A Warning from 1765

"The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" ^ | 1765 | Charles Carroll

[fire_eye]

"Purchase lands in America, where liberty will maintain her empire till a dissoluteness of morals, luxury, and venality shall have prepared the degenerate sons of some future age to prefer their own mean lucre, the bribes, and the smiles of corruption and arbitrary ministers to patriotism, to glory, and to the public weal.
No doubt the same causes will produce the same effects, and a period is already set to the reign of American freedom; but that fatal time seems to be at a great distance. The present generation at least, and I hope many succeeding ones... will enjoy the blessings and the sweets of liberty."

[x]

This is certainly an interesting question. You can find a lot more quotations from the founders saying that representative governments can only last as long as public virtue and religious piety do. The decline of other nations and empires throughout history deeply influenced them and I'm not sure we can simply discount their perception.

Virtue does seem more to be a base or foundation, rather than a goal, as nicollo noted. Making virtue a goal is more reminiscent of Robespierre than of the founders. I'm not sure virtue is only a means or that the foundation is less important than the goal, though. Maybe public virtue enables us to be free in order to be privately virtuous (which can't be compelled publically, because it is private or because it isn't virtue if it's only the product of compulsion), public virtue being a part of political philosophy and private virtue a part of social or moral philosophy or religion.

Two aspects of this. 1) Madison's idea of checks and balances: does it mean that competing and countervailing powers make virtue unnecessary? And the same question can be asked of subsequent ideas of markets and democracy. I'm skeptical about whether Madison really wanted to make virtue superfluous whether societies can dispense with virtue or rely on markets or constitutions or democratic processes alone. 2) Founders and later moral revivalists (progressives, prohibitionists, etc): how close together or how far apart? I don't know how to answer that question. There certainly is a difference, but the attitudes of both the founders and the progressives are very different from those of people today.

I suspect the founders presumed that the spectrum of possible or acceptable behaviors would be narrower than it turned out to be later on. If you behaved in certain ways in their world, you forfeited your right to be heard, either because you weren't trusted by your peers or because you didn't have the property to vote. Democracy meant that you could behave in what had been unacceptable ways and still have a voice in government, and this meant that new attitudes towards morality developed.

[nicollo]

Madison's idea of checks and balances: does it mean that competing and countervailing powers make virtue unnecessary? ...I'm skeptical about whether Madison really wanted to make virtue superfluous whether societies can dispense with virtue or rely on markets or constitutions or democratic processes alone.

I assume that Madison viewed virtue as an essential interest. Yet, how could these creators of political conflict deny dissent, even unvirtuous dissent? Madison knew corruption. I'm sure he, like Washington denied it, even in commerce, which was horribly corrupt in their day, or as we see it today. Was it not another "interest"? Wouldn't Madison view the rights of virtue necessary to its triumph? If so, it had to triumph over something.

That is, weren't the Founders presenting their side of things? Weren't they arguing within the constraints they developed, which neither denied nor affirmed their opposite views?

Today, we view Washington's wealth as corrupt. He monopolized the fish trade, for example. He held aces in commerce. He withheld from personal gain his own holding within the new Federal City (on the Virginia side), but we cannot assume that his investments on Capitol Hill were entirely benign. He had to think it was a good investment (it wasn't, as Robert Morris found out, while busting his fortune in Foggy Bottom).

I suspect the founders presumed that the spectrum of possible or acceptable behaviors would be narrower than it turned out to be later on. If you behaved in certain ways in their world, you forfeited your right to be heard, either because you weren't trusted by your peers or because you didn't have the property to vote. Democracy meant that you could behave in what had been unacceptable ways and still have a voice in government, and this meant that new attitudes towards morality developed.

You correctly point to a drastic change in moral standards between then and now; I see it only changed in form, not kind. The moral is ever that which produces good result. Is "choice" virtuous? A good case has been made in the SCOTUS that it is (and which I reject). So, too, was made the case for the plain virtues of property, which we readily and regularly deny today. Definitions of property are drastically different; property itself is unchanged.

[Make me laugh that defenders of abortion, trees, and the ozone are but defending property. For one of Nicollo's dissents in the fight against virtue see here]

[Torie]

I suspect that Madison had no illusions about human virtue under the right conditions, unlike Jefferson, a chap whom he kept in check from his more radical vancies in probably the most successful political partership in American history, bar none. But yes, I suspect Madison put too much weight on the idea of pluralism to get it right. It helps, but it is no substitute for virtue. The right road is some intelligent balance between pluralism, and the anti pluralistic ideal of progressivism. In the end, civilization will only prosper if the values are basically right, but pluralistic ideal combined with intelligent empiricism, and a certain willingness to circumscribe short term self interest out of a measured selflessnes for the larger good are all needed for the Aristolelian ideal of not just life, but the good life. It is all very messy, which is why I am suspicious of formulae with few variables. To get it right requires constant effort and reflection.

[nicollo]

It is all very messy, which is why I am suspicious of formulae with few variables.

Exactly what I was trying to say, a far better said.
But you're unwilling to pull that trigger:

It helps, but it is no substitute for virtue.

Pluralism is, or it isn't necessary to guide virtue. (And vice versa). Which is it?

[Torie]

Pluralism is a mechanism to mitigate the deleterious impact of the un-virtuous. It is to be valued, but in the end it is a mere palliative. Although it is an odd thing to say for this near atheistic agnostic, it is no substitute for moral virtue. To use the finanace analogy of hedging, it is useful for the delta function, but not the omega function. It helps with risk within a circumscribed band, but not outside that band.

[DreamWeaver]

Bump

For later reading.

[nicollo]

Pluralism is the mechanism to define virtue's outcome. Pluralism doesn't always get it right, but if virtue is right, it gets a better than even's chance. Look at our history. How many movements have been self-defined by virtue? All of them?

I'll give to the Founders the definition of virtue, but not its application. Even they couldn't get it right. Ask the carriage livery trade in 1792: they were the first objects of virtue gone astray in tax policy. Or, God help us, Shay's friends.

Pluralism is a political mechanism, not a moral one. Morality in law is defined by the Bill of Rights. What that's got to do with tax policy, we'll never know, except that it's never been good. Mighty hard to extrapolate from the fundamental governmental imperative -- funding -- that has virtue compromised from the get-go, to general virtue.

It don't happen that way.

[Torie]

I am not sure you have said anything different than I. All I know, is that competing special interests often don't end up serving the public interest. In the end, there needs to be a certain measure of selflesness in the political realm, or it simply won't work very well. Pluralism alone is not enough, although it is better than nothing.

[Ohioan]

Capitalism could not survivie without a measured social safety net, and the agraian regime was obviously destined for the dust heap of history. We waste so much time with matters that are totally irrelevant.

The interaction between individuals and between individuals and their Governments involve issues that are basically the same from generation to generation--regardless of gains or losses in the tools and vehicles of production, which we employ. What you state is the rationalization that academic "liberals" have employed since the 1930s to justify the excesses of the "New Deal"; a rationalization very similar to that used to persuade German industrialists that they needed to go along with Adolph Hitler.

There is no reason, either economic or cultural, why the agrarian "safety net," of Jefferson's day, could not be adopted to deal with conditions in industrialized communities. It is the demagoguish appeals to class hatred, which stand in the way, not anything intrinsic to human society. It would be well if instead of teaching verbal rationalizations for the usurpation of power in either America or Germany, the academics would just take the trouble to study how we took care of the genuinely needy in Jefferson's day.

In 1782, Jefferson noted that one could travel from Savanah, Georgia to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and not see one native American begging. Just walk around in any city along that route today, and observe how the modern "safety nets" are working. We are disintegrating in the social substructure, and don't even notice, because of the inertia that carries the economy further. We had better wake up, lest the "deluge" after us, makes the "deluge" after the corruption in France during the time of Louis XV look like a picnic. We are flirting with something ugly beyond the comprehension of those who do not see the signs. But every blow to the sense of individual responsibility, upon which all of our institutions are based, makes us more vulnerable.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[nicollo]

I am not sure you have said anything different than I

Whatever we've said, you've said it better than I.

I'm just asking you to shoot the duck: "selflessness in the political realm" is most subjective. Rather than to empower selfishness, I see that plurality inhibits it. Again, virtue is in the works, not its product.

Am I getting anywhere?

[nunya bidness]

In the end, there needs to be a certain measure of selflesness in the political realm

You need to print that out in a big font and read it over and over again. Altruism is a measure of self-interest not state sponsored and certainly not at the barrel of a gun.

[Torie]

You need to read Noah Webster's biography. Hartford, Connecticut in the late 18th and early 19th century was filled with street people. Fantasizing about the golden age that never was may or may not be useful as a myth, but it is a myth. During the Civil War, NYC had 30,000 prostitutes. I read that somewhere just recently on the internet.

[185JHP]

Some of those guys saw into the heart of things. "Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." GW

[Torie]

Rather than to empower selfishness, I see that plurality inhibits it. Again, virtue is in the works, not its product.

I have lost you here. Perhaps you can give concrete examples, to help on aging brain to get with the program.

[Ohioan]

I will take Jefferson's testimony over Webster's. But I do not doubt that there were poor conditions in Hartford, if Webster observed them. I was not suggesting that the 18th Century was economic paradise, only that the social value system was more conducive to promoting progress in the human condition than that in the present.

Let us not, if you prefer, argue from either of our historic observers. Let me put the same point in terms of what each of us has observed in recent years. Have there been more or fewer people begging in cities near you, in the past ten years?

William Flax

[Torie]

Where I live, there have never been such, ever. In Los Angeles, about 60 miles north, the number is way down from what it was 10 years ago, and that is a fact. Part of that is due to the increasing Hispanic influence. Yes, you heard me right, the Hispanic influence. Write that down.

[185JHP]

NYC had corrupt police officers when TR was Police Commissioner. TR liked to go out and walk around the streets at night. One night he came upon a uniformed cop talking to a street harlot in a salacious manner. He said to the cop "What are you doing?" And the cop said "Move on, or I'll fan you!" - meaning beat you with my nightstick. Immorality isn't a new thing. Maybe putting some stocks in malls would be a good thing for the education of the "Goths" and other feral youth?

[nicollo]

I was referring back to my #20, last paragraph.

A concrete example would be Stephen Douglas vs. Lincoln. Neither one took a terrifically virtuous side of the debate over slavery, yet Lincoln's pragmatism won over Douglas' pragmatism. Virtue was for John Brown in that one.

Lincoln's moral obfuscation won the argument.

[Ohioan]

Where I live, there have never been such, ever. In Los Angeles, about 60 miles north, the number is way down from what it was 10 years ago, and that is a fact. Part of that is due to the increasing Hispanic influence. Yes, you heard me right, the Hispanic influence. Write that down.

Let us say that there are different dynamics in play, here and there--although you are the first observer that I have encountered, who suggests that the social climate is improving in California. But what is your point about the Hispanic influence that I am supposed to write down? You aren't suggesting, are you, that the solution to a social and moral breakdown in the American population, is simply to replace the Americans with a foreign group? I hope that you are not suggesting anything so callous and indifferent to the ongoing existence of the American people? My only point was that there was a better, less corrupting way to deal with poverty, than the increased dependence upon big Government. I was not suggesting that we replace anyone. I would hope that that is not what you mean--or that we need any foreign element to teach us how to behave.

I will read any response tomorrow or Monday, but it is now time for me to go out for the evening--pretty late start, our time. So good night, for now.

William Flax

[Torie]

Are we getting confused between "selfishnes" and selflessness?" If so, I can see why are dialogue has run aground.