbyterianism is the form of church government most compatible with such sociological notions as mediating structures or the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. The idea behind both concepts, negatively, is that large structures like those of centralized government are clumsy if not ruthless in addressing the variety of circumstances and problems of ordinary individuals, families, congregations, and communities. Positively, these concepts also teach that the state should not perform tasks which other institutions and communities can perform themselves. In the words of Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno:
Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.[8]
Ironically, in the twentieth century it has been Roman Catholics, those who affirm an infallible centralized authority, who have explored most the political implications of subsidiarity. In contrast, twentieth-century American Protestants, whose very denominational diversity is a vindication of the principle of subsidiarity, lament their lack of uniformity and pine for a Protestant pope to give them the order and stability necessary for greater influence.
Be that as it may, a commitment to liberalism in the classic political sense, that is, as the political philosophy of American conservatives, need not mean an equal commitment to individualism. One reason why Machen's libertarianism fails to resonate with contemporary religious conservatives, aside from their belief in the goodness of government, is that they do not notice that Machen's politics are rooted in this notion of sphere sovereignty. It was not that he believed all governmental power was always harmful. Rather, when government overreached its proper bounds, Machen expressed alarm. The creation of a federal department of education was a prime example of national government overstepping its proper sphere. For this reason, Machen put his finger on the problem with the growth of the federal government. Too often we think that social or political problems come down to the tension between the rights of individuals and the compelling interest of the state. But as Mark C. Henrie has recently argued, building on the work of Robert Nisbet, twentieth-century American politics is bound up with a historical paradox:
The power of the state in our lives has risen hand in hand with the rise of the individual "rights" about which we are so proud. . . . These two movements--increasing political power and increasing individual "freedom"--are directly related. For the rights that have been "recognized" by the modern liberal state are not so much rights against the state as they are rights against other social bodies that used to have some measure of authority in the lives of men and women.[9]
Machen's plea for liberty, then, was not aimed at license for individuals. It was an argument for the freedom of legitimate authorities to exercise power in their proper spheres. In other words, the debate over the federal department of education was essentially, according to Machen, a struggle between the rights of parents and the rights of the nation-state. And this explains why he was opposed to federal intervention in education, no matter how good it might be. Even if the bureaucrats in Washington devised a classical curriculum that taught Greek, Latin and all the wonders of ancient literature and history, he still would have opposed them. The reason was simple--it wasn't the state's business to educate children; that business belonged only to parents. For Machen, it was the essence of paternalism to let government do good things that involved it in spheres where it should not go. The rule of a benign dictator was still tyrannical, no matter how good his policies. As he explained to one congressman, the best thing to do would be to "diminish rather than to increase the function of the public school, and to place the responsibility . . . of children where it exactly belongs, upon the individual parents."[10] The contest over a federal department of education, then, was plainly and simply a struggle between families and Washington. And for Machen, the principles of American government made this an easy call, since the liberty he favored was premised upon the conviction of limited government.[SNIP]
Machen's politics had a strong footing in Calvinist notions about liberty of conscience, the limits of church power, Presbyterian polity, and sphere sovereignty. Presbyterians did not have a market on the belief in liberty of conscience, but they were one of the few communions with a whole chapter devoted to it in their doctrinal standards. Chapter twenty of the Westminster Confession of Faith reads, "God alone is Lord of conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men."
Nice words. What did fascist Presbyterian President Woodrow Wilson do? Nationalize the running of the railroads and create the forerunner of the even more despotic and fascist United Nations. Here are some of the few things that I agree with Machen on and your fascist President violated them.
He was a liberal.
I know you like to bash all Presbyterians so how was the Presbyterian Reagan a “fascist”?
Most fascists are. The Democratic Party is full of them.
I know you like to bash all Presbyterians so how was the Presbyterian Reagan a “fascist”?
Even though President Reagan attended mostly Bel Air Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) since 1963, he certainly appeared to be unaffected by the fascist bent in that organization. A superior man overcoming the limitations of the organization that he joined.
Too bad so few Romanists can overcome the inherent fascism taught in their church.
Fascism and globalism, two of the scourges of the 20th century, were first practiced by the stiff-necked Calvinist Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson, America’s first fascist president.
In fact, both ideologies were concoctions of his polluted “elect” mindset.
So when you say Romanism you're using a euphemism for Calvinism. Got it.
Wilson did two very bad things which abrogated the state of freedom in the United States and the world.
Does that unproven assertion make you glad you're not like that "Presbyterian fascist"?
Our slide into fascism started when the first child stepped foot in the first government school in the mid-1800s.
1) Government schools teach all citizens that the child and parents are under the power, inspection, and direction of the state. That alone acclimatizes the population to the yoke of tyranny.
2) Every day that a child attends a government school, he or she learns that the government has the power to take money from his neighbor to pay for a service that his parents want for FREE! Well?...If schooling can be provided by the government, why not other goods and services that the child or parents want for free. Why not free medicine, doctoring, hospitalization, food, clothing, housing, and a thousand other socialist goods and services?
3) Within one to three generations of the first government K-12 schools we had: direct election of Senators, the federal reserve, the failed League of Nations, the feminist movement, the IRS, FDR's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society, the abolishment of the gold standard, a thousand other socialist programs and agencies...and now we have Marxist-fascist Obama!
Marxist fascism is our nation's MOST MOST MOST serious and immediate threat! Schools are the Marxist-fascist's **MOST** important weapon!
If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else./p>
So!....If we are going to win against Marxist fascism we MUST MUST MUST close the government schools and get children into **private** environments ( possibly "schools") where the parents have the maximum control over the direction of their children's education!
I agree with the one caveat that parents in local communities can form associations for the education of their children free from national dictates and funds and probably from state dictates and funds.
Education needs to be decentralized!
In other words: Close down the government K-12 schools. Let the parents figure it out without any government interference.
Another interesting use of quotation marks, since you are the first and last on this thread to post Presbyterian fascist...or can you demonstrate otherwise?
I’m sorry, did you miss the questions?
Indeed you are.
...did you miss the questions?
No.
Obviously the current model is not working.
I detect a certain amount of confusion on our friend’s part. Perhaps you need to enlighten him. He is floundering.
What a bunch of self-serving drivel. The letter referred to (http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/L13TESTE.HTM) Was sent to politely protest the anti-Catholic legislation typified by the Blaine Amendments that sought to ensure that ACatholics had no voice in the body politic.
While the Constitution bars the participation of government in religion, it does not bar the participation of religions and its adherents in politics. The growing Catholic population was disrupting the political status quo so Catholicism was made the bogeyman.
It was, and is, the position of the Catholic Church; A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs, including Catholics, must advance their convictions in the public square -- peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.
Reagan maintained a great deal of respect for both the Pope and the Catholic Church. Another thing you don't have in common with him.
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