Posted on 05/21/2002 5:44:16 PM PDT by aconservaguy
Check this out:
It's beautiful.
Richard F.
. . .
The aim of conservatives was to protect liberty,
I understand him to be casting the Federalists as the "conservatives" here. I'm not sure that "liberty," "freedom," or the "rule of law" were the objectives that the Federalists had in mind when, during the Adams presidency, they enacted the Sedition Act just a few years after the adoption of the First Amendment. Maybe I'm missing his point.
Jefferson's own affection for the French Revolution explains the distrust many Founders had for him, and gives us ample reason to question the "good Jeffersonian" versus "bad Hamiltonian" view of American history. To be sure there were virtues in Jeffersonianism and dangers in Hamiltonianism. But the reverse was also true.
The article provides a good corrective to the naive worship of Jefferson. But America does benefit from the tension between Jefferson and Hamilton. Hamilton set the country on a safe path, but pure Hamiltonianism would also have been undesirable.
By the same token, republicanism is a double-edged sword. It did harken back to classical antiquity. And it did strengthen the defense of the people's liberties. But McDonald is right that there was something ferocious and utopian about it. The idea of recurrent revolutions and secessions, and "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants" every generation is not, strictly speaking, a conservative idea.
The idea of republicanism as a modernism is an intriguing one. It's something that should be explored further. But it's worth noting that ideologies were very much mixed together in those days. In time of crisis, political figures naturally strained to strike republican poses, which they relaxed when tensions eased.
Englishmen looking back over to their own Civil War commonly took it as a victory of liberty against tyranny or, less commonly, as a defeat of tradition by modernity. What we can see now is that liberty, tyranny, modernity and tradition present in both camps. Not always to the same degree, of course. There were reasons why one fought on this side or that. There is a lot at stake in such struggles and sometimes the balance of the evil is on one side.
But the idea that all has to do is pick up the banner of Cromwell or Charles, Jefferson or Hamilton to automatically be right in all subsequent political conflicts is a mistake. I don't know how far I'd go with McDonald, but his article is a potent corrective to much of what one reads about the early years of our nation's history.
We do have to acknowledge that Forrest is the supreme Hamilton biographer. He may see motives and motivation in Hamilton due to his depths of study that few other would. While never thinking of him as the monarchist that some make him out to be, there was as much the Tory in him as the Burkeian "Old Whig".
I will need to look back at last year's reading of The Last of the Fathers, a new bio of Madison to see if I can get it in context with some of this.
Certain items in this, I note, are repetitions of points made repeatedly by Russell Kirk, particularly the linking of the Lockeian rationalism as outside of the Burkeian Conservative strain and the organization and depiction of conservative principles in general.
You can say that again.
Interesting statement. It suggests that the only anti-dote to utopian dreams slipping in and out of our contemporary pundits (LewRockwell.com) is an historical understanding of millenialism. There's homework.
I could see how one comes to say this. The less we understand "millenialist", the less humble every political enterprise becomes, modernist or not.
Well, gee... that little "pipe dream" didn't seem to work out too well, did it, KC? Funny how "theory" succumbs to reality sooner or later, and probably sooner, in the degree that the theorist regards actual experience -- personal, social, and historical -- as outmoded and therefore "irrelevant" to his theoretical problems.
Our modernist and post-modernist ideologues are seemingly united in believing that the only way to make anything "new" (e.g., a "perfect society") is to simply clear the decks of everything "old." But this never works in the long run: Reality is just too stubborn.
Thanks for the heads-up to this "meaty" essay, KC Burke. Bookmarked for later study. best, bb.
The filtering process of the Federalist was the accross the board understanding of how to create an upper house in congress ( a sea anchor sort of body) and how to have a President not beholden to a segment of the country or elected as a popular demogogue. In sum, all the dangers read in populist democractic regimes up until their time.
Since then, with expansion of the franchise and liberalizing of the participation of the electorate in determining representation, we have had a slow, gradual, change to our structure today -- all without revolution or upheavel on these matters. Very conservative and prudent change, albeit not without flaws.
I think it is not so much the republicanism of the founders that he is casting in that light. but, instead, the (Jeffersonian) Republicanism of Jefferson, Madison and those that followed after the demise of strong Federalists right up until the Jeffersonian Republicans became the Jacksonian Democrat-Republicans.
My reading is that excess on both sides was high.
Hi KC! The thought has struck me that the "expansion of the franchise and liberalizing of the participation of the electorate in determining representation" has had highly revolutionary effects on the social fabric and the evolution of political institutions. Though it is anathema these days to suggest it, we'd probably be a whole lot better off as a nation if the franchise were limited to those who could meet some type of property qualification, and/or pass a literacy test.
This suggestion more than likely wouldn't serve the ideologue's purpose, which is to "perfect society" according to his dreams. But it sure seems to reflect the facts of social reality, given that societies are composed of men, and men -- even "virtuous" men -- are flawed creatures.
The idea that a just and free political society can be constructed out of a tiny minority of virtuous men is patently laughable. In any event, a broad franchise would be unlikely to elect virtuous men. If anything, contemporary voter tastes seem to run in the other direction. But if it did, those "virtuous men" sooner or later, virtually inevitably, would be forced to adopt tyrannical measures, for the unvirtuous would probably not be eager to follow their lead without "incentives" to do so.
The student of history may have noticed a very stubborn fact about political societies, well-known since the time of Plato at least: Political societies are only as good as the "general level of attainment" of the men who comprise them. If most men lack virtue, there's nothing government can do to make a just or good society, let alone one that would "last forever."
Whatever. The problem is, regardless of whether the franchise is restricted or expansive, it seems to me that no "perfect societies" will likely result. The millenialist tendency MacDonald discusses here assumes that man is capable of self-perfection. As Voegelin has put it, it's an exercise in intramundane eschatology (i.e., human "self-salvation") whose real objective, when you boil it all down, is political power for the millenialist thinker.
I just loved his comment that the one thing an ideologue cannot do is to cease being an ideologue (to paraphrase).
Thanks for writing, KC. This has been a great discussion for far. best, bb.
It is certainly homework for me.
Do you really think it makes sense to lump Madison in with Jefferson without any qualification at all?
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