That happy old Union was a friendly contract—the states managing their own affairs, joining together in matters of defense, and enjoying free trade among themselves, and indeed, enjoying free trade with all the world, because the Constitution, as it sometimes forgotten, required all taxes to be uniform throughout the Union and absolutely forbade taxation of the exports of any state. The federal government was empowered to lay a modest customs duty to raise revenue for its limited tasks, but otherwise had no power to restrict or assist enterprises.
That is what the States United meant to our Founders—a happy Union of mutual consent and support. It did not mean a government that dictated the arrangement of every parking lot in every public and private building in every town, and the kind of grass that a citizen must plant around his boat dock. It did not mean the incineration of women and children who might have aroused the ire of a rogue federal police force, unknown to the Constitution and armed as for a foreign enemy. It did not mean that billions would be spent (as in Kuwait) restoring an oriental despot to his throne; or that a hero would be made out of the successful general who killed more women, children, soldiers trying to surrender, and his own men than he did armed enemies. Had George Washington been confronted with these things, he would have reached for his sword.
The American Founders knew that republican societies were fragile—that they tended to degenerate into empires if extended beyond a small state, though they hoped the federal principle would block this tendency in America. Their definition of self-government was the superiority of the community to its rulers. In a reversal of the age-old pattern of mankind, the rulers (a necessary evil) became delegates of the community temporarily assigned to take care of some part of the public business. In an empire, like the one from which they had seceded, the public business. In an empire, like the one from which they had seceded, the community existed for the support and gratification of the rulers. A republican America was to be governed in interest of the communities that made it up; its rulers were ‘responsible.’ An empire, to the contrary, was governed by the needs, ideas, interests, even whims, of the rulers. A republic passes over into empire when political activity is no longer directed toward the well-being of the people but for the benefit of their rulers. That is to say, an empire’s government reflects management needs, and reflects the desires and will of those who control the machinery, rather than the interests and will of those being governed. Who can doubt that we are now an empire? The American people no longer think of the government as theirs, but as a hostile, manipulative, unjust, and unresponsive distant ruler.
A republic goes to war to defend itself and its vital interests, including possibly its honour. Empires go to war because going to war is one of things irresponsible rulers do. The point of reference for a republic is its own well-being. An empire has no point of reference except expansion of its authority. Its foreign policy will be abstract, and will reflect on the vagaries of mind of the rulers, who might, for instance, proclaim that it is their subjects’ duty to establish a New World Order, whatever the cost to their own blood and treasure. Who can doubt that once-proud republican Union of the states is now an empire?
An empire contains not free citizens, but subjects, interchangeable persons having no intrinsic value except as taxpayers and cannon fodder. So, if the governors of an empire should feel it easier for them to placate criminals that to punish them, they will turn over the neighborhoods and schools of their subjects to criminals, and even punish officers of the law for acting too zealously against the criminal class, thus violating the first rule of good government, which is the preservation of order. A people’s culture may be changed by imperial edict to reflect a trumped-up multiculturalism (a sure sign of an empire), or their religion persecuted. And, of course, violating one of the essential rules of republicanism, that the laws be equal to all, the imperialists exempt themselves from the commands they lay down for the rest of us. The republican right of self-government and the right of self-determination both necessarily incorporate the right of secession—that a people may withdraw from an imperial power to defend its liberty, property, culture, and faith.
We know the problems. Where should we look for solutions? Changing the personnel of the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court has been of little avail. Thomas Jefferson gives the answer: our most ancient and best tradition, states’ rights. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson remarked that in most ways American were happily situated, and then asked:
What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits… and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
But to preserve this form of government? What should we do, or not do? Jefferson answered: preserve elections (not the party system), maintain equal justice under the law, rely on the militia, avoid the debt, maintain the freedoms of speech, religion, and trial by jury, and avoid entangling alliances. And most important: ‘the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.
These past few days I've been thinking about writing whether conservatives can really do anything about reform...
Should we make ourselves noticeable (by joining certain movements and groups), or should we strive to be virtuous? Those who are in the position to should work for a reinvograted state sovereignty and relocalization, especially those in state governments, should do so, even if they attract the notice of the Federal Government and the elites. The rest of us can be virtuous citizens without fanfare, by contributing to the buildling up of community. Even if we are stuck in a community with which we do not share much in common in terms of moral ideals, to practice charity and love of the common good is paramount.
Still, the question of the end of society and its implications for culture of has not been settled in my mind yet. Relative cultural homogeneity seems necessary for a political community to persist, but even if there was not a problem of unassimilated immigrants, there is the problem of the loss of traditional Anglo-American culture in many states. It has been supplanted by liberalism, antagonistic to traditional morals and destructive of communal life.
Many have judged that the old American Union is gone, and restoring the old constitutional order is impossible because those who enter the Federal Government, even so-called conservatives, even on the Supreme Court, do not respect the limits set by the Constitution. (Most recently, Paul Gottfried has reminded us that most Americans are content with the existence of the welfare state, even if they quibble about certain programs or dollar amounts: Is Big Government Here to Stay?)
Dr. Wilson continues:
The sovereignty of the people, in which we all believe, can mean nothing except, purely and simply, the people of each state acting in their sovereign constitution-making capacity—as they did in the American Revolution when they threw off their king and assumed their own sovereignty, making their constitutions. This was a revolution in the sense of a transfer of the locus of sovereignty, not in the sense of social upheaval. The people of each state ratified the Constitution as freely consenting sovereigns, agreeing to make an instrument, limited and precise, for some of their common business.
The case of South Carolina is illustrative but not unusual. The people of South Carolina were sovereign and independent before the Declaration of Independence. Through their own governor, legislature, courts, and armed forces they were exercising every sovereign power—taxation, war, treaty-making, and the execution of felons. The week before the Declaration of Independence, Colonel Moultrie and the South Carolina forces, from their palmetto log fort on Sullivan’s Island, repulsed and defeated a British fleet that threatened to suppress their sovereign self-government.
The question is not altered by the fact that the Union has been expanded to fifty states. The founding fathers wisely made the Union expansible. The Congress may admit new states (or not), but the federal government does not create new states. States create themselves. The federal government may administer the territory, the land, before statehood, but only the sovereign people can adopt a constitution and incorporate themselves into a political society. Only by a sovereign act of free consent can a state ratify the U.S. Constitution—if we believe in government of the people. This is as true of the new states as of the old, of Montana as of South Carolina—if we believe the people are sovereign.
Americans are natural republicans, not monarchists or aristocrats. That is, we believe government rests upon consent of the governed—that is the key phrase of the Declaration of Independence. Government is legitimate in just so far as it rests upon consent, that is, the people accede to the government. The opposite of accede is to secede—the withdrawal of consent from an oppressive government. That is the only really effective restriction on power, in the final analysis.
One may be critical of the rhetoric employed in the Declaration of Independence. But it would be wrong to criticize the notion that the consent of the governed is required with respect to the Federal Government, or to say that the social compact theory of the Federal system is incorrect.
Social contract/social compact theory with respect to a particular political community is probably wrong (I haven't seen a version articulated that harmonizes with classical political theory or the Natural Law). To apply it to the states, which were sovereign, would be wrong. However, the Federal Government does get its authority from the people, as mediated by the states. (As for the source of the authority of the states, how was that answered by the Founding Fathers? From the people alone? Or from God, mediated by the people?) Those powers not delegated to the Federal Government remain reserved to the states. It is wrong to think of the Federal Union as being a single nation-state and making negative judgments accordingly about the rhetoric employed concerning authority, liberty, and so on. And yet this is the mistake that many Catholics make in their analysis.
The question of revolution and removing authority from those holding office is a tricky one--we should be careful about leaping to conclusions in a zeal to oppose liberalism lest we overlook what might be true in certain writings, especially if they may be consonant with what medieval and modern Catholic theologians wrote about political theory. (Which is not to say that attempts to link St. Robert Bellarmine to the Declaration of Independence are historically correct or the attempts to appropriate his writings in defense of the American "Revolution" are faithful to what he thought. I remain undecided on these questions.)
From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition
South Carolina League of the South
The Essential Aims and Ends of Government by Richard E. Wagner
(via The Western Confucian)
The Role of Robert Bellarmine in the Filmer-Locke Debate
Answers.com
The Bellarmine-Jefferson Legend and the Declaration of Independence By David Schley Schaff
I haven't been able to find the exact title for that short book about Bellarmine that I was thinking of when I wrote the last part of the post...
Catholic Founder: Charles Carroll by Bradley J. Birzer
How Charles Carroll Influenced U.S. Founding Fathers (Part 1)
Part 2
EWTN archive
A discussion of Dr. Rao's Founding Fathers vs. Church Fathers
Started on July 28.
No comments:
Post a Comment